Resisting the Spectacle of Pride: Queer Indian Bloggers as Interpretive Communities

Abstract

Community formation/sustenance in the real/virtual realms is especially important in an age where media are increasingly convergent and interactive. Using the theory of interpretive communities, this article analyzes a network of queer Indian bloggers/readers/commenters and their reading of the mainstream media coverage of India's first national Gay Pride marches. Media ethnography and qualitative content analysis decipher the strategies used by the interpretive community, and explore how bloggers are at once consumers/audience of mainstream media and producers of alternative media. Resistance to mainstream media-sponsored gender-normativity is problematized, and the analysis reveals a simultaneous “talking-back” and legitimization of media authority.

Notes

The author thanks Dr. Joshua Atkinson, Dr. Rebecca Lind, and the anonymous reviewers at JoBEM for their keen insight and help in shaping this article. Thanks are also due to Mr. John Fred Cassidy (Junior) for his input.

A previous version of this article was presented at the annual conference of the International Communication Association in Chicago, IL in May 2009.