Emergent Networks of Self-Organization: Communication Technologies, Social Infrastructure, and the Production of Everynight Lives
My project examines how global communication networks reshape night space through multiscalar Information Technology (IT) operations in Hyderabad's "HITEC City", India. It analyzes fiber-optic cables as material substrates that enable nocturnal production of space, hierarchically exploiting nightshift workers. Night-time workers, in turn, create informal social networks to resist this neoliberal exploitation while navigating infrastructural inadequacies. Dialectically, this research investigates how material and social network elements constitute and resist hierarchies of network society. Using vlogging ethnography as methodology, this research brings visibility to nocturnal workers and hidden infrastructure materialities through collaborative media production as a social justice intervention, challenging power asymmetries. I aim to contribute to urban and technology policy research in India.