Interview with Hasit Shah
2019
As a journalist and researcher Hasit Shah has been exploring smartphone use and its impact on people in India for years. Here he shares insight on how India, with its large population, is still very much disconnected from the outside world, and even when connected, it is not to consume news. He considers ongoing problems in India—such as three hundred million without electricity, similar numbers are illiterate—in relation to the number of people who have smartphones but are missing basic needs.
Hasit Shah is journalist based in London and a Research Affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. For twelve years (2002–2014), Shah was a journalist with BBC News in London,working as a news editor, a digital media strategist and as a foreign affairs producer. He has covered major breaking news stories and events across the world, including the Mumbai attacks; riots in France; violence in Indian-administered Kashmir; the London bombings; elections in the UK, France and India; regime change in Egypt; and an earthquake in Japan. Shah was a 2014 Nieman-Berkman Fellow in Journalism Innovation at Harvard. He is currently researching the impact of the growth of the mobile internet in India on digital news platforms and business models.