The ongoing century is a Social Media communication century where the traditional concept of time and space has been considered as a myth and been successful to make a global village by the help of science and technology revolution. In this new medium, now, selfie has been come out as a new popular culture of the global society beside lot of new other concepts and ideas. But taking this ideas of communication critically, it has seen that there are some issues which making the globe more racially divided than ever. Making a deep analysis of the popular selfie culture of a nod (India) in the global internet democracies, this paper will try to analyse the role of the new most usable social media applications in promoting racism more horribly than ever in India. Also, taking the Psychoanalysis theory of Sigmund Freud and the Anti/ Post-Colonial Theory of Frantz Fanon as the base, this study will try to understand the new imperial hegemony of such responsible new media and photo-capturing applications. Moreover, its impact on Indian democracy in a long term and the reasons for the lack of proper law of the political institutions against virtual racism will also be understood.

Keywords: selfie culture, social media, digital racism, digital age, network society, democratic populism

Social Media is our daily routine to sign in not once but several times a day. This media has reshaped the entire socio-economic, political, religious, and cultural dimensions and many more systems and practices of our daily life. According to corporate research analytic Statista, the world’s 5.03 billion population is now connected to the internet which is 63.1 percent of the overall global population. Another study by this research group says the 4.7 billion population of the entire world is connected with different social media applications which is 49 percent overall. Also, their research says, 6.5 billion smartphone subscriptions are active in the current world where a camera and different social media applications are already inbuilt into the phone or there are options of installation for more other applications, based on the choice of the users of those phones.¹ 

The new practice of social system has not only changed the way of communication but also enhanced the entire socio-economic, political, cultural, and religious system in this new society. Individuals now have a choice for several things they enjoy or work with. Though this choice is a rational choice or not that can be a different debate, but, yes, some options are more diverse than the physical or the old society. The establishment and worldwide function of this new society has given people a worldwide scope of their activities overnight connecting them with different digital nods of the network. As Michael Oakshott argued that every change brings some new that can be counted as positive change but some negative developments cannot be ignored. In this new medium of communication age, we also witnessed the same. Social media communication culture has given us a lot of new development which can be found everywhere in society whether it is in religion, politics, culture, or the broad area of the social system. The structure of power and knowledge has also taken the form of a worldwide giant taking the opportunity of this new system.

States in the twenty-first century are more active than ever. States are trying to have control over others remotely. Most of the richest states are on that way by the innovation of such technologies. The idea of photo capturing and sharing that with others got popular as it started coming up as inbuilt with smartphones. Taking photo by himself/herself which is called selfie and sharing it on social media networks is now a pop culture among netizens. This culture being a popular one leads the popularity of the idea of westernised conception of man with white skin. This concept being very popular making the third world countries like India to feel very subordinate to their own black and brown skin. And, all this happening by the majoritarian view called “big data” in the digital society through the charisma of Algorithms.

This study has been gone through after reviewing dozens of primary and secondary data in form of books, articles and community standards of some popular social media sites related to this research to understand the existing discoveries of the intellectuals. Also, some basic books have been given a special emphasis as their core of the idea and to make an extension of it in the digital society. The first and foremost literature I have gone through is the theoretical base of this study, written by Algerian Psychoanalyst and writer² namely “Black Skin, White Mask”. In this world-famous book, Fanon penned his experience with French rule and the socio-psychological conditions of the colonized people of Algeria. The condition of the people of Algeria he saw there was a condition of a hungry man who was constantly trying to convert him/herself into the level of civilization assimilating with the status of the French white people. To become one of the French they even didn’t dither to learn their language, pronounce their accent, adopt their dress code, etc. Furthermore, the colonized Algerians were more excited to marry the white man, but if it is not possible then at least spend a night with them so that they can proudly propagate their win of touching the highest level of leaving standard. But, at the end of the day with a strenuous effort, they were rejected by the French from their culture. Fanon blamed this psychology of the Algerian people for making Algeria a colony of the French. The second book which became very significant in my area of study is “Algorithm of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism” written.³ In this book, Noble talks about ‘Technological Redlining’ by which she means the oppression of algorithms. For this oppression, she generally impeached factors like hegemonic gender, race, and capital. Their role in the network as a ‘big data’ reinforce the digital divide in society. The third book which is very popular in the social science discipline nowadays and especially in sociology is “The Rise of Network Society” written by Manuel Castells⁴ is a combination of three volumes. In this book, Castells argued the emergence of networks in the twenty-first century changed the total socio-economic conditions of the world. This neoliberal age using this network changed the economic strength of some richest countries with a high flow of information. The flow of labour and the condition of human rights has also changed in this new age. In this book, he generally talked about the changing global scenario making a common global village, but this village is also not so far from the demand of the people with a new face. As far as this network reshaped the capitalist strength, it also strengthened the hands of the people with the new medium of social movement. Identity, culture, and human rights, in general, have been reshaped in this network.

The article will not count the benefits of the network in the global village but will try to find out the answers of

1. What are the new ways of spreading racism in the network society which affects a post-colonial country like India?
2. Who are the major creators of racism in the network?
3. How do these new creators are unique with this idea and being allowed to carry forward this in India?
4. Is there any role of populist discourse to make algorithms functional?

This study has been undergone in both societies, physical as well as digital using multiple methods of research. In physical society, the survey methods proved beneficial to understand the new medium of tools by which the respondents are functional in Photo capturing, photo editing, and sharing online. On the other hand, to observe their activity on different social media platforms, the content analysis method was used. Here, the content in form of Pictures, Videos, and comments was considered necessary. Also, some primary and secondary data helped a lot to complete the circle of resources. This kind of study is unique in character. The earlier study only focused on the issue of racism in physical society and India as a field in the post-colonial discourse hundreds of times, but, its application in the digital society is totally unique as the society itself is unique with a new medium of communication by some new dominant actors.

The new knowledge in the worldwide new medium of communication can be seen as more dynamic and challenging for a country like India which went through a long rule of different foreign rules whether it is Portuguese, Dutch, French, or British. Among all these foreign dominations on the Indian subcontinent, there had been the British who exploited India for a long time imposing their rationality, and science of knowledge. As the French Philosopher Jacques Derrida said there is a structure where every activity of our daily life is shaped by different western notions. This notion in Derrida’s terms is ‘text’ which developed the western truth of the structure.⁵ Derrida’s concept can be justified as the entire globe became the colony of some western countries which after the second world war got their independence one by one. Western civilized white people introduced their truth to rule their colonies. In the African case, as early Post-Colonial writer, and philosopher Frantz Fanon argued in his famous book ‘Black Skin White Masks’,² the French not only ruled Africa but they divided the entire African population, alienated from the development of mental and physical peace and took them to feel the subordination lifetime.² In India, the British not only ruled India but introduced their conception of rationality which resulted in the division of India in 1947. Though the soft arms for ruling and dividing India were mostly religious than any other like race, culture, language, etc. but their conception of racial division was also not so far from their grab.⁶ 

The seed of racism in colonial India was implanted by the British and now has taken a wider shape of a giant in the network society and played a vital role in dividing Indian citizens very softly for a long time. Thought, the network society has given a lot of new inventions and opportunities to the people, but here the power has been reshaped using this development of the global village.⁷ Using this new platform, knowledge has received a worldwide audience to follow its rational argument which is not new but can be considered ‘Old wine in a new bottle’ as Lenin said considering the role of capitalism in Democratic countries where revisionist movements were going on.⁸

The seed of Racism in India which was implanted by the British during colonial rule now grown into a normal issue in India. This has been developed for several reasons but the most dominant reason is following the liberal culture since independence.⁹ Though the current normal system of racism in our daily life has been able to spread its branches with the economic reform in 1991. This time hundred and thousands of foreign companies entered India with their product to capture this new global market.¹⁰ But the most dominant and the current form of racism came out once the network society with their mobile-friendly applications captured this post-colonial market in this process, this society of internet culture not just propagated racism but also produced it to its current and highest pick.¹¹ Now, if we look at the medium of spreading racism in the network society then the study should have started with smartphones which provide the entrance for global connection. 

India currently has 931 million smartphones¹ and all these phones provide an inbuilt camera and an option to download it from different application stores whether it is Google play store or another. As this study needs a special demand of a proper nature of the smartphone companies and their businesses to understand the racism in social media age I conducted two different social surveys, the first one is on sixty college-going female students and they are mainly from the Kolkata region. I took their Android phone and made a list of applications installed on their phone. Among all the applications I made two categories of those applications, one is photo capturing applications and another one is photo capturing with social media communicable applications. In the first category, I found such inbuilt applications provided by the phone companies such as Xiaomi, Realme, Vivo, Oppo, Lenovo, Micromax, Apple, Samsung, etc. these all only capture photos with filtering tools.

In the second category, I found Facebook, Instagram, B612, Snapchat, Picasa, WhatsApp, and many more in this list. The majority of these two categories of applications are foreign companies and have huge market popularity. All these applications provide tools like ‘filtering’ while capturing photos and after capturing a photo or shooting videos. Though this is not the complete list of devices and applications which function to capture and edit photos and videos, there are hundreds of other such applications and devices in the market some of those major I tried to mention below in Table 1 and Table 2. 

Now, the major question is, what is the ‘filter’ in smartphones? So, to understand this, we have to start with the history of ‘Photo’ little more. The world’s first photo was captured in 1828 by the Frenchman Joseph Nicephore Niepce. It was made by using the ‘camera obscure on a tin plate covered with a thin layer of Syrian asphalt. Later, the first coloured photo was taken by an English Physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1861. This colour photo was the first successful experiment with the filter option. It was used in three different filters – green, red and blue. In 1880, the American banker George Eastman inaugurated the first of its photo capturing company named ‘Eastman Dry Plate Company in America. Later on, in 1888, this company changed its name to ‘Kodak’. This company still plays a significant role in the current globalized world. In 1884, this photo-making system developed making the film and in 1889 this innovation started the mass production of films. In 1980, after the invention of computing, the first photo editing computing program was made which was named ‘Adobe Photoshop. Later on, this system has been configured with smartphones which changed the total photography system and its philosophy taking the market strategy in mind.¹² A filter is a tool for editing photos or videos which I termed the ‘digital fair and lovely’, yes the digital fair and lovely, by which anybody knowingly or unknowingly can look fair and lovely according to the philosophy of these companies. Though, in July 2020, the beauty product ‘Fair and Lovely’ faced huge criticism from civil society, and changed its name to ‘Glow and Lovely’.¹³ But the philosophy of looking fair is still active in business and making people fair and lovely, the digital fair and lovely in the network society. 

Now, if the researcher looks at their business strategy, then who are the customers of this digital product, the answer is the young female most. In my second survey, I found very few numbers of male students who prefer this kind of application on their mobile phones. According to the Pew Research Center, women within age of their thirties are most familiar with sharing photos on social media platforms, especially on Instagram.¹⁴ According to Word Stream research, 95 million photos are shared in a single day only on Instagram. In a latest report of Facebook, the social media giant said, 250 billion photos are shared on their platform in a single day, and among this, there are 350 million new photos shared every day.¹⁵ For all these social media companies, India is a big market.

The following chart shows the market shares of top five smart phone companies in India in 2021: Figure 1

Figure 1 Market Shares of Popular Smart Phone Brands in India.

The above Table 1 of the brands of smartphones shows that India is a market of foreign companies where there is a hegemony of the Chinese and some western companies. Although several other companies also sell their smartphone in India, those are not as influential as above-mentioned brands in Indian Market. The above chart 1 and Table 1 show the poverty of the number of Indian-origin brands and their market value. According to the Market analysis research group called ‘Research and Markets, India’s smartphone market size was valued at 139 billion US dollars in 2021 and is expected to grow with a CAGR of 10.5 percent and reach 281 billion US dollars by 2028.¹⁶

The following table shows the names and the origins of all those brands function India with worldwide connection.

The above list of photo-filtering applications shows that there is a domination of American Companies in making people white. Though, this list is not a complete one, but, if we visit different application stores and specifically the application stores giant such as Google Play Store then the variety and already downloaded figures of applications it holds can take this research article to feel very small in thinking and limited. So, it is not possible to mention all those names in this research article. I have only mentioned the names which were most preferred by the respondents to use, besides, some other popular usable google applications. According to a Research Report by Sephali Bhatt of ‘The Economic Times in 2018, “The selfie obsession culture of Indian citizens led this company to earn an estimate of one billion Indian rupees”. Though, as per her report, these figures are only of some major dominant companies but there are hundreds of other brands which provide these features in Indian and other citizens of the globe which also have huge paid and free user consumers.¹⁷ This gigantic number of beauty apps and their consumption has not been discovered by the public debate, and therefore, its impact on the economic and social life has also not been addressed by the Indian intellectuals and government yet. 

This part of the research is the major concern for me as a social researcher in the network society. This part will try to analyse the role and impact of filtered selfie culture in the social media age and more importantly in the popular discourse to understand racism. Some scholars defined populism as a typical reaction to a deep crisis, real or perceived, in diverse and large democracies.¹⁸ In most of the current writings, populism has been classified into two parts considering its nature of ideology – right-wing populism and left-wing populism. But beyond this narrow classification of populism, Jean-Paul Gagnon and his associates have classified this into six different populist movements –

1. Authoritarian and democratic,
2. Market fundamentalist (libertarian) and redistributive,
3. Exclusionary and inclusionary (ant pluralist and pluralist),
4. Xenophobic and cosmopolitan,
5. Electoral and participatory (thick)
6. Nostalgic and aspirational.¹⁸

Populism is more than a rhetorical style and political protest.¹⁹ Making a deep analysis of the political system in a democracy, Urbanti emphasizes the power by which the political system is changed. According to her, ‘populism in power is an extreme majoritarianism’.¹⁹ To understand racism in a digital age where it is necessary to understand the role of the players in this society. The digital society consists of human and non-human players. Non-human players in the digital society can be understood with the function of ‘algorithm activism’.²⁰

Generally, the network society consists of different nods situated in different parts of the world. Every nod is identified as the user of this platform. So, this is how, there are billions of nods or users of this network.⁴ To understand it in a traditional language we can term it as a citizen of this new society. At the very beginning of this society, citizens were making demands of this society on what they wanted and how will they behave. The discipline was mostly decided by the behaviour of the citizens of the society. Thought, there were authorities in this society who were making the entire system and placing demands on the citizens. This new society consisted as a result of the participation of the citizens in it. Authority as the owner of such different meta-nods, on the other side, considering the role and demand of the virtual citizens started developing the new society. The nature of the users of this society is not different but the same as the physical man as they control their digital identity in the virtual society. The authority such as the owner of the different platforms in the social media age considering their business interest allowed such nature of man which can be found in old or physical society. In this process, some authorities such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. allowed its virtual citizens to perform such functions which are vulnerable to others. In this process, they allowed only the good behaviours and wishes of the people which human beings try to fulfil as only an individual but not human beings of society. The role and responsibility of these virtual citizens are to secure only the interest of the individual but there are no such duties of the citizens for the society. It is a society that liberal philosophers wanted to see the physical society. They defined the virtual citizen as only an ideal man of its network society. They allowed the language of power of its citizen only and in the initial periods, it did not have a dialogue with the authority of physical society. In this full process, the authority of this virtual society thought that their virtual citizen was capable enough to secure their interest.

The individual in this new society was made how western and American developed nations think of their citizens in the contested notion of developed, developing, and under-development. But, specifically, here, they consider the citizens of metropolitan cities from different parts of the world considering their capabilities to enter into the network society.²¹ As the developers and owners of this new society are mostly from the west and the capitalist countries, therefore, the whole concept of man has been shaped by their philosophy of man and their capability and to some extent with the concept of the metropolitan man of different countries irrespective of spatial differences. The language, dress code, behaviour, race, colour, societal discipline, etc. are allowed and made as per the thought of the western concept. From here, their concept of power is also defined by the authority as per their choice. 

The problems with the digital society arise when its dialects with the norms and discipline of physical society and particularly with the existing social, political, religious, and cultural values. The first of its kinds can be seen in the developing world nations states and with their different existing norms. The Arab Spring started with the Tunisian Revolution which resulted in a regime change in just twenty-eight days when general citizens came out on the street to demonstrate against the authoritarian government.²² This movement was first started in the newly introduced social media sites where ‘digital elites’ started resisting the government and their authoritarian regimes.²³ Just within months and a year, this society came out as a global platform for the protest against unjust irrespective of space and the form of government.²⁴ In this process, a wave of Arab Spring has seen in the US in 2012 himself made the definition of the virtual man with their language of power for its digital society. These incidents, convulsed Philosophers, Journalists, Thinks Tanks, scientists, and social scientists who always think about justice in society and try to develop it with their justification. Although The Arab Spring was not a single movement that took place in the social media age there are thousands of other social media revolutions which changed the unjust traditional power system and considered a democratic friendly society for the common people.²⁵ 

Among several other languages of power and its tools, there can be found the concept of race. The long history and its origin in the developing nations was a powerful tool for the colonizers in different countries whether it is French or British. Post-colonial philosopher Frantz Fanon in his different writings already showed this thing in his experience of French rule in African nations in general and Algeria in Particular which I mentioned in the first part of this writing.²⁶ The British in India, South Africa, and other countries also followed the same philosophy of power.²⁷ This tradition continues in different parts of the world which has got a gigantic shape in this new society making a popular culture where the role of the algorithm is deemed more dangerous for these countries given racial discourse.³ 

The concept of digital man and its whitish identity is still seemed very unjust for the citizen of physical society. The hegemony of this white man concept is continuing not only due to the citizens of this new society but because of the creating structure of the algorithm which himself is an entity like how the conservative thinker Edmund Burke considers the physical society.²⁸ As there is a hegemony of the current capitalist countries (mainly China) in the smartphone business in India, and, Western Companies (Mainly USA) in making different smartphone applications that promote the concept of whitish man superiority in their business therefore the challenge towards a country like India is dynamic. This challenge is the new challenge of the globalizing world and is not the same as in colonial periods. This challenge can be taken from two sides, one is from the business ties with these two digital giant countries and another one is from the algorithm activism. In the following sections, I will try to explain these two unique challenging aspects of India.

The globalizing world multiplied the challenges of Racism for a colonial country like India. India has a good relationship with the USA as a strategic partner which started with the process of liberalization, privatization, and globalization in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR and the welcome of the structural adjustment program of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1991. From this time but particularly after the demise of the majoritarian rule of the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1989 India was going through a political crisis in the centre. This led the government from time to time to work as a weak government and was very unfit to understand and tackle the negative sides of the neo-liberal developments in India. In this process, hundreds of companies physically and digitally led this country to be in shape according to their language of soft power. The concept of white superiority which was popularised in colonial India by the British also continued in the digital neo-liberal age by the American companies replacing the other British and Russian Companies after the 1991 developments. The launch of different media houses in America such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and hundreds of other media giants carry forward the same white superiority by developing their applications and software with the photo editor or filter option. On the Other hand, Chinese phone companies which are cheap in price in comparison with other phone companies have domination in the Indian smartphone market and also popularised the same white superiority in their phone configuration. Although, this can be an inappropriate argument if the researcher says that only the Chinese traders promote white superiority through their smartphones and Americans through their Applications and software but both countries have contributed in both the medium. Moreover, there are other foreign companies as well beyond this stereotype structure such as South Korea, Japan, and some other European countries. 

China being a mass producer of cheap digital products is necessary for India to reduce the gap of the digital divide within its population. But at the same time, China is our neighbour country which for its economic nature and insecurity for the development of India could not become our good partner in the Asian continent. Also, there is a trade competition between both the countries in the South Asian region and the entire South East Asian region. Not only that, but border disputes with China are also a major concern for India which brings India close to the USA strategically. But both these countries are very aware of India’s development, and therefore, using this weakness to a high level to feel India subordinate. Though it is not the only argument, the awareness among Indian citizens about the soft power and strong leadership in central government is also equally important. However, the current world order and the regime change in 2014 in India dared India to take such initiative to ban a few Chinese applications which were promoting racism as well as was a security threat to India.²⁹

The second most challenge of India on the issue of racism is Algorithm Activism. In this section, my empirical study with a hundred college-going students becomes significant. To understand Algorithm Activism and Populist culture in the case of racism online, it was very much important to complete this data collection process in both the societies on same persons. Easily, we can term it the ‘Two-dimensional activity of a person determined its two different identities. The first dimension is Physical society where they have their own real identity with their real human nature and features as human beings. The second one is the identity of virtual society where their identity is formed with a digital white mask. The activities of digital spaces take all those persons to feel ashamed and very sick psychologically when their real identity is gets disclosed with unknown and knowns sometimes. The identity of the digital white mask feels them very proud in a digital society where everyone is covered with the same but in the real case, everyone is obsessed with everyone. So, when everyone is obsessed with everyone in physical society, they do not want interaction physically but virtually. They are happy with their digital identity. Therefore, they will not welcome the government's decision if the government bans all those racist applications of mobile phones and software which promote white. 

Now, the major question that will arise from here that how this is related to populism. To know this answer, the researcher had to go through the digital data collection process with all of the respondents’ different social media accounts. Though, many of them I know for long a time are old citizens of this society which helped me to make this digital observation study easy and very fast. In my digital study, I found almost everyone looking white in their photos and videos which was done either by the phone cameras which have filter options or by using third party application which has a better option for making faces white. The researcher checked their last month's photos and videos where almost everyone got white. In these pictures and videos where their actual black or brown skin colour is not shown and looking white is a characteristic of a good photo that gets hundreds, thousands, and millions of likes shares, and views. Sometimes, when somebody does not have a connection with such digital white-masked people also get these photos or videos on their timeline by the ‘invisible digital hands’ of the algorithm activism. Moreover, the advertisement policy of all those social media companies promotes any videos which fit the community guideline of their different companies making the people forced free consumers of those products. This promoted photos and videos, if, is with digital white masked there are no issues from the company’s side as this issue does not break their community guideline. So, it is very clear that these digital media companies do not consider racism a bad thing for a country like India.

The hard racism sometimes cannot move on the mesh of the sieve. If there is a strong comment from any of the citizens of this digital society to anyone then there can be seen some strict action against that person. Sometimes, this action comes from the netizens, and social media companies at the request of the government and sometimes by the government itself. There are thousands of examples where those comments were banned by the companies or governments take legal actions or both happened. But the issue is there is no such minimum censorship policy or program from the company’s side and cases that are not so politically significant get unnoticeable or ignorable importance from both political and as normal from the company’s side. More importantly, there is no such legal action against the promoter/social media companies who by their algorithm promote such activities. Also, the company’s own efforts to promote such racism in form of making algorithms and making such filtered applications and software don’t get punishment. The silent and democratic populist support helps these companies to create their ‘digital colonialism’ with whitish philosophy.

The outcome of the study

The social media age of communication is much more popular than any other form of communication nowadays. People being a member of this society easily access all kinds of information. As this society performs based on the algorithms set by the big companies of communication functions like majoritarian utilitarianism. This majoritarian utilitarianism leads the society towards a popular culture of a hegemonic conception of the human nature of the practice. The legacy of colonial India is playing a crucial role to reshape the new India with the old practice of racism. People are being fooled by the digital idea of beauty, where the role of the majority is covering up the role of the minority who are more conscious about the role of these new cultures and practices. There is a lack of political role in minimizing such issues in society. The role of the economy and its management is also responsible so far. But, beyond all these, there is a lack of the role of the bureaucrats who are not capable enough to play a proactive role to understand and to produce a counter strategy in their policy-making process against digital beauty apps. These apps are not just leading Indian people to a pseudo-character of looking beautiful but also to a world of unhappiness and division within society based on skin colour. Beyond all, people become alienated from society and gradually from himself/herself when feel shameful to show the reality, the real colour.

This study which I have tried to develop for a long-time engagement shows how these smartphone companies and new media sites and applications are taking the advantage of the uneducated people of this country who went through a long colonial rule with the whitish norms. The language of exploitation has not been changed to sustain the power position and has taken a new form in the network society in globalization. Education in modern language and rationality which shaped the power of the western nations is being continued to make the new digital colony. There is clear hypocrisy seen in the network society of the new capitalists where a country like China is also a great power to fight with. This network not only makes India’s challenge high but also multiples that. In this current network world, India Faces the old capitalists of Europe but also some new such as the USA, China, South Korea, Japan, etc. At this point when India’s own infant telecommunication and network companies are very weak then the challenge to tackle such an issue which has a very deep root in Individual psychology can be proven wrong to uproot.

None.

Author declares there is no conflict of interest in publishing the article.

None.

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