Structuring the “Expected”: New Social Media Platforms and the Role of Women in Urban Spaces

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Author(s): Devanjan Khuntia (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India)
Copyright: 2018
Pages: 15
Source title: Handbook of Research on Women's Issues and Rights in the Developing World
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Nazmunnessa Mahtab (University of Dhaka, Bangladesh), Tania Haque (University of Dhaka, Bangladesh), Ishrat Khan (University of Dhaka, Bangladesh), Md. Mynul Islam (University of Dhaka, Bangladesh)and Ishret Binte Wahid (BRAC, Bangladesh)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-3018-3.ch019

Keywords: Gender & Diversity / Gender and Diversity / Information Science Reference / Medicine & Healthcare

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Abstract

This paper based on empirical research attempts to deal with the question of media imagination and the marginalization of women migrants in Indian Megapolis. Foregrounding on the emerging social fact regarding the urban settings catering to one-third of country's population as migrants of which more than two-thirds are women categorically from non-urban rural areas. Further, in the backdrop of the internet and the new media penetration of rural population by half of total usage in India by 2020, the functions of the mediated imageries of the sexes need to be re-examined within the rural-urban continuum for a better clarity of media-gender relationship. The popular media imageries many of which disseminate unrealistic, stereotypical, and restrictive perceptions resulting in portrayal of women in stereotypical ways contradicts the general perception of non-urban women-emancipation through consumption of media texts which is highly urban centric. Such contestation of media effects raises a need to investigate how women migrant to the urban setting consider, analyse, internalize and utilize such portrayal of themselves in the media thus reflecting the actual consumption pattern of media texts and gender roles fixations. This paper particularly looks at an unexplored area of new media consumption within the non-urban migrants to Indian metropolis. It is an attempt to locate affordable alternative communication technology to understand the renewed social interactions of women migrants via virtual social networks in urban centres and how it infers and shape their social identity formation.

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Structuring the “Expected”: New Social Media Platforms and the Role of Women in Urban Spaces

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