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Archiving as History-Making: Religious Politics of Social Media in India

Communication, Culture & Critique, volume 9, issue 2 (2016), pp. 212-230
"This article explores the case of right-wing Hindu nationalist volunteers in India, to turn a critical eye on a digital practice that has become prominent on new media in India in recent times-the assembling of facts, figures, and treatises as an ideological exercise by the net-savvy "nonexperts." Using qualitative methods, I argue that this practice of online archiving constitutes a distinct politics of history-making. I show how archiving-as-history-making is pertinent especially for religion's interface with cyberspace and the varied ways in which online users participate in religious politics. Online archiving for religious politics offers a sobering, and even troubling, picture of the digital commons, and unsettles some of the universalist claims underlying much celebrated user-generated content." (Abstract)