Identity Performance on the MTV India Facebook Fan Page Articulating Youngistan, Performing ...

255 Pages·2015·1.83 MB·English

Identity Performance on the MTV India Facebook Fan Page
Articulating Youngistan, Performing Indian-ness

By

Neha Gera

Bachelor of Journalism and Mass Communication (Indraprastha University) 2006

Masters of Journalism and Mass Communication (C. C. S. University) 2008

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

University of Sunderland

UK

October 2014

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ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the everyday activities of Indian youth on the MTV India Facebook fan
page. The two- phase research design included a period of participant observation, combined
with conducting online interviews, and a visit to New Delhi, India to conduct offline
interviews. The thesis analyzes several aspects of identity performance (e.g. online identity
performance, relation between online and offline identity, ideal presentation of an online
identity) in relation to Goffman’s (1959) presentation of self in everyday life, and argues that
the MTV India Facebook fan page has become a site for identity performance.

Since such identity performance is bounded by participants’ everyday activities, the fan page
can also be identified as a particular ‘place’. I use Tuan’s (1977) idea of ‘place-making’ and
illustrate how the MTV India Facebook fan page has become a meaningful and familiar
‘place’ overtime through performance of routine activities and everyday practices (Seamon,
1979). These activities can be identified as articulating ‘Youngistan’ (voice of Indian youth)
and performing Indian-ness, suggesting that fans have appropriated the fan page for
performing specific activities that are particular to them.

In addition, the thesis takes the local-global character into consideration and argues that
local-global combine together to form separate, unique cultures such as MTV India, which
safeguard ‘locality’ within the global product and help in ‘place-making’ activities.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………….7

CHAPTER 1: DEFINING THE OBJECT OF STUDY ………………………….…………12

1.1 Social network sites (SNSs)....... .....................................................................................12
1.2 Social networking sites – a way to connect online and offline life..................................17
1.3 MTV India’s Facebook fan page......................................................................................19

CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: LOCALITY, PLACE AND IDENTITY
CREATION……………………………………………………………………………...…..25

2.1 The local-global MTV India.............................................................................................25
2.2 A familiar sense of ‘place’................................................................................................31
2.3 Situational geography........................................................................................................36
2.4 Online self & the offline world ........................................................................................44

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ……………………………………...….……………….47

3.1 My ethnographic approach...............................................................................................47
3.2 Online ethnography...........................................................................................................53
3.3 Study plan..........................................................................................................................65
3.4 Conducting interviews......................................................................................................68

CHAPTER 4: SETTING THE FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS AND INTRODUCING
FAN ACTIVITIES ………………………………………………………………………….72

4.1 Topics posted on MTV India’s Facebook fan page..........................................................72
4.2 Discussing fan activities....................................................................................................79
4.2.1 Wall posts.......................................................................................................................79
4.2.2 The like button...............................................................................................................82
4.2.3 The share button ............................................................................................................86
4.2.4 Comments .....................................................................................................................91

CHAPTER 5: IDENTITY PERFORMANCE ON THE MTV INDIA FACEBOOK FAN
PAGE………………………………………………………………………………………..95

5.1 The liking activity.............................................................................................................96
5.2 The sharing activity.........................................................................................................102
5.3 The commactivity............................................................................................................109
5.3.1 Accomplishing friendliness..........................................................................................111
5.3.2Managing disagreements via turn taking......................................................................116
5.3.3 Space for knowledge sharing.......................................................................................127
5.3.4 Performing national identity through text talk.............................................................135
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5.4 The role of Stigma...........................................................................................................147
5.5 Performing identities in day to day life on the MTV India Facebook fan page..............150
5.6 Creation of an online community....................................................................................154

CHAPTER 6: PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR USE OF SPACE………………………….160

6.1 The MTV India Facebook fan page as a space...............................................................178
6.1.1 Fan page – a space to perform routine activities..........................................................179
6.1.2 The fan page – a space to perform fans practices for online performance…………...181
6.1.3 Fan page – a space to perform fan activities on shared interests/to meet like-minded
people....................................................................................................................................185
6.1.4 Fan page – a space for online and offline friending.....................................................189
6.3 The MTV India Facebook fan page – a useful space and a ‘place’................................191
6.4 Place as a ‘meaningful’ construct...................................................................................192
6.5 The MTV India Facebook fan page as a specific ‘place’................................................196
6.6 Developing a sense of belongingness.............................................................................201
6.7 Creating an individualized sense of place.......................................................................204

CHAPTER 7: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS…………………………………….211

BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………………229

APPENDICES……………..……………………………………………………………….241
APPENDIX A – QUESTIONNAIRE FOR ONLINE INTERVIEWS……….……………242
APPENDIX B - QUESTIONNAIRE FOR OFFLINE INTERVIEWS……………………243
APPENDIX C – FACEBOOK RESEARCH PROFILE…………………………………...245
APPENDIX D – ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS………………………………………..247
APPENDIX E – COPY OF CONSENT FORM………………………………………….. 250
APPENDIX F - GLOSSARY….......................................................................................... 252
APPENDIX G - SELECTED ONLINE INTERVIEWS…………………..….………….254
APPENDIX H – OFFLINE INTERVIEWS………………………………………….……267
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While writing a dissertation is one of the most isolating activities, I was never really ‘alone’.
I had the constant support of family, friends, colleagues, and mentors. The love and support I
received from my partner Ankur Goyal during this time period exceeded my expectations.
He stood by me throughout the process and bore the brunt of my constant studying and
occasional frustration. Without complaint, he responded with chicken curries, lentil curries
and my favorite Italian and Chinese food. Ankur’s love, humor and patience helped me to
move ahead and focus on my goal. I am eternally grateful to him.

I am also thankful to all my family for their love, including my granny Bhaji, who always
believed in capabilities and abilities and inspired me to move ahead. I am especially
appreciative of my father’s acceptance of my prolonged absence from family life. Dad, I’ll
be back soon. Finally, I would not be who I am today without my mother Janak. Maa—this
thesis is the answer to your persistent question, “Kab Khatam Hogi (when will this finish)?”
Finally, I am done maa.

I am also indebted to my two supervisors – Julia Knight and Shaun Moores – for their
support. They were like a family in the UK. Julia, a scholar, a mentor and my first
supervisor, is no less than a ‘goddess’. She supported, suggested and guided at each stage of
the thesis. Shaun, my second supervisor has always offered kind help in the form of his
valuable suggestions and informational notes. He helped me find various perspectives and
humor in this process while always being there with an understanding shoulder on which to
cry. It has been a pleasure to have worked with these two brilliant scholars who have guided
me and shaped me with boundless patience and encouragement.

Besides this, my colleagues at the Sunderland University were supportive and contributed an
excellent and intellectually stimulating environment where I was able to grow as a scholar. I
am also grateful to MTV India’s fan page administrators for provide input and information
that I needed from time to time.

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Finally, and most importantly, I want to acknowledge and thank the hundreds of Indian
youth who engaged in online and offline interviews and took the time for face-to-face
interviews. Without their voices, this project would have been impossible.

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Introduction

In 2009, I moved to the United Kingdom for my PhD studies. Moving to the United
Kingdom and living here was equivalent to my dreams come true. I had a family friend, who
introduced me to the city- Sunderland and its people. In the beginning, I only knew him, but
later I made friends and became part of a social circle. But I missed home- my family, my
friends and relatives.

Mobile phones were not so cost efficient, so it was suggested that I use Skype or Facebook. I
made an account on Skype and added family and other relatives. I had an account on
Facebook, but I never used it much. I sent requests to all my friends and used it to get in
touch with my friends in New Delhi and other places.

While Skype helped me to stay in touch with family, Facebook offered an opportunity to
interact with my school/college friends. I also joined different Facebook fan pages
representing various brands such as MTV India, New Look, FabIndia (an Indian garment
brand) etc. The MTV India Facebook fan page took my attention on the first visit as most of
my Facebook friends were already participants on it. The fan page featured various topics on
MTV India’s reality shows, sports activities, Bollywood etc. I was particularly interested in
Bollywood and MTV India’s shows, so I started following the fan page on a routine basis.

It is through the fan page, I met Gitesh, a 20 year old boy from New Delhi. We started
interacting on the fan page about one of the reality shows on MTV India and got to know
each other. He told me that he loves Facebook, especially MTV India’s Facebook fan
page, and logs in at every possible opportunity. He routinely participates on MTV India's fan
page by posting comments, and takes particular pride in the way he expresses his ideas on
various topics posted on the fan page. Through this activity he has formed allegiances with
other like-minded people, and feels he has become part of an online community.

My online association with Gitesh and his online allegiances with other people on the fan
page suggest that the fan page is used as a platform to create new connections and strengthen
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existing ones. Launched in 2008, MTV India’s Facebook fan page has evolved
to support a wide range of everyday youth practices and activities. It has become a major site
for young people’s opinions and ideas on social reform, politics, sports and issues of national
importance, and has constituted a space to perform what Baym (2000) terms ‘friendliness’
based on common interests.

The phenomenon of such online groups/communities is not new and has already formed the
object of a number of studies. As early as 1996, Ananda Mitra studied a newsgroup
‘soc.cult.Indian’, and examined the traditional national identities that have been disrupted by
the process of migration and immigration. In his study, he identified the diasporic
communities that have embraced the Internet to produce a new sense of community by
textually creating images of their own national and tribal issues. The text messages
exchanged on the internet were artifacts that bound the community together. The identities
within the community were produced primarily by the way in which participants insert
themselves into the discourses. More recently, Nancy Baym (2000), in her book Tune In,
Log on: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community, looked at an online fan community of
geographically dispersed individuals, who formed allegiances on the basis of common
interests and practices. Her object of study is a newsgroup, rec.arts.tv.soaps (abbreviated by
its members to r.a.t.s), whose members have willingly agreed upon a similar purpose and
protocol in an effort to connect with other kindred fans in a social environment. The
study identified the online community as a site for interactions and shared practices that
utilize technology and the structure of a newsgroup to facilitate activities of everyday life.

Building on the work of Mitra, Baym and others (e.g. Kendall, 2002; Boyd, 2004), I examine
the everyday activities of Indian youth on the MTV India fan page, and identify how these
activities shape certain aspects of sociality and friendliness. The participants engage in
everyday activities by posting textual snippets (postings), either in response to an existing
discussion thread or to create a new thread. These discussion threads can be viewed as a
form of interactive 'text talk' that allow participants to voice opinions – particularly about
important cultural and national issues – and create a group identity for people, who use the
site for a specific purpose. My first research question aims to examine the activities of
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participants and organization of the ‘text talk’ that takes place on MTV India's Facebook fan
page in order to illustrate how identities are performed, especially in relation to the theme of
‘Indian-ness’.

Since identity performance on the fan page is bounded by everyday activities, the fan page
can also be identified as a ‘place’ articulating ‘Youngistan’. Drawing on the other name for
India (Hindustan), Young+i+stan refers to young Hindustan, which represents the broader
youth culture in India. The term was first introduced by Pepsi in an Indian advertising
campaign and was quickly adopted by MTV India to represent the broader youth culture. In
Hindi language, the word ‘stan’ refers to ‘place’ and its use in the term ‘Youngistan’
highlights how the MTV India Facebook fan page has transformed into a place. My second
research question examines how the fan page has transformed into a meaningful ‘place’
(Tuan, 1977) through routine activities and everyday practices.

Besides this, my two implicit research questions1 examine the relation between online
offline life and how the MTV India Facebook fan page has become a glo-local product.

Dissertation organization

The thesis is organized around two core topics- identity performance of Youngistanis (Indian
youth) on the MTV India Facebook fan page and the fan page becoming a particular ‘place’.

Chapter 1 gathers literature on social networking sites, centers on the newly emerged social
networking site ‘Facebook’, and explains how the site has become a space for identity
creation. It introduces the object of the study. It then discusses the MTV India Facebook fan
page and explains how the fan page has become a site for everyday activities performed by
Indian youth.

1 The focus of this study is to examine identity performance and place making process on the MTV India’s
Facebook fan page, but to find out how the fan page has become a particular place, it is important to understand
the local-global character of MTV India and connection between their online and offline life. Therefore, these
are questions are listed as implicit research questions in my thesis.

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Chapter 2 sets out the conceptual framework and explains the key concepts structuring the
study. I explain the local-global character of the MTV India Facebook fan page and locate
MTV India and the fan page as a particular hybrid culture formed through indigenization and
localization. I argue that the fan page has created its own identity and has been transformed
into a particular place through participants’ routine practices and everyday activities. I take
Goffman’s (1959) work on ‘presentation of self in everyday life’ and ‘role of stigma’ into
account and argue how the fan page has become a site for identity performance.

Chapter 3 details the ethnographic approach employed in the study. I use qualitative
methods such as participant observation and online and offline one-to-one interviews to
study participants’ mediated performances on the fan page. In addition to these qualitative
methods, I use language methods (Hanks, 1996) to make sense of ‘text-talk’ posted on the
fan page and illustrate identity performance on the platform. Like others (Williams & Copes,
2005; Farquhar, 2009), I have created a researcher Facebook profile separate from my
personal Facebook account that clearly states my research interests, objectives and aims of
the study. It is through the researcher’s Facebook profile I participate, observe, collect online
data and create connections with potential subjects for offline interviews.

Chapter 4 sets out the analytical framework for the study; I select a range of topics posted
on the fan page based on fan activities (like, share and comment) received by each topic.
These topics will be used to study identity performance on the platform. I briefly explain fan
activities (like, share and comments) on the fan page and illustrate how they are performed.

Chapter 5 analyzes the liking, sharing and commenting activities and explains identity
performance in relation to Goffman’s (1959) concept of stigma and presentation of self in
everyday life. I study liking and sharing activity on the fan page and illustrate how people
communicate their interests and tastes in public, and how psychological traits such as
sociability are associated with Facebook fan pages. To demonstrate the identity performance,
I analyze comments (textual snippets) through language methods and detail on a set of
qualities that have emerged from the fan page and its participants.

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