The Mumbai attacks and diasporic nationalism: BBC World Service online forums as conflict, contact and comfort zones

Abstract

The violent attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 occasioned intense political debates in the online forums of the BBC World Service (BBCWS). This article examines the ‘Have Your Say’ forums of BBC Urdu and BBC Hindi. Such public forums can be understood as ‘contact zones’ of debate between digitally empowered, potential ‘world citizens’, located both inside and outside their countries of identification (in this case Pakistan and India). BBCWS envisages such forums as facilitating a ‘global conversation’, which is its declared policy aim, but these particular forums are, in relation to the Mumbai attacks, sites of transnational affective bonding in terms of shared national identities, rather than sites of encounter and intellectual engagement with ‘others’. Although diverse opinions are expressed, users appear to value the forums as offering them ‘bonding’ rather than ‘bridging’ forms of transnational social capital. The BBC's editorial framing and pre‐moderation of debates contributes to this characteristic of the forums, in particular in the Hindi case. The process of selection, translation (hence editing), and the delay in publishing limits the potential for dialogue between users, but enhances the forum's function as a message board or ‘public screen’ onto which diasporic nationalist imaginings are projected.

Keywords:

• Mumbai bombings 2008
• BBC World Service online forum
• contact zones
• diasporic nationalism
• South Asian politics

Acknowledgements

This article is based on collaborative research undertaken from January to August 2009. Kiran Hassan, Vishaka Muchal translated the forum comments, tabulated the data and provided valuable feedback on successive drafts. Mike Thelwell conducted the webometric analysis. Sophie West also contributed to the research process and conducted and transcribed several interviews. We are very grateful to them for the significant contributions that they have made to this article. We would also like to thank our colleagues at the BBC World Service who gave freely of their time and thoughts. Dr Tom Cheesman offered very valuable comments and editorial support. Many thanks to the editors of this special issue Alasdair Pinkerton, Sharika Thirinagama and Gerhard Baumann and to the anonymous reviewers who also provided helpful feedback. Any failings in the analysis or article lie solely with the authors.

Notes

1. BBC Hindi received more than a million page impressions on 26 November source: web‐analytics data from SAGE Analyst (BBC in house research).

2. Analysis carried out by the BBCWS audience research team in September 2007 for Hindi and January 2008 for Urdu, source: web‐analytics SAGE Analyst and Jive Soft (forum publishing system) (BBC in‐house research).

3. BBC World Service Annual Review 2008/2009, at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/institutional/2009/06/090609_annual_review2009_aims.shtml [Accessed 29 July 2009].

4. Quarterly web survey on BBCWS websites, December 2008. A sample of over 1000 frequent users of the sites answered a short questionnaire (BBC in‐house research).

5. Unique Users is an industry website measure of the number of different computers or browsers that have visited a website during a given time period. It is not a measure of actual individuals. Nor is ‘page impressions’, since one individual can easily access a site hundreds of times in a short period.

6. Press release: BBC World Service Comprehensive Spending Review 2007, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/keyfacts/stories/ws_constitution.shtml [Accessed 20 July 2009].

7. Conversation with Kelly Shephard, BBCWS Managing Editor (Future Media & Technology), 26 August 2009.

8. Pakistan national survey (2006) and India survey of 10 cities (2006) (BBC commissioned research).

9. Email to staff from Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC Global News Division 23 February 2009.

10. Forty‐five million at September 2009, claimed on http://www.imrbint.com [Accessed 10 October 2009].

11. Pakistan national survey (2006) same as above.

12. Interviews with BBCWS forum moderators, July 2009. Names have been changed.

13. Quarterly web survey on BBCWS websites, December 2008. A sample of over 1000 frequent users of the sites answered a short questionnaire (BBC in‐house research). Same as above.

14. The interactive map is also available in Urdu and other languages including English, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7751876.stm [Accessed online: 1 December 2009].

15. Jamat‐e‐Dawa, founded in Pakistan in 1985, has been accused of being the front group for the prime suspects of the Mumbai attacks. On 10 December 2008 India formally requested the UN Security Council to designate JeD as a terrorist organization.