Dalit discourse in weblogs: An overview
- Panjab University: Research Journal Social Science
- 30(1,2,3), 2022: p.23-39
With the emergence of Digital Information Technology, the modes of writing and publication have undergone an epochal shift. The newly educated Dalits are using social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger.com, and YouTube. They are publishing personal and social tales via social media for larger public consumption. The paper, however, focuses on Dalit blogs. It tries to investigate Dalit blogs and discourse weaved through them which primarily focuses on raising Dalit consciousness among readers much like Dalit autobiographies and other genres of Dalit literature however in a much more polemical manner. The paper attempts to establish that writing narratives of caste through blogs is political and not merely an innocent act of recording their daily activities. While critically analysing the select Dalit blogs, it establishes that through their 'selective remembrances' the bloggers create a counter hegemonic public sphere to encounter dominant ideologies of hierarchy and graded inequality. The paper employs theories from New Media Studies to comprehend and analyse the poetics of Dalit blogs and critical insights from Dalit Studies to understand the caste-quotient of blogs. The blogs: Voice for Reservation, MC Raj Author, Dalit Liberation Movement, Gujarati Dalit Literature, Loknath Yashwant, Time and Us, and Kherlanji Massacre are selected for the purpose of content analysis. – Reproduced