Transnational and Networked Empathy: Queer Activism in Indian Digital Diasporas

Nanditha Narayanamoorthy

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, School of Information and Library Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Siegel Family Endowment Fellow

Digital spaces become principal sites in the emergence of social justice movements and gender activism, particularly in the Global South. This webinar demonstrates how the Indo-Canadian diaspora engage in discussions surrounding the legalization of homosexuality in India on Twitter and Instagram, and participate in a movement of transnational and networked empathy for queer rights and emancipation in the country. Using discourse, textual and visual analysis, this talk will frame the conventional discourse around #Section377 in the creation of ‘zones of queer empathy’ within the diasporic discourse that function as safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ subjects on social media platforms.

Nanditha Narayanamoorthy is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Siegel Family Endowment Fellow. Her work draws from a Humanities-based framework to understand the relationship between technology and democracy and rethink digital infrastructure and platform design in the Global South. As an interdisciplinary scholar at the intersection of Critical Digital Studies, Gender Studies, and Social Justice, her work investigates the role digital infrastructures play in centering feminist and queer subaltern counterpublics online. She is published in Feminist Media Studies and Digital Studies/Le champ numerique.

Presented by: Canada India Research Centre for Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)