Title: In this paper, I demonstrate how combining Marten’s and Jeppesen’s concept of Maps as counter-data media can be seen in the digital humanities project “Dehi Violence 2020 Archives.

Mattern (2015) characterizes maps as more than mere landscapes they represent to be simply texts to be read, rather as rhetorical and political. Mattern (2015) highlights that by looking at the “medial” properties of maps, we can better understand how they convey meaning, exert influence, and carry bias. Bill Rankin, through his Radical Cartography project, calls attention to those protocols and conventions by juxtaposing data sets, or rendering the same set of data in varying styles, thus “provoking slippages, overlaps, and multiple kinds of diversity” (Mattern 2015).Mattern (2015) argues that maps as media are distributed among myriad “users” in particular ways; they’re accessed, “processed” (do we still “read” maps?), and interpreted by those users in different ways. Mattern (2015) questions the very existence and values of large scale media-production industry with the critical question of who historically has owned the means of describing the space, and what has been their interests? Recognizing maps as media potentially opens up a more expansive understanding of how they operate (Mattern 2015).

Jeppesen and Sartoretto (2023) defines hegemonic maps as “visual representations produced by dominant institutions that often reflect Western frameworks and can have a negative impact on public discourse and social justice initiatives”. One example is the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center global map, which uses a colour scheme of red, orange, and green against a black background to represent the daily progression of the pandemic (Jeppesen and Sartoretto 2023). This map, while widely circulated, relies on data that may be non- comparable across countries due to variations in reporting criteria and timeframes (Jeppesen and Sartoretto 2023). Countering the data narratives of hegemonic maps, community‐produced maps can resist dominant representations of the pandemic, providing greater visibility, specificity, and nuance regarding the communities and territories mapped (Jeppesen and Sartoretto. 2023). Conjoining data and mapping, we define counter‐data mapping as practices that integrate resistant data appropriations into counter‐mapping processes, with the objective of challenging power asymmetries (Jeppesen and Sartoretto 2023).

“Delhi Violence 2020” is a community archive that documented communal violence and the subsequent events that erupted as an outcome of citizenship policies introduced by the Indian state. The archive brings together events from social media, news reports, and fact-finding reports to show the rampant misinformation circulated around the events, organized and targeted hate and violence by Hindu and right-wing groups, and complicity and inaction by the police (DV2020). The aim of this archive is to provide a counter-narrative to the State’s version which holds anti-CAA activists responsible for instigating the violence, elides over the role of the organized Hindutva forces including within the police and political establishment and projects the violence as largely caused by the Muslim community (DV2020). The archive also contains a timeline for incidents of violence, including counter data narratives from community documented sources. This essay will explore “Delhi Violence 2020” archive at the intersection of maps as media and as an implementation of counter-data mapping.

Regarding maps as media encourages us to recognize their prevalence and value as a fundamental cultural form – but it also prompts us to supplement geography’s methodologies and critical frameworks with those from media studies(Mattern 2015). The archive meticulously documented numerous sub-incidents over a temporal plane, organizing them chronological and categorizing them to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the socio-political consequences. Mattern (2015) summarizes that maps inform, persuade or perhaps even manipulate us, validate or marginalize voices, embody our ways of knowing and relating, shape politics, shepherd or exploit our environment. Maps have always been, but are now more than ever, media (Mattern 2015).

Jeppesen and Sartoretto (2023) find that marginalised communities have been resisting state and commercial control of big data through resistant data appropriation and counter‐hegemonic cartographic representations. The DV2020 archive seeks to challenge and counteract the effects of state propaganda by providing an alternative narrative and perspective on various issues. Such repositories of resistance link counter‐mapping to social movement actions, further supporting our argument that counter-data mapping is the new frontier of media activism and community communication (Jeppesen and Sartoretto 2023). Counter‐mapping practices have revealed invisibilised, racialised, gendered, and Indigenous communities, linking lived space to marginalised identities, and consequently have challenged hegemonic maps that construct feelings of alarm, alienation, and social control (Jeppesen and Sartoretto 2023).

Resistant data appropriation includes the construction of subaltern datasets and the repurposing of big data for socio‐political resistance, a community communication practice that both uses and contests new data technologies (Jeppesen and Sartoretto 2023). The DV2020 archive has carefully curated its media sources from community members from various news and social media platforms, showcasing resistant data-mapping practices. Activists have re‐appropriated big data and created counter‐datasets to develop counter‐mapping visualisations (Jeppesen and Sartoretto 2023). Jeppesen and Sartoretto (2023) argue that counter‐data mapping is the new frontier of media activism and community communication, with the potential to become an important communicative form of resistance in the 21st century.

Despite whatever opportunities we might have to detour, or subvert, the map and its underlying database – to build self-reflexive critiques of the cartographic enterprise right into the map itself – we sometimes run up against the operative or epistemological limitations of these systems (Mattern 2015). The DV2020 model was capable of effectively illustrating the consequences of a specific incident. Nevertheless, the inquiry interrogates the fundamental epistemological question: whether every incident can be counter-documented, or scenarios where there are multiple counter-data mappings. It is worth considering whether these counter-narratives themselves have a significant social impact. Sometimes it’s simply impossible to pin things down as a cartographic point, line, or area (Mattern 2015). Not everything is mappable, and not everything belongs on a map (Mattern 2015).

Maps can serve as a powerful medium for community communication, intersecting with counter-hegemonic maps, resistant-data or counter-data mapping. Showcasing “Delhi Violence 2020” archive as an example, we highlight that collective data appropriation by marginalised communities embodies the potential for challenging dominant narratives and fostering inclusive perspectives.

References :

Jeppesen, Sandra, and Paola Sartoretto. 2023. “Cartographies of Resistance: Counter-Data Mapping as the New Frontier of Digital Media Activism.” Media and Communication 11 (1): 150– 62. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v11i1.6043. Mattern, S. (2015) Gaps in the Map: Why We’re Mapping Everything, and Why Not Everything Can, or Should, be Mapped. https://wordsinspace.net/shannon/2015/09/18/gaps-in-the-map- why-were-mapping-everything-and-why-not-everything-can-or-should-be-mapped/ Jeppesen, S. (2023). Radical data journalism. In E. Siapera, S. Farrell, & G. Souvlis (Eds.), Radical journalism (pp. 115– 34). Routledge. “DV2020” n.d. https://delhiviolence2020.com. Accessed November 24, 2024.