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Does Playback Theatre Act as Alternative Media in a Pluralistic Indian Society - a Descriptive Study
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Niharika Puttige
With just a simple yet beautiful piece of coloured fabric and words that make an impact, playback theatre creates magic on the stage and within the lives witnessing it. The notion of theatre as alternative media is contemporary on its own, as it was considered to be just a form of entertainment by a large part of the population. Playback theatre has played a role in bringing about social movements and political protests. This paper discerns the power of playback theatre and interprets its influence on people’s thoughts. Opening the theatre world into being considered not just as an entertainment factor, but providing a stage for social realizations, reforms, and a news source. Attempting to answer, whether Playback theatre has an influence in shaping thoughts and if alternative media can be considered as a source of news. Quantitative methods are used to analyze the data collected through survey method. One hundred theatre enthusiasts were specifically chosen as the sample size to answer a descriptive questionnaire on the concepts of alternative media and playback theater. The questionnaire was distributed only in the city of Bangalore, in the state of Karnataka. Secondary data was collected for information anenting to the theatre scene in other parts of the country. The paper in particular is framed around a fairly new topic and there hasn’t been much research done on the same. Future scope on this field of study is as vast as it is newfangled and contemporary.
Experiencing the Instagrammable City: How Netnography and Phenomenology Collectively Offer Key Insights into the Contemporary Photographic Documentation of Urban Areas
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Justin Battin
As Lev Manovich suggests in his monograph Instagram and Contemporary Image (2017), the Instagram platform has drastically altered traditional visual aesthetics, how digital images are distributed and archived, and how the practice of photography is performed, particularly within the myriad rhythms of daily life. This study takes this statement as its starting point to explore the experience of contemporary urban photographers who use the social media platform Instagram as their primary mode of distribution and a site for communal engagement. This paper is particularly focused on elucidating the methodological approaches implemented to understand the full scope of this experience: netnography and phenomenology, the latter being a research method that has emerged out of necessity due to the steady digitalization of social worlds, and the former being one that questions the way we experience the world as human beings. This paper specifically argues that amalgamating these approaches and using them as complementary pairs permits the most comprehensive avenue to identify the most ubiquitous depictions of urban areas, which explicit factors motivate Instagram users to repeatedly upload photos exhibiting familiar imagery, and what notions we can draw about how urban centers are experienced from each of the aforementioned questions. Approaching these questions through a combination of the aforementioned methodologies will provide a clearer and more thorough understanding of how social media photographic practices transform how geographic places are experienced and defined whilst still retaining a sense of how fostering social connection, in this case through digital photography, remains pivotal to human existence.
Hidden Desires and Religious Sensitivity in the Spirit of Pluralism in Indonesia: A Case of @alPantuni Instagram’s Comic Strips
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Erikson
Early this year, the Ministry of Communication and Information in Indonesia have received public complaints related to inappropriate contents under the account of @alpantuni on Instagram in favor of showcasing the LGBT life. Under the Indonesian Information and Electronic Transactions Law 2008, the account had the indication of showcasing pornography, therefore the content should be taken down. Further, the Ministry had also sent their request to Instagram to suspend the account. The conflicting values of being gay and Muslim in Indonesia have been a matter that should not be put in public. However, through social media platform, exposure regarding becoming LGBT can be easily produced and distributed, and also publicly accessible. This study aims to explore the series of @alPantuni’s comic strips on Instagram, by applying visual and textual analysis to understand the discourses which have been displayed through its 29 comic strips. The analysis relies on the context of political and socio-cultural contexts of Indonesia, where the issues on LGBT are still a sensitive topic of conversations within the society. In addition, being gay and Muslim may have triggered the religious sensitivity in the country. Moreover, this study also proposes the challenges of the Indonesian pluralism values in the era of social media.
