For a good theoretical overview of issues around online counter-publics you might be interested in this collection: Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera (eds) Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice (2007) Palgrave. cheers, Mathieu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mukherjee, Ishani" <imukhe2@uic.edu> Date: Monday, January 31, 2011 11:02 pm Subject: Re: [Air-L] Subaltern counter publics online? To: "Leurs, K.H.A. (Koen)" <K.H.A.Leurs@uu.nl> Cc: air-l@listserv.aoir.org
Hi Koen,
For my dissertation, I am currently looking at how ethno-cultural narratives are created in online communities (spec. blogs that discuss domestic violence within the South Asian dispora in the US), from the perspectives of ethnic-community empowerment and identity negotiation. I haven't looked at Nancy Fraser's work yet, but I have come across research that reworks the public/private debate, esp. in the context of creatingminority counter-publics online, often working from within the dominant discursive spaces.
You can perhaps refer to Rohit Chopra's work, "Global primordialities: virtual identity politics in online Hindutva and online Dalit discourse,"which looks at the intersection of technology and culture in online representations (community websites) of the elite/dominant Hindu nationalist community and the subaltern Dalit community (New Media & Society, 2006, vol. 8/2, pp. 187-206).
You can also try: Mallapragada, M. (2006). Home, Homeland, Homepage: Belonging and the Indian-American web. New Media and Society, 8(2), pp. 207-227. She talks about how online interactions/communities of ethnic minoritiesoften ruptures the public/private, gender-race divide/politics, and creates not only geo-political, but also rhetorical transgressions and ambivalence.
I hope these help and prove interesting for your purposes.
Best,