Digital Archiving as Social Protest: Dalit Camera and the mobilization of India’s “Untouchables”

Abstract

The relationship between journalism and social marginalization is a relatively understudied area in digital journalism studies. Our case study of Dalit Camera (DC), an online news archive and chronicle based in India, examines how historically disadvantaged Dalits, or “Untouchables,” are leveraging digital tools to narrate their oppressive past to the outside world parallel to the rise of political censorship in India. As part of its archiving process, DC is preserving footage of Dalit resistance against hegemonic domination by caste Hindus. Through their grassroots network of citizen journalists, DC is also engaged in reporting caste-based discrimination and violence today, contributing to the Dalit social movement for equality and justice. Our study provides the first examination of Dalit social protest as a function of digital news archiving, in the process bringing a non-Western subject typically reserved for Subaltern Studies to digital journalism studies as a potent example of citizen journalism and participatory online culture in a censorious media climate. We argue that the growing field of digital journalism studies must leverage productively with area studies scholarship, such as Subaltern Studies, in order to advance a deeper understanding of journalism cultures in the Global South.