Vernacular Discourses of Disruption in Alternative Digital Space

Abstract

This article explores the discursive strategies employed by Dalits and other marginalized groups to highlight inspirational stories of bottom-up change across rural India. These agential narratives are featured in the community-run alternative digital media portal, Video Volunteer’s series, “Videos that Created Change.” I contend that marginalized groups’ articulation of structural change against systemic oppression takes the form of vernacular discursive practices, which foreground place-based identities and regional languages. Such newly emerging digital media practices have the potential to disrupt the hegemonic mainstream template of marginalized citizens’ abject victimhood.