Social media as online archives: inserting religious identities within educational spaces in India

In this ethnographic study I demonstrate how students, teachers, and parents use the affordances of social media platforms to insert religious identities within educational spaces, learning experiences, and classroom interactions. This study was conducted in three schools in tier-I cities of India. The aim of this study was to examine the role of parents and teachers in socializing young students to perform their religious identities while engaging with both educational content and their classmates from a different religious community. In this paper, I argue that social media networks are largely used by individuals to reactivate the existing discursive-discriminatory practices which populate the already dense and politicized mediascapes in cities of India.