Gaali cultures: The politics of abusive exchange on social media

Abstract

On the rapidly expanding social media in India, online users are witness to a routine exchange of abusive terms and accusations with choicest swearwords hurled even for the seemingly non-inflammatory political debates. This article draws upon anthropology of insult to uncover the distinctness, if at all, of online abuse as a means for political participation as well as for the encumbering it provokes and relations of domination it reproduces as a result. In so doing, the article critiques the conception of ludic as anti-hegemonic in the Bakhtin tradition, and develops an emic term “gaali” to signal the blurred boundaries between comedy, insult, shame, and abuse emerging on online media, which also incite gendered forms of intimidation. Gaali, it argues, is best conceptualized through the metaphor of “sound” as distinct from what recent new media studies theorize as “voice.”

Mapping out Violence Against Women of Influence on Twitter Using the Cyber–Lifestyle Routine Activity Theory

“…However, instances of gender-based sexual harassment flagged by the South Asian dictionary were far more sexually explicit compared with those flagged by the English dictionary. These findings point to distinct Indian Gaali cultures, where offenders intentionally frame their sexually charged vitriol with sarcasm and humor as a way to simultaneously participate, gain traction, and intimidate women in the Indian online public sphere (Udupa, 2018). This finding is important because it shows how cultural context is an equally relevant point of consideration when developing mechanisms of platformbased guardianship around content moderation and management strategies.…”

“…The problem with software, blocking, and filter-based forms of guardianship is that these strategies do not translate well to Twitter where users observe and engage in active conversations. Twitter's "shared material architecture" vis-a-vis tagging and retweeting creates an open environment for bystanders to easily become involved in "confrontational encounters" (Udupa, 2018(Udupa, , p. 1512. This affordance structure of Twitter (e.g., attract followers, more retweets, and likes, and) produces incentives for users to express contentious opinions that provoke and spark controversy, in order to gain popularity.…”

Language in the middle: Class and sexuality on the Hinglish continuum

“…Although these terms are often perceived as stilted, archaic, or even pejorative by urban middle-class speakers, they are regularly used in the Hindi-medium press to narrate same-sex sexuality, as in the collocations samlaiṅgik (homosexual) and samlaiṅgik sambandh (same-sex relation). I have rendered the abstract in Hindi instead of Hinglish to highlight this ideological divide.7 For a provocative account of the rise of politicized "gaali cultures" on social media, seeUdupa (2018).8 I thank Costas Nakassis for his astute feedback on the relationship between these two examples.9 The Nestlé Munchification video can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtu be.com/watch ?v=WwZxo X57WcY. Last accessed April 17, 2021.…”

From texts to contexts: the relevance of digital ethnography in a Foucauldian discourse analysis of online gender talk in Kerala

“…Online talk is often characterized by the unabashed use of abusive and sarcastic language and humor and political satire. Udupa (2017) said that there is a greater tendency to use abusive language to be "heard," especially in large, anonymous and online spaces. People can be more abusive and sarcastic in online talk than offline talk because of anonymity and many other characteristics of the online medium.…”