Research Topic

Vaibhav’s research examines the role of the Caste System and other socio-cultural hierarchies in governing aesthetics on social media platforms such as Instagram in India. He is interested in the emergence of the category of ‘Cringe’ within the Indian social media landscape, popularised during the Indian government's historic ban on TikTok in 2020. This research aims to uncover how the caste system mutates on social media under the guise of aesthetics through labels such as ‘Cringe’. The lived experiences of content creators belonging to socio-historically oppressed groups who are labelled as ‘Cringe’ will be at the forefront of this research. It will further interrogate how the circulation and reception of this dubbed ‘Cringe’ content is structured at the intersection of platform-specific affordances and deeply embedded casteist hierarchies, producing new forms of visibility, marginality, and distinction in online spaces. 

Biography 

Vaibhav completed his Bachelor’s in English Literature from the University of Delhi, followed by a Post-Diploma in Advertising and Public Relations from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi (IIMC). During the last semester at IIMC, his team worked on a brief by UNICEF to create an advertising campaign on child safety. He also led the annual Media and Communication festival at IIMC and collaborated with Facebook for an installation on misinformation. Vaibhav worked as a Brand Strategist for close to two years after his diploma, designing digital marketing campaigns for several brands. Inspired to make sense of the intellectual challenge weathered by the COVID-19 epidemic, he joined a Master’s program in English at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). As part of his dissertation, he undertook qualitative research on the consumption patterns of ‘Cringe’ content by interviewing Instagram users with high digital capital residing in New Delhi. 

LSE supports Vaibhav’s research through the PhD studentship.

Supervisors 

Professor Shakuntala Banaji and Dr Rohit K Dasgupta