Anirban Baishya: Online Academic Portfolio

Research Statement

My research focuses on digital media and everyday life and the ways in which these enforce subtle negotiations with large structures of state and corporate power. In essence, I am interested in the “small” ways in which digital media are used, and how they shape our habits, routines and communication practices. Keeping with this, my PhD research focuses on the selfie to explore the interconnections between digital media and the public sphere in contemporary India. By the term “selfie,” I refer specifically to digital self-portraits taken with the help of networked, personal communication devices such as cellphones and tablets. While selfies are a global phenomenon, the Indian case offers us a way of examining how digital media and a culture of sharing and participation has attached itself to pre-existing modes and practices of everyday life. India, with its rapidly changing media landscape, and its emergence as a booming smartphone market, is a prime ground for such a study. In my work, I extend the idea of a technological vernacular that recognizes that responses to, and reception of technology can vary widely according to locale, culture and economy. Further, I seek to extend an idea of “digital selfhood” entailed by the convergence of mobile telephony and the Internet. Often, “private” devices such as smartphones and tablets work on the premise of self-presentation and constant participation in public life. In my project, I focus on three key ideas that reflect the implications of such participatory practices.
 
The first idea that I examine, is the emergence of the selfie as a product of informational aesthetics. The selfie’s aesthetic has developed alongside the emergence of sleek, interactive, touch-screen surfaces, and faster, accessible platforms for accessing information and manipulating images. I interrogate this aesthetic shift in the context of contemporary India through an examination of the new products launched by three mobile phone companies—Oppo, Vivo and Gionee. These smart phones are advertised as “selfie-expert” phones with the mobile phones photographing function overtaking the telecommunication function. I also examine how the selfie is being explored by artists and designers such as Gitanjali Rao and Adrita Das, in which the selfie becomes a performative act, as well as a form of the insertion of the self into the surface of the image. Rao in her “Wishfie” series for instance, uses the selfie as a metaphor, and has created works in which she inserts her own image alongside Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and film stars of early Indian cinema, while also paying attention to costume, makeup and getting the look of the era.
           
Next, I explore the relationship between death and the selfie with specific reference to the selfie-death panic in India. News reports are rife with statistical evidence of the selfie as a leading cause of death worldwide, with India at the top of the list. However, I argue that rather than a “fatal” technology, the selfie represents a disjuncture between physical urban space, and network space. Through an engagement with such developments in the urban space of Mumbai—the city that has been at the center of many of these reports, I probe how instances of selfie-related deaths expose the gap between urban policies and advances in network communication. For instance, the oft-iterated demarcation of no-selfie zones in Mumbai has a lot to do with seashores and rhythms of the tide, while urban policy tends to overlook these factors and presents the selfie as a harbinger of death. The larger goal here is to examine how the rhythms of electronically mediated life have led to multitasking and distracted sensibilities that have not yet been fully recognized at a policy level.
 
The third key idea is that the selfie is a form of affective labor, that is more than mere documentation of the self. Selfies of isolated bodies can also be expressive of larger community ideals, solidarity and support. I interrogate how the selfie’s power to generate affective responses has allowed it to become attached to notions such as nationalism, patriotism and progressivism. The seemingly leisurely act of clicking a selfie and then uploading it in support of a cause or a political party is a form of affective labor, in which the selfie diffuses the relationship between leisure and work. This also means that the selfie is more than just a photographic form; it is an informational form that fuses linguistic and symbolic functions through metadata such as geolocation, hashtags and captions. I examine this through case studies ranging from the 2014 General Elections that installed Narendra Modi as the Indian Prime Minister, to civic campaigns and government schemes.
 
One aspect of selfies that I intend to explore further is its relationship with location and power. Since selfies are also visual expressions of “being with” someone and “being in” a particular place or time, they are also data forms that are rooted in locatability. This was reflected in a (now-shelved) government regulation in the Indian state of Maharashtra, whereby schoolteachers would be required to take group-selfies with students as proof of attendance. Another case in the state of Andhra Pradesh involved the arrest of a rebel leader who was apprehended after a selfie with his wife was used by the police to mine information about his location and current appearance. Cases such as these reflect the selfie’s suitability for hegemonic forms of regulation and policing. The overall aim of the project is to track the transformations that selfie-culture has entailed in the Indian public sphere. In doing so, the project contributes to burgeoning research around digital cultures and their technological impacts.
 
In corollary, I am also interested in pursuing more extensive research into the transformation of the public/private binary in the era of digital social media. I contend that in the era of networked communication systems and digital practices, the internet is no longer just an appendage to the political environment—it is the environment itself. Glimpses of this were also seen during the 2016 US Presidential elections, when the use of social media by Presidential candidates, and anxieties about fake news reached a fever pitch. There is a global through-line to be followed here: while access to digital platforms and the internet is not evenly distributed across the world, a certain tendency has come to the fore, whereby social media campaigns and digital practices frequently evoke a collective “we” that mobilizes people to action. My second project will explore this question through a transnational lens, by locating how digital media practices and social media communication have become ubiquitous in political mobilization and the management of public opinion. Locating instances from India, United States and Turkey, this second project will explore how habitual use of social media creates the possibility for the virtual transmission of affect, which I identify as a being central to this constitution of “we.”
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