Dr. Fathima Nizaruddin

This subproject will use the context of the transformation of specific political communication processes in India under the conditions provided by platform capitalism to examine how this transformation might have an impact on the course of democracy in the country. It will map the links between the expansion of the circulatory space for certain political positions in contemporary India and the  platformization of communication ecosystems that align with these political positions. The role played by transnational capital in changing the communication landscape in the country after the advent and popularity of social media platforms will be analyzed to understand how such changes could have contributed towards a majoritarian shift. The subject formations that sediment around this majoritarian shift and their relationship with democratic spaces will be studied. The manner in which the existing platform ecologies and the conditions of labour around it shape these subject formations will be a key point of inquiry for the project. Multiple methods including digital ethnography, discourse analysis, biographical interviews and arts-based methods will be employed during the course of the study. The sub project will consider the proliferation of misinformation within the media environment in India as an important vector that influences political communication. Together with an analysis of the role of social media in this proliferation, the study will also take into account the older trajectories of the use of misinformation in political communication in the country since the colonial times. The manner in which the communication processes around specific political configurations are shaped by the current architecture of major social media platforms will be examined. The subproject will use empirical examples from two states in India i.e., Uttarakhand and Kerala to ascertain the possibilities for changes within the current communication ecosystems around digital platforms to ensure the future sustenance and expansion of democratic spaces