Setting 1

In the classroom followed by an open-ended discussion; online at home (on your own) followed by reading and responding to comments in the comments-section below. After each screening, write down a brief reflection about the film.

1. Comparing the two reflections, does your understanding or perception of a given film change based on the venue in which it is being viewed? How so?
   
   Do the audience reactions, whether in a public setting (like the classroom) or online shape your reception and engagement with the film?
   
   What insights does this exercise offer you into your reception and engagement with a piece of media like an ethnographic film?
   
   Do you think the filmmaker(s) catered their film to a specific audience? Why or why not? How does this add to your understating of the process of knowledge production in anthropology?

Setting 2

Using a country like India or the United States of America as an example to explore the practices related to state-sponsored censorship, conduct independent research (online) on how the institutions tasked with rating or censoring media such as the Central Board of Film Certification of India (CBFC) or the Motion Picture Association of America define censorship.

1. Identify specific guidelines (or the lack thereof) that these agencies have used or are currently employing to censor visual media.

2. Using discourse analysis, the exercise of “reading-against-the-grain,” write a critical reflection of how formal definitions and practices related to censorship are applied.

3. How might these definitions and practices fluctuate and change over time? How might they react to the political and cultural climate of the moment?
   
   What does this tell us about democracy and free speech, and its relationship with the governmental institutions?
   
   How might censorship operate to reinforce certain hegemonic narratives about the nation?
   
   What are some of the different strategies employed by filmmakers and artists to circumvent state-sponsored censorship and subvert dominant ideology?

Setting 3

With the expansion and growing accessibility of new media technologies such as online blogs, web-based publications, video sharing websites, etc. it has become easier for academics and researchers to make their research findings publicly accessible to a far wider audience. As a result, these academics and researchers have also come under increasing scrutiny and attacks by anonymous individuals or trolls and online vigilante groups who disagree with or dislike their findings.

1. Identify one such case from past reports or track the trajectory of one such form of popular media (or journal article), which has been challenged or misinterpreted or rendered “controversial” in popular media or online. For example:

2. How might new media technologies represent sites that simultaneously provide access to knowledge as well as a platform for those seeking to dismiss or debunk that knowledge?

How should the academic or researcher respond to online trolling and other informal forms of censorship, or even fake news reports and academic blacklists?

Given the challenges highlighted above, do you think it is important for anthropologists to undertake such public engagement efforts irrespective of the risks?