Digital Media as a Space for Identity Negotiation and Re-creation for Marginalised Women: Dalit Women in the Twenty-First Century

Dalit women in India continue to be oppressed due to the intersections of gender, sexuality and casteist ideologies which shape their identity and status in the constitutionally casteless society. The marginalisation of Dalit women manifests in the form of misrepresentation and/or underrepresented in the mainstream media, leading to the continuity of the presence of stereotypical subordinated identity in the social discourses. Nonetheless, Castells and Cardoso (The network society, John Hopkins University, Washington, DC, 2006). argues that the evolving patterns within the communication technologies, especially the social media platforms, have created a space for the minority’s narratives. Through the analysis of Twitter (now X) as a byproduct of the networked society, this research aims to investigate whether and how the social media provides a space to discuss Dalit women grievances and accordingly elucidate how does it contribute to reframing the Dalit women identity. Entman’s Framing and Manual Castell’s Network society have been used as the theoretical frameworks to address the above issues. Overall, the results indicate the presence of more nuanced and multivariate identities of the Dalit women, embedded in 3 broad frames-Victim frame, Dalits as resilient and Liberal feminist discourse.