ANTHMETHGRP3-2425-POOJA-DHARAN

[Last modified: December, 7 2024 05:03 PM]

I will be sharing a revised pilot project proposal this week. Overall, my general topic has not changed but I have refined my focus and honed in on the areas that would be interesting to explore from an anthropological perspective. I also have developed a better understanding of methods that I can utilise and how each method could be useful for obtaining different types of data.

Topic:

For my pilot project, I would like to explore the South Asian diaspora’s lived experience, and how that is captured and shaped by the #browntok TikTok subculture. I’m curious to discover more about how content on this platform impacts their sense of cultural identity, creates a sense of community within the overall South Asian community, and the extent to which offline behaviours and thought patterns manifest into the online space. Alongside these general questions, I am interested to explore my participant’s unique relationships with their own algorithms and the different complexities that they may add to their experiences on the platform.

Questions:

• Does content on #browntok reinforce one’s cultural identity, and how does that impact their own sense of self and self-perception?
• Does content on this platform help to create a stronger sense of community within South Asians or is there a general sense of division?
• Do traditional thought patterns and behaviours that exist in the offline world manifest themselves into the online space?
• How does the algorithm affect South Asians’ experiences scrolling through #browntok?

Methods:

• Having a scroll myself just to see what general content comes up for me and note down my findings
• Interviews to ask how people use TikTok and to probe on the themes addressed by the above questions
• Participant observation – have people scroll through #browntok content and share thoughts that come to mind as they do so
• Leveraging more multimodal approaches to collecting and representing data – potentially having participants draw representations of their feelings and associations that they have about #browntok and its content

Potential findings:

These are the findings that I would expect given my own positionality as a member of the South Asian diaspora, but I anticipate that the reality may be different as my participants will be influenced by their unique lived experiences.

• Content consumption on #browntok has led to a sense of self-empowerment due to a stronger sense of identity and connection with South Asian culture
• Feelings regarding the platform and content could be mixed, as people may praise it for being an outlet for self-expression of one’s culture, but others may find it to be a daunting place that makes them feel more isolated than connected with the larger community
• People may think there is an overall divide between the South Asian community on TikTok
• Showing videos may bring up additional feelings, both positive and negative, about #browntok content

I got a lot out of this module and I’m keen to explore this topic more in the upcoming months!

[Last modified: November, 29 2024 08:59 PM]

My group chose the first case study on women survivors of domestic abuse in Pakistan. Immediately, we noticed some issues with the research approach. One, we do not have a sense of the research questions that would guide the researcher’s approach, so it is hard to assess if these topics would bring distress to the participants and any other community members. This is a highly vulnerable community, so the ethics committee will need to assess if there are any sensitive topics that could potentially harm the participants. Second, it would be helpful to learn more about the researcher’s positionality. The short blurb mentioned that this is someone who identifies as a woman, so her shared gender identity with the participants may help her better connect with them. I would also be interested to know more details about the researcher’s nationality. I think this would be important because there may be complexities in getting consent for various aspects of the research if there is a language barrier between the researcher and the participants. If there is a strong language barrier, there may need to be a translator present to facilitate communication between them. That way, the participants can get a clear idea of what they are consenting to.

It was also unclear if the community was aware of this person’s presence as a researcher. It doesn’t look like the researcher had properly disclosed her intention to conduct research within the refuge, which could impact the participants’ abilities to give free, prior, and informed consent. Also, since the researcher is technically an employee at the refuge, this may create a power dynamic between her and the participants which could additionally affect the participants’ abilities to provide this consent. It looks like one of the participants gave consent for her story to be publicised in the local press, but there is no written evidence of that consent. The story had already been published, but I would have advised the researcher to think through whether the content in that story could bring distress to the participant in any way. This goes back to my point on positionality, but it is important to understand the cultural contexts of the region and how something like this could impact the participant within these contexts, especially since they would not be anonymised. Also, it is unclear if the researcher got consent for using this data in her dissertation, as it looks like she only got verbal consent from one of the participants for using her data in the published article. If that is the case, then there is a clear issue of consent and transparency as the participants did not provide consent to have their data used in this new piece of work.

There is also the issue of data protection, as we do not know how this data would be stored. It would be imperative for the data to be stored within a secure network or in a locked box should there be no internet or computer access. Overall, this project is relatively high risk so it would be good for the researcher to work through these issues with her appointed ethics committee.

[Last modified: November, 22 2024 05:00 PM]

For the tutorial task, Constantine, Julia and I went to the Anthropology student common room which was the emptiest that I have seen it since the start of term. I took a combination of written notes on my phone, images and audio recordings. I noticed that it was helpful for me to capture images and audio recordings describe the overall setting in ways that my writing cannot. For example, when I provide a physical description of a particular environment, it may be hard for others to actually visualise what it looked like, so in that case images would be a great supplement to my written notes. Here are some images that I captured earlier today to better represent my environment:

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Images in the common room. Photo on the right is of Constantine taken with their consent!

I was wary of taking photos of the other people in the room without their consent. There were not many people as mentioned, so I still feel that the above images accurately capture the emptiness of the space. However, I think supplementing with techniques like drawing to capture how many people were in the space and the overall layout of the room would be helpful, since the angles of these images do not reflect that well.

We also noticed that the air conditioning was making a droning noise, which was detectable even when there were conversations in the room. I took an audio recording which I will insert here (I recommend increasing the volume for this part):

An audio recording of the air conditioning noises.

With this, I feel like I was able to provide a sensorial description of the space’s ambience. It is very hard to describe sound with text, so others would benefit greatly from hearing the actual sounds in the room rather than reading my written descriptions of it.

Other than these two modes of note-taking, I found my written notes to be very helpful in noting down the specific feelings that I had in this environment. I noted that it was so quiet at times that it felt awkward to break the silence and speak out loud, that it was freezing in the room, and the presence of five other postgraduate students who were also in our tutorial group. Personally, I feel as if these pieces of information could only be described with text so it was helpful for me to write them down.

Since my pilot project would be conducted on an online field site, there will inherently be multimodal components to my research. I see myself incorporating TikTok videos and screenshots, but I think it would be helpful to supplement these with drawings. Specifically, it would be interesting to have my interlocutors draw particular associations and feelings that content on #browntok brings up for them. This would be a helpful way for me to uncover more information about their experiences beyond participant observation or interviews.

[Last modified: November, 17 2024 03:05 PM]

I pick up my phone to access my field site, which is entirely digital. On the phone, I navigate my way over to TikTok, open it, and start to scroll through my For You page. After five minutes of scrolling, my hand becomes tired from the weight of my phone, so I prop it up against my water bottle so I can sit more comfortably as I scroll. Once I did this, I noticed that it immediately improved my posture, as I naturally slouch when I scroll through my phone. I then proceed to scroll through my feed in a leisurely manner, and some videos cause me to physically react in different ways. Often times, I will change my facial expression and breathing patterns based on the emotions the videos elicit from me. I may laugh which exerts a lot of pressure on my entire body as I may sway back and forth, and my breathing is partially interrupted. Even in situations when I feel second-hand embarrassment from whatever I am seeing, I am still exerting pressure on my body, specifically my chest as my breathing deviates from its normal patterns. After scrolling on TikTok for a while, my eyes start to become tired, which then prompts me to stop and find a new activity that causes less eye strain. It also motivates me to get more movement in my day after sitting down for relatively prolonged period of time, so I get up out of my chair when deciding to find something else to do.

In doing this exercise, I realised that thinking of my body purely in the physical sense was quite hard to do. It was easier to think of how I emotionally react to certain things, but thinking of how I physically react to them made me feel quite disconnected from myself. It seems counterintuitive, but purely thinking of how my body behaves in certain situations made me feel more out of touch with my thoughts and feelings. I believe that this is because I usually reflect on the feelings and emotions associated with a particular experience I have had, and not so much about my bodily conduct. Although it felt unnatural, it highlighted that the body can act differently in certain spaces and circumstances and how subtle physical changes can be associated with various factors such as emotion.

[Last modified: November, 12 2024 06:44 PM]

My project centres around a broad topic, concerning the lived experience of members in the South Asian diaspora. The South Asian diaspora exists in many places, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and the Caribbean to name a few. There are various factors that impact these peoples’ lived experiences, including the historical contexts regarding their migration to and life in these countries as well as South Asian ethnicity and religion. For example, the South Asian experience in the United States was largely impacted by the terrorist attacks that happened on September 11, 2001, as many South Asian Americans were the targets of hate crimes and other forms of racism following those events. In addition, the demographics of the areas they migrate to can have a strong impact on these groups, affecting their sociality with others and their general interactions with the world around them. I am going into this process with the assumption that my participants will experience life differently based on how their unique backgrounds come into contact with their local environments.

As an Indian American woman, I recognise that my positionality provides me with the context to relate to my participants on some matters, but I am also aware of the fact that not all South Asian experiences are the same. Upon reflection, my caste, religious affiliation, gender identity and ethnicity have all shaped my experience and perspective on the world around me, both negatively and positively. I have witnessed first-hand how these add complexity to my experience as a third-culture kid in the United States, coming with privileges and disadvantages. That said, I believe that my positionality may impact my relationship with my participants; since I plan on speaking with people from various backgrounds, their experiences living in their respective communities and countries may shape their perception of me.

With this in mind, I need to design my research approach in a way that makes my participants feel comfortable sharing information with me. In addition, it will be necessary to get a general understanding of the external factors around them that would impact their experiences, so I may need to supplement my knowledge through additional research. As mentioned, I believe each participant’s experience will be shaped by their background so this would be helpful for understanding the overall context. Doing this could ensure that I am expanding my perspective beyond my own experience to conduct a thorough and relevant analysis for my participants’ data.

[Last modified: October, 26 2024 03:01 PM]

For this exercise, I decided to sit outside of the pro-Palestine encampment next to Gordon Square and all of the food stalls. I took notes on my phone since I didn’t have a notebook on me. With a phone, I was able to quickly note key details about my surroundings while not drawing too much attention to myself. In general, I noticed that most people tended to walk by the encampment maintaining little to no interaction with it. In fact, most people would not even glance at it as they walked by. I thought I saw some people glance over in the encampment’s direction, but I could not be too sure from the angle I saw that from. Other than that, most of the interactions that I witnessed were between people walking together, and between customers and the food stall vendors. Long queues started to form for the food stalls as lunch time was approaching, and this is when I noticed the aromatic smells of the food around me and how those pulled people in from the foot traffic on the pavement.

Revisiting my notes from yesterday, I was able to identify some themes relating to our study. One is capitalism serving as a distraction, and specifically one that prevents kinship. This was evident in the ways that people would stop by the stalls but not engage with the encampment or its members. In general, observing people’s behaviour also highlighted the use of non-verbal communication, specifically in the body language people used to avoid interacting with the encampment. The idea of attention came to mind as well as we see how people are selective about the places and activities to devote their attention to. That said though, I was only in this location for thirty minutes and it would take multiple observations in the same place to provide a thorough report with more detail.

This exercise was helpful for remembering the key details about the fieldsite – specifically when it came to interactions that stood out. I tried writing down everything that I noticed even if the details seemed insignificant at the time just so that I could have a record to look back on later when I am analysing the data. The phone was helpful for taking notes as it made my presence more invisible as a researcher, which I felt was necessary given the sensitive nature of my surroundings. That said, I felt like it was still limited as I wasn’t really engaged with the practice of note-taking. I find that handwriting my notes allows me to reflect more on the content I write, whereas typing leaves me feeling a bit disengaged with it. Also, I was not able to draw anything on my phone too – I am not sure how helpful that would have been in this particular situation but it is something worth noting. Overall, this activity made me realise that various forms of fieldnotes can be useful depending on the circumstance, so this is something that I will keep in mind for the future.

[Last modified: October, 18 2024 05:14 PM]

I am interested in exploring the TikTok subculture #browntok and whether it fosters a sense of unity vs. division among South Asians, impacts self-perception and connection to cultural identity, and resurfaces traditional values and beliefs found within the community. These themes stem from my own background as a first generation Indian-American who grew up in a pre-dominantly South Asian community. From that experience, I witnessed traditional beliefs on colourism and family dynamics being passed down from Indian parents to their American-born children, and this was something that always fascinated me. That said, this is something that may be very specific to my lived experience and not the case for other South Asian people.

Last week, I mentioned that my background could be skewing the TikTok algorithm, and I was curious to see what other people might see as they scroll through #browntok. Through this lecture, I also realised that my interpretation of the research can be quite skewed by my own background, and that I will need to put measures in place to ground my research in my participants’ experiences rather than reflecting my own. One thing I thought of was making sure that my participants come from a variety of backgrounds different than mine. In doing so, I’ll also need to make sure that the questions for my interviews are more open-ended and less centred around my preconceived ideas regarding my own lived experience.

I believe that my background gives me cultural context that will be helpful in analysing the results, but I will need to be cognisant on how much of that context I should add to the equation. For example, my experience would be extremely different from someone from the South Asian diaspora who grew up in an ethnically homogeneous community as the only brown person. They may interpret certain things as positive when I would view the same thing in my own life as negative, so it’s important to really listen to what they are saying instead of looking for confirmation on my thoughts about the South Asian community. This is why it’s important that I conduct research on a diverse set of participants to form credible conclusions. While my lived experience may be helpful in understanding cultural nuances that may be underlying, this shouldn’t impact the way I interpret my findings. In fact, interviewing a diverse group of people may be even more impactful for gathering information related to my research questions.

I look forward to applying this knowledge to interviews with my participants in the upcoming weeks!

[Last modified: October, 12 2024 04:40 PM]

This week, I conducted my participant observation online since my field site is a TikTok subculture. From a cafe, I started to scroll on TikTok under #browntok and encountered many different types of content. Most of what I saw was content related to “attractiveness” – there were a lot of posts featuring images of attractive men and women, specifically Indians. I was interested in how a lot of these try to uplift the community in different ways. I saw a lot of content showcasing “glow-ups” for both men and women; others were related to topics within the community like combatting colourism and helping people embrace their natural features. For example, here is a screenshot of a post that shared photos and videos of attractive Indian women as a way to potentially help darker skinned brown women embrace their natural skin tones:

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was interesting to go through the comments in this one – they were full of appreciation for all the women shown, one even highlighting actor Simone Ashley. One thing I noticed was the fact that one of the comments said “Dravidian women on top,” referring to women of South Indian or Sri Lankan descent. It was interesting to see that specific ethnic groups get called out either in the comments or in the actual posts, and I am curious to explore whether this helps enhance one’s connection to their identities.

Another common theme that came up while scrolling was South Asian fashion. Posts featured different South Asian fashion content creators, celebrities who attended different fashion shows, or people wearing South Asian traditional attire. One creator in particular, @maybe.zainab, a Pakistani-Canadian, mentioned that it was a goal of hers to consume less “white media” and in the process found a lot of cool brown women content creators that she shares in the video screenshotted below. The other videos highlight South Asian celebrities at the 2024 Met Gala and outfits worn to a family member’s South Asian wedding.

I also saw a few comedic posts making fun of the some of the traditional values found offline in the community, as well as some talking about South Asian representation in Hollywood. I found the latter interesting since I expected there would be more content about Bollywood (or any of the other South Asian film/TV industries), but I only saw posts related to Hollywood in my initial search. Another thing worth mentioning is that I received some recommended searches while scrolling through the posts and these are the ones that came up:

Overall, I think this was a useful first look into #browntok. The online aspect of this ethnography also did not make me feel as voyeuristic as I thought I would since I already scroll through my TikTok For You page in my free time. However, I was left with many questions. One, how are people of other South Asian ethnicities engaging with the platform and with the content? Most of the posts that came up for me were from people of Indian or Pakistani descent, so I was left wondering what the full picture looked like with better South Asian representation. I also felt like this approach was a bit one-sided as I was seeing the posts produced by others and their comments but I wasn’t seeing people’s live reactions and thoughts to them. From that perspective, it would be helpful to employ the other methods outlined in my research proposal to get clarity.

I had a feeling that my TikTok algorithm was also impacting the content that was appearing for me. I like to joke that TikTok knows exactly who I am: an Indian-American who likes K-Pop and now lives in London. That said, I would like to have other people from the South Asian diaspora do the same exercise and share their thoughts aloud so that I can get a better sense of the full breadth of content available on the platform.

[Last modified: October, 5 2024 02:31 PM]

Topic:

For my pilot project, I would like to explore the topic of community building on TikTok, specifically through the lens of #browntok, which is the hashtag that houses content created by the South Asian diaspora. I’m curious to see whether consuming this content creates a stronger sense of identity and how that impacts self-perception, and also if it makes people feel better connected to the South Asian community or if they feel isolated. Also, TikTok has been used as a platform for activism, and I’m interested in exploring if there is an overall sense of unity or if there is more division within the South Asian community on this platform.

Questions:

• How do South Asian people use TikTok to connect with the larger South Asian diaspora, and what are the specific feelings associated with that?
• How has #browntok content consumption impacted South Asian people’s identities and self-perception?
• Is there a strong sense of community within the #browntok sphere? What are people’s feelings around this?
• Does #browntok content reinforce traditional beliefs found within the South Asian community?

Methods:

• Interviews to ask how people use TikTok and to probe on the themes addressed by the above questions
• Participant observation – have people scroll through #browntok content and share thoughts that come to mind as they do so
• Show the same set of pre-selected videos to different participants and have people comment on them

Potential findings:

• Content consumption on #browntok has led to a sense of self-empowerment due to a stronger sense of identity and connection with South Asian culture
• Feelings regarding the platform and content could be mixed, as people may praise it for being an outlet for self-expression of one’s culture, but others may find it to be a daunting place that makes them feel more isolated than connected with the larger community
• People may think there is an overall divide between the South Asian community on TikTok
• Showing videos may bring up additional feelings, both positive and negative, about #browntok content

[Last modified: October, 1 2024 06:14 PM]

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