Installations from Privilege to Survival: Emergence and Evolution of Dalit Voice on Instagram Accounts

Abstract

Growth of New Media has paved way for abundant possibility to articulate marginal voices. It is the emergence of social networking services that aids all the subaltern expressions to visualize their concerns on divergent virtual platforms. Visibility is the only path through which they can present their own underprivileged problems of discrimination and sense of identity. Ten years have passed since Instagram released its initial operations as a photo and video sharing space, and now the service witnesses a gradual shift of content creations. The proposed research paper traces the evolution of Instagram from a content-based perspective, arguing that the service has become a realm of survival as far as some communities are concerned drastically moving away from the privileged shutterbugs. It has the efficiency to advocate Dalit voice through multiple interactions. The paper attempts to analyse the Instagram accounts of Dalit Desk and The Blue Club foregrounding how the issues of caste atrocities in India are being mediated without the support of conventional media. The intervention of Instagram is perceived of two types in a structural approach; the first type being informative and persuasive for the common users where the second type seems to be academic and intellectual aiming to create potential exchanges on Dalit discourses. The former method makes use of the strategy of posting images directly which are related to segregation meanwhile the latter depends on a series of academic interactions in video format. Though the approaches are structurally different, they thematically intersect at a single point of representation. Considering the advancement of New Media as an alternative stream for the oppressed, the paper interprets distinctive installations in the form of real-life photos, short videos, posters, and long interactive videos as instances of rendering unheard inputs.