Good Girls Don’t Go Online: Unpacking the Quotidian Playful Resilience Influencing Girls’ Social and Digital Engagements

Authors

  • Kiran Vinod Bhatia University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Payal Arora Professor and Chair in Technology, Values and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Manisha Pathak-Shelat Professor of Communication & Digital Platforms and Strategies and Chair of the Centre for Development Management and Communication MICA, Ahmedabad.

Keywords:

social surveillance, online participation, India, creative insurgencies, quotidian playful resilience

Abstract

In this study, we examine the ways in which young girls from low-income communities exercise their autonomy and agency in their engagement with digital technologies and, at times, show compliance with social norms when online. Based on our findings from our ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that young girls’ engagement with digital technologies reflects both submission to the dominant gender, class realities, and a sustained desire to create a fraying around the edges of systems for gendered surveillance-discipline. We develop the concept of “quotidian playful resilience” (QPR) to unpack the influence of gender norms and class-based experiences on young girls’ everyday digital practices. We define QPR as a meta practice that informs how girls access, use, and navigate digital technologies—including the infrastructural affordances and limitations and the realm of the digitalscape. The study explores the productive associations between gender, class, and technology in young girls’ digital encounters in India.

Author Biographies

Kiran Vinod Bhatia, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Kiran Vinod Bhatia is a doctoral student at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison. A critical-digital ethnographer by training, her scholarship largely explores the links between Social Networking Sites (SNS), digital affordances, childhood and adolescence experiences, and social identities. She is a fellow at the Muslim Women in Media Training Institute at the University of California, Davis. She has co-authored two books- Challenging Discriminatory Practices of Religious Socialization among Adolescents: Critical Media Literacy and Pedagogies in Practice (Palgrave Macmillan: 2019) and Raising a Humanist: Conscious Parenting in an Increasing Fragmented World (Sage: 2021).

Payal Arora, Professor and Chair in Technology, Values and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Payal Arora is a digital anthropologist and Professor and Chair in Technology, Values and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her expertise lies in digital cultures, inequality and inclusive design in the Global South and has authored several books including the award-winning The Next Billion Users by Harvard Press. She is the Founder of Catalyst Lab, a digital storytelling center, and Co-founder of FemLab.Co, an initiative on AI and the future of work in the South.

Manisha Pathak-Shelat, Professor of Communication & Digital Platforms and Strategies and Chair of the Centre for Development Management and Communication MICA, Ahmedabad.

Manisha Pathak-Shelat is Professor of Communication & Digital Platforms and Strategies and Chair of the Centre for Development Management and Communication MICA, Ahmedabad. Her research explores how ordinary citizens engage with media and use communication to experience agency, explore identities, and participate in social change. She has taught and worked as a media consultant, communication trainer, and researcher in India, Thailand, and U.S.A.

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Published

2021-10-29

Issue

Vol. 15 (2021)

Section

Articles

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