Identity and Platform Governance

Examining how digital platforms shape identity, language, belonging, and participation among historically marginalized communities through decolonial and sociotechnical perspectives.

Research Summary

This research program examines how digital platforms shape identity, language, and collective participation in historically marginalized communities. Through qualitative, computational, and critical approaches, I investigate how platform governance, algorithmic systems, and colonial histories intersect to influence online expression, cultural preservation, and community formation across South Asia and its diaspora.

Why this research?

Digital platforms have become central spaces for cultural expression, political participation, and community building. However, not everybody can make their voices heard – platforms’ recommendation algorithms, moderation systems, interface designs, and economic incentives influence whose voices are amplified, whose identities become legible, and whose experiences remain marginalized.

Much of the rich work on online communities in human-computer interaction and social computing has emerged from North American and European contexts. In contrary, how colonial histories, linguistic diversity, religious identities, and regional politics shape digital participation elsewhere remains insufficiently understood.

This research program addresses that gap by studying online communities in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. Rather than treating identity as a fixed characteristic, I examine identity as an ongoing sociotechnical accomplishment that emerges through interactions among people, platforms, algorithms, and historical power structures. My work contributes to decolonial computing by foregrounding local knowledge, community practices, and lived experiences that are often overlooked in mainstream technology research.

Across this project, I investigate questions such as:

  • How do digital platforms influence the construction and negotiation of cultural identities?
  • How do language, history, and colonial legacies shape online participation?
  • How do creators and communities navigate platform governance, moderation, and algorithmic visibility?
  • How do marginalized communities appropriate digital technologies to preserve culture and build solidarity?
  • What can decolonial perspectives contribute to the design and governance of online platforms?

Research Approach

This project combines qualitative, computational, and critical methods to understand online communities as sociotechnical systems.

Methods include:

  • Interviews and digital ethnography with community members
  • Computational, qualitative, and critical discourse analyses
  • Sociotechnical theories and decolonial and postcolonial perspectives

Rather than studying individual technologies in isolation, I investigate how users, platforms, institutional policies, and historical contexts jointly shape digital participation.

Research Outcomes and Contributions

This research contributes to several areas within Human-Computer Interaction and CSCW.

  • Decolonial Computing: Develops empirically grounded understandings of how colonial histories continue to shape digital technologies and online participation in major ethnolinguistic communities like the Bengalis from South Asian countries like Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan – regions of increasing geopolitical importance. (See CSCW 24, CHI 22)

  • Online Communities and Platform Governance: Extends theories of online communities by showing how identities emerge through ongoing interactions among users, technologies, and sociocultural histories. It also demonstrates that governance is enacted not only through platform rules but also through recommendation systems, creator labor, audience expectations, and community norms. (See CSCW 21, Submitted)

  • Global HCI: Broadens HCI scholarship by centering perspectives from South Asia and other historically underrepresented regions. My work demonstrates how examining communities outside dominant Western contexts can generate new theoretical insights with broader relevance across computing disciplines. This can also inform designers developing multilingual and multicultural technologies. (See CHI 24)

Current Directions

This research program continues to evolve alongside rapid developments in generative AI and platform ecosystems.

Current directions include:

  • AI-mediated identity construction
  • Cultural representation in generative AI
  • Platform governance for multilingual communities
  • Digital public spheres in the Global South