Abstract Panel


Authors Information
SequenceTypeName TitleFirst NameLast NameDepartmentInstitute / Affiliation
1 Author Ms. Sariga A V Anthropology PhD Scholar, Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi
Abstract Information
TrackID
:
IUAES23_ABS_F9497
Abstract Theme
:
P082 - Digital Culture: Continuities of the Physical and Virtual Worlds
Abstract Title
:
The Influencer Culture in Social-media and Covid-19: An Ethnographic Study on the Awareness of Gender Equality among Youth of Kerala
Short Abstract
:
The covid19 lockdown period was crucial in increasing the usage time spent on digital world. There was an increase in the contents available in the social media as well as the time spent by the youth in these platforms. This study analyses how the feminist/ misogynist social media content creators that mushroomed at the time of covid-19 lock down impacted the youth of Kerala
Long Abstract
:

The Covid-19 lock down had a profound impact regarding the exposure to digital culture in the population of Kerala. The population started spending a good amount of time in the social media applications like face book, Instagram, and YouTube at this time. However, the usage pattern of these applications differed among the different age and gender groups. There was also an increase in the contents available in the social media and a good number of content creators started their channels or pages or became popular for a first time during this lock down period. There was a few YouTube channels and Face book and Instagram pages that started promoting feminist ideologies and some other channels that exclusively started promoting misogynist/ patriarchal ideologies during this time. This paper explores the impact of this newly mushroomed digital culture among the youth of Kerala.The population of this study is narrowed down to the Malayali youth of Pondicherry university. The convenience sampling of non-probability sampling method was used to obtain data. Open ended schedules and focus group discussions were used for data collection.In this study, while the female population showed a unity when it came to the influencer content on social media they liked, the male population exhibited some variations in their inclination pattern. Females were uniformly oriented toward content creators that spread feminist ideas and marginalised politics on social media, but males' preferences ranged from feminist influencers to neutral stances and influencers who aggressively propagated sexist ideologies. The women in the study reported a substantial influence of feminist social media content creators in important areas of their life and thought process.This paper explores ways in which online and offline worlds intertwine each other to create a gender sensitive and politically aware environment among the youth of Kerala.

Abstract Keywords
:
Social media, content creators, feminism, misogyny, youth