Construing Dalit Counter Public Online : A Study on Twitter Engagement for Activism, Policy, and Mobilisation

Abstract

Social media, enabled by internet technology, has induced immense prospects for encouraging debates, deliberations, raising voices and concerns, activism and mobilisation. In the same regard, social media has provided a rostrum for the voices of the disempowered and the marginalised, and has given impetus to their activism and social movement. In India, Dalit-specific forums and portals have emerged, which have also leveraged social media to amplify their voices and activism, and have furthered the anti-caste movement, online. This study chooses Twitter as an empirical field for research. Invoking and contextualising the Fraser’s “Counter public,” the study examines the content of N = 8475 tweets from 16 Dalit-specific Twitter handles and explores the major issues discussed, policy engagement, activism and mobilisation. The Twitter study is also complemented with the insights derived from the semi-structured interviews with the activists and the researchers to fill the critical gaps and to capture the Twitter engagement holistically. The findings suggest that the foregrounding discrimination and atrocities, knowledge sharing – including research, erudition and discourses, and engagement on Caste exegesis are the major issues articulated by the Dalit-specific portals. Besides, the study also finds that there is a low policy engagement online, however, there may be potential discussions often which are of meaning and importance to the social group, and mobilisation in the cases of affirmative policies and legal instruments concerned with the Dalit rights. There is also evidence for offline mobilisation when there are focussed-trigger events of Dalit atrocity, and in relation to which, the study attempts to explore the hashtag #DalitLivesMatter on Twitter. The study also concludes that the Dalit “Counter public” online mimics the call given by Ambedkar – “Educate, Agitate and Organise.”