Structuring the “Expected”: New Social Media Platforms and the Role of Women in Urban Spaces

Introduction

Understanding urban space in India in the context of providing home to one-third of country’s population as ‘migrants’ of which more than two-thirds are women categorically from rural areas indicates two annotations. First, that the spaces and essence of contemporary megacities in the global-south like that of Delhi, for example, have developed into a different urban meaning with reference to classical theories of urbanism and second, as much as the city has changed, so have the imageries engulfing the urban dwellers especially women migrants. In other words, the transforming media conceptualize, construct and finally deliver these images to the migrants. The broad argument I wish to present is that the valency of voluminous media sources processed by informal accessibility via unrestricted virtual portability leads to an increase in spontaneous dissemination of corresponding mediated messages within an urban space has become a constitutive frame for a distinctive mode of social experience for non-native city dwellers such as rural women migrants. However within this system of creating an urban experience, the media watchful of not disturbing the market forces and the state, and generates a coverage that simultaneously propagates existing power relations and confines alternatives to the dominant social system. I argue that rather than perceiving media as something separate from the city, the medium which ‘represents’ urbanity by transforming it into an image, the spatial experience of contemporary social life in urban setting arises over a complex course of co-constitution between urban structures, social practices and media feedback. Thus, for having a holistic understanding of women migrants’ social experience in the city and the corresponding construction of her social identity formation, an investigation covering mediated imageries and its relationship with rural women migrants is a must.