Research Diaries

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ABSTRACT

With the number of mobile phone subscribers increasing across all sections of society, this paper aims to understand if homeless women in shelter-homes of India have access to mobile phones and, if so, what are their usage patterns. Facilitated by issues ranging from domestic violence to lack of employment to forced migration and even to human trafficking and rape, women residing in the shelter-homes of India have a myriad of stories to tell. Not all of them have been on streets forever and many have the basic literacy to understand how to use a mobile phone. For the purposes of the study, the researchers engaged with women above 18 years of age up to the age of 45 in a series of open-ended interviews to understand their access to mobile phones and contextualize their homelessness within an affordances-based framework for mobile phone access. This paper takes into account the dual barriers of gender and the lack of a home to study the digital divide experienced by homeless women in India, expanding on how both these factors shape their access and usage, eventually bridging the digital divide, and whether mobile phones are required/desired by the women themselves. The study found that the women staying in shelter-homes see a window of hope in their use of mobile phones in the form of an independent financial future or an independent marital life, but the biased perception of using a mobile phone among women hinders women’s access to and use of these devices, which ultimately results in the loss of any kind of opportunity before it has even been explored, perhaps leading to the loss of a chance at a bright future. 

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic and the worldwide lockdowns that followed the same have led to drastic changes in our lifestyles. While the lockdowns marked a global transition to a world of online services and products, the change was neither easy nor smooth for many. From lack of access to technology to the absence of skills to use it, the act of “going digital” was littered with challenges for people across the world. In the South-Asian country of India, this lack of access was further amplified by the presence of a gender digital divide. Among the women from various factions of the society, one such category affected by it was female entrepreneurs from small rural areas in India. These entrepreneurs were cut off from their clientele owing to a nationwide lockdown in the country imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. Most of these women had no prior experience with technology (which is mobile phones in their case) but they not only negotiated access but used it to sustain and grow their entrepreneurial endeavors in a short duration of time. This study, through in-depth qualitative interviews with female entrepreneurs from small rural areas in India maps their usage patterns and their negotiations for domesticating mobile phones. The research found that the first two stages of domestication theory (appropriation and objectification) were easier to navigate for the women entrepreneurs, but gender expectations from them made the last two stages of incorporation and conversion challenging. 

ABSTRACT

The reducing digital divide in India has been facilitated with increased access to internet and mobile media at an unprecedented rate. As of December 2020, 95.80% of Indian census villages have mobile network connectivity according to an answer given in the Lok Sabha by the union minister of Telecommunications in 2022. The total internet subscribers in country are 824.89 million with 797.61 million subscribers of wireless internet and 27.28 million subscribers as per the data from March 2022. The access to internet has facilitated user generated content across platforms. YouTube, a global online video sharing and social media platform is home to many such creators who have been creating user generated content.  

The study focuses on the Indian animation community on the platform through a netnographic approach. The researchers shortlisted 12 such YouTube channels discovered through their current online presence and YouTube search of combinations of the keywords ‘India’, ‘Indian’ and ‘Desi’ with ‘Animators’, ‘Animations’ and ‘Cartoons’.  The selection criteria for the same was language (either Hindi or English), the channels should have at least 50K subscribers and the creators should be from India.  Since like ethnography, netnographic study goes beyond analysis of content shared in a community online but focus on a variety of methods to delve into deeper meanings and derive narratives from context, immersing into the channels.

The study utilizes three data sources: metrics of the channels, usernames and the content in the videos within the sample. It was found that humour is the common theme across all channels and there is extensive use of expletives in the videos. The usernames are also customized to the three-layered markers of language, culture and geography to establish a local connect with the audience. In the content analysed similar markers were found, establishing how Indian animators have worked on localization of the platform to suit their needs and audience demands. Brand collaborations were also found in many videos, indicating that their reach is being tapped into by corporate entities to reach potential customers too. The study is the first of its kind in analysing user generated animation content from South Asia and contributes to the growing body of literature on platform localization of digital platforms.  

ABSTRACT

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 in India triggered a nationwide lockdown and the education system too took one of the largest hits with most institutions shifting to online mode of teaching, which posed a variety of challenges. The challenges were spread across a wide area, ranging from basic facilities like stable, high-speed internet and mobile phones/laptops to the lack of prior experience in teaching online, creating a sense of pressure as India converted to almost a full-time online teaching system. This naturally triggered a series of incidents, often in forms of incident messages, online class disruptions and ‘misuse’ of the online learning mediums to create chaos by students who found a way to take mischief making to a whole new level, and resorting to bullying in the cyberspace. While a number of studies are focusing on the challenges faced by students and understanding cyber bullying amongst classmates, the only literature available from the teachers’ point of view is in media coverage of such incidents, making this research essential for understanding challenges faced by educators. Hence, this study makes an attempt to understand experience of female teachers especially in context of untoward incidents happening while online teaching. An online survey was conducted in the present study and it was found that female teachers are facing incidents, which to some extent can be termed as cyberbullying.

Book Chapters

ABSTRACT

The year 2020 marked a drastic shift in how we live and exist as a society with a transformation in our approach to every aspect of our daily life. Businesses also felt the sudden backlash of the lockdowns owing to the pandemic, and many opted to go online to survive while many online businesses mushroomed. This paper takes a look at such businesses curated on Instagram by women entrepreneurs from India and how they used various features to reach their customer base and the platform’s policies aimed at supporting them. From the newly introduced Instagram Reels being engaged to put a face to the business to the use of reviews as an alternative to traditional ads to build trust among the customers, these women entrepreneurs made the best out of the challenges posed by COVID-19. They utilised the period to start something new to become financially self-reliant. The study, aimed at understanding the trend of usage of the Social Networking Site (SNS) Instagram engaged a detailed netnography (digital format of traditional ethnography) teamed with small qualitative interviews of 15 ‘Instagram Business Accounts’ run by individual women from India during COVID-19. The content drawn was analysed and three underlying themes in the form of practices were identified: Usage of Story Highlights for archiving, Reels and Livestreams for giving a face to the campaigns and engaging Reviews in various formats to diffuse the innovation of a small online business. The interviews conducted with the users of these accounts also identified the flexibility of routine, the freedom to choose the pace of work and monetary benefits as the reason behind these women choosing to start an online business during COVID-19, although almost every entrepreneur interviewed also had a presence on other platforms along with Instagram, which warrants further study in the area. 

ABSTRACT

The discourse around the fifth Sustainable Development Goal of 'Gender Equality' enlists the end of all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere as the first of its nine targets. Extensive research has already established how portrayal of idealized body images in the traditional media formats end in detrimental effects on the women's body image, but also create a barrier in their social growth. Out of the many traits idealized for the perfect woman in India, fair skin and petite bodies are two major requirements, retold and reinforced in narratives across traditional and non-traditional media platforms. While the battle against the 'fair skin' standard has had many landmark wins, including the renaming of a popular facial cream brand in the country, the fight for equal space to all sizes and shapes in popular culture is slowly rising. This paper takes a closer look at the growing crop of India's Plus Size influencers on Instagram, and how they are encouraging women to accept their bodies. Creating content on a platform known to promote 'body dissatisfaction' across researches, this paper examines how narratives of real women with plus size bodies are asserting narratives for their acceptance as well