Paper short abstract:

This paper examines young people's lived experience of WhatsApp groups in contemporary India to explore the ways in which power structures mediate, constrain and shape voice and silence in online environments.

Paper long abstract:

Digital platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp have enabled more people in recent years to become involved in civil society activism, participate in formal politics, and even lead popular movements. However, digital technology, despite its progressive and democratic potential, is necessarily a tool enmeshed in power relations, and scholars increasingly argue that these digital platforms reflect the social hierarchies of the societies in which they are embedded (Miller and Horst 2012; Elwood and Leszczynski 2018; Gajjala 2012). This paper examines the politics of digital platforms and digitality from the vantage point of 'private' WhatsApp groups in India today. Based on ethnographic research conducted with students in New Delhi around the 2019 Indian national elections, we show how young people's participation in everyday political and politicised conversations is mediated, and at times, reconfigured by the relative novelty of the digital interface and the ordinariness of societal structures. Rather than simply perceiving the 'WhatsApp group' as a site of activism, inclusion and resistance for marginalised groups (e.g. Sen 2019; Omanga 2018), we explore the the ways in which power structures mediate, constrain and shape voice and silence online as well as the affective labour involved in these negotiations.