Reimagining Communities through Transnational Bengali Decolonial Discourse with YouTube Content Creators

TL;DR

This paper explores how YouTube content creators from Bengali communities use online discourse to decolonize and re-imagine nationalism across Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, highlighting the role of technology in supporting decolonial narratives.

Contribution

It provides insights into the motivations and strategies of Bengali YouTubers engaging in transnational decolonial discourse, emphasizing the sociomaterial aspects of online decolonization.

Findings

YouTubers use video content to challenge colonial narratives.

Decolonial discourse online fosters community re-imagination across borders.

Technology enables complex expressions of nationalism and decolonization.

Abstract

Colonialism--the policies and practices wherein a foreign body imposes its ways of life on local communities--has historically impacted how collectives perceive themselves in relation to others. One way colonialism has impacted how people see themselves is through nationalism, where nationalism is often understood through shared language, culture, religion, and geopolitical borders. The way colonialism has shaped people's experiences with nationalism has shaped historical conflicts between members of different nation-states for a long time. While recent social computing research has studied how colonially marginalized people can engage in discourse to decolonize or re-imagine and reclaim themselves and their communities on their own terms--what is less understood is how technology can better support decolonial discourses in an effort to re-imagine nationalism. To understand this phenomenon, this research draws on a semi-structured interview study with YouTubers who make videos about culturally Bengali people whose lives were upended as a product of colonization and are now dispersed across Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. This research seeks to understand people's motivations and strategies for engaging in video-mediated decolonial discourse in transnational contexts. We discuss how our work demonstrates the potential of the sociomateriality of decolonial discourse online and extends an invitation to foreground complexities of nationalism in social computing research.