Volume 4: 2022
Author:
Rimsha Saleem
Abstract
This study investigates the fan communities around Punjabi stage dramas as they circulate on online spaces, in particular YouTube and Facebook. It explores the construction, negotiation, and performance of transnational Punjabi identities in these online spaces with a particular emphasis on gender, spectatorship, and fan culture around Punjabi dramas. These stage dramas, which are recordings of live performances in Pakistan, have such a massive following that it exceeds in-theatre viewership. On average, these dramas have over 5 million views, 20 thousand likes, and hundreds of comments each. For the purpose of this study, more than 500 comments on 3 popular Punjabi stage dramas have been analyzed. An overview of the comment section reveals that almost all the comments are made by male viewers, and they are mostly positive. Many of the commenters identify themselves as residing outside of Pakistan, such as India and the UK. These patterns and trends are further analyzed by employing exploratory qualitative data analysis techniques of text mining. The findings will be represented in word clouds and frequency plots to observe trends and patterns in the comments. This study provides insight into the digital afterlives of these performances and how they resonate with Punjabis through time and across borders in online spaces.
Keywords
Fan Communities,Stage Drama,Diaspora,Social media
