Public Lecture Explores Social Media and Indian Nationalism

How is social media being used to foster political debates around national identity in India? Media scholar Professor Sahana Udupa explored the topic at a recent lecture at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) titled Debating the Nation: Social Media and Middle Class Politics in India.

Udupa, who is an associate professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Central European University in Budapest, explained how social media has revived and encouraged political discourse among members of India’s middle class. The lecture was based on her latest ethnographic research, which was inspired by a concept discussed in her recent book Making News in Global India: Media, Publics and Politics. The political activism exhibited via new media technologies, and the growing discussions it facilitated on national belonging, intrigued the researcher.

“My interest is to understand how the historically formed ideology of Indian nationalism, and Hindu nationalism in particular, intersects with digital media cultures – what valence, divergence and effervescence they create, as digital media penetrate the lives of millions of Indians living in India and overseas,” said Udupa. “How is a certain imagination around the nation reproduced amidst divergent narratives, and how is it reshaped by the digitally mediated landscape?”

While her lecture highlighted the similarity of global media cultures across the world, Udupa hopes that the audience realized the importance of further study in different social and political contexts. 

“As new media grow rapidly across the world, touching the “global-south” with abundant imaginations of public participation, it is time we took serious note of digital expansion beyond the West in an interconnected world,” she said. “As digital media researchers and concerned citizens, we are now only beginning to appreciate the enormity of the task before us. I hope my talk was one small step in that direction.”

In addition to her role at the Central European University, Udupa is also a senior research partner at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Germany. She was the recipient of the European Research Council Starting Grant award in 2016 and will shortly begin a five year project on digital media politics in India and among the diaspora in Europe at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.