Memes of Marginalization: Analysing Caste-Based Hate Speech in Meme Culture and Social Media
Memes of Marginalization: Analysing Caste-Based Hate Speech in Meme Culture and Social Media
Tuesday, 8 July 2025: 09:45
Location: FSE036 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
Oral Presentation
Meme culture within digital spaces operates as both a product and a catalyst of social realities, simultaneously reflecting, perpetuating, and reconfiguring societal norms and entrenched power structures. Memes, under the guise of humour, can serve as alarmingly potent instruments of hate speech against underprivileged communities such as Dalits that may propagate ostensibly innocuous or comedic content with embedded prejudices and reinforcement of stereotypes. The study aims to investigate the various manifestations of caste-hate speech in memes on social media platforms against lower caste groups and to unearth underlying narratives and social contexts in which such memes are created.
Semi-structured interviews of 50 young individuals who belonged to marginalized caste groups and were active on social media platforms were conducted to gather in-depth insights into their experiences and perceptions of caste-related memes and hate speech. Further, inputs obtained from interviews were subsequently used as prompts to access and analyse casteist memes, comment sections and short-form videos on social media, facilitating the identification of patterns and trends through qualitative content analysis.
The research found that in the digital culture of social media, the upper caste groups hold the prerogative of social capital that enables them to become trendsetters and manipulate the trajectories of meme trends. Memes, often consisting of verbal abuses and slurs, are weaponised to initiate and spread false rhetorics and disinformation. They posit Dalits as unworthy recipients of welfare policies such as fee concessions and reservation quotas for government jobs and educational institutions, consider their digital sub-culture to be inferior, impure, sub-standard and 'cringe', reinforce traditional stereotypes, and endorse the practice of untouchability and hereditary occupations associated with their castes. Consequently, such memes which are embedded with hate speech, perpetuate exclusion, and normalise discrimination, both online and offline, thereby impairing the social and virtual life of marginalized caste groups.
Semi-structured interviews of 50 young individuals who belonged to marginalized caste groups and were active on social media platforms were conducted to gather in-depth insights into their experiences and perceptions of caste-related memes and hate speech. Further, inputs obtained from interviews were subsequently used as prompts to access and analyse casteist memes, comment sections and short-form videos on social media, facilitating the identification of patterns and trends through qualitative content analysis.
The research found that in the digital culture of social media, the upper caste groups hold the prerogative of social capital that enables them to become trendsetters and manipulate the trajectories of meme trends. Memes, often consisting of verbal abuses and slurs, are weaponised to initiate and spread false rhetorics and disinformation. They posit Dalits as unworthy recipients of welfare policies such as fee concessions and reservation quotas for government jobs and educational institutions, consider their digital sub-culture to be inferior, impure, sub-standard and 'cringe', reinforce traditional stereotypes, and endorse the practice of untouchability and hereditary occupations associated with their castes. Consequently, such memes which are embedded with hate speech, perpetuate exclusion, and normalise discrimination, both online and offline, thereby impairing the social and virtual life of marginalized caste groups.