“Studying Up” through Digital Ethnography: The Case of Conservative Caste Enclaves

Paper Title

“Studying Up” through Digital Ethnography: The Case of Conservative Caste Enclaves

Publication Info

• Topic area: Digital ethnography and caste privilege in socio-technical systems.
• Keywords: HCI, caste, digital ethnography, YouTube, Brahmin food vloggers, nichification, conservative caste enclaves, cultural preservation, privilege, social stratification.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: HCI and CSCW research has predominantly focused on marginalised communities, with limited attention to privileged groups and how they sustain power and privilege through digital platforms.
• Significance: Understanding how privilege operates and is reproduced in digital spaces is essential for addressing systemic inequities and designing justice-oriented socio-technical systems.
• Motivation and related work: While there is emerging interest in studying elites in HCI, research on caste privilege, particularly its digital manifestations, remains nascent. This paper addresses the gap by examining how Kerala Brahmin women food vloggers use YouTube to sustain caste privilege and cultural authority.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Digital ethnography of Kerala Brahmin women food vloggers on YouTube to explore how caste privilege is enacted, circulated, and preserved through socio-technical practices.
• Novelty:
  1. Extends “studying up” in HCI by foregrounding caste as a critical axis of privilege in digital platforms.
  2. Demonstrates how food vlogging and nichification become mechanisms for sustaining caste hierarchies.
  3. Advances digital ethnography as a method for accessing and analysing privileged lifeworlds, particularly for researchers from marginalised positionalities.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted 20 months of digital ethnography (Feb 2022–Oct 2023) on 11 Kerala Brahmin women food vloggers.
  • Used purposive sampling, metadata analysis, and iterative coding to trace caste-coded practices in video content, metadata, and audience interactions.
  • Emphasised reflexivity and minimised algorithmic amplification during data collection.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Brahmin food vloggers use YouTube to archive and circulate caste-coded culinary practices, leveraging platform affordances like metadata (e.g., caste-specific tags) and visual staging to assert cultural authority.
  • Nichification transforms Brahmin identity into a marker of authenticity, attracting both caste insiders and curious outsiders.
  • Vlogs romanticise caste privilege through curated displays of Brahmin homesteads, heirlooms, and rituals, while reinforcing gendered roles tied to caste traditions.
• Advantage over baselines: Highlights how caste privilege operates in subtle, everyday practices rather than overt hate speech, filling a gap in HCI’s focus on marginality and oppression.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Analysed 374 videos across six selected channels, focusing on metadata, visual framing, and audience comments.
  • Observed patterns of caste-coded discoverability, claims to authenticity, and audience engagement.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Study focuses on Brahmin women food vloggers in Kerala; future research could explore transnational dynamics and intra-caste hierarchies.
  • Reflexive challenges include managing researcher well-being and addressing the risks of amplifying privileged discourses.

Summary

This paper uses digital ethnography to examine how Kerala Brahmin women food vloggers leverage YouTube to sustain caste privilege through the socio-technical process of nichification. By embedding caste codes in metadata, staging, and narratives, these vloggers create “conservative caste enclaves” that archive and circulate Brahmin culinary traditions while normalising caste hierarchies. The study highlights the methodological potential of digital ethnography for “studying up” privileged groups, particularly for researchers from marginalised positionalities. It calls for designing non-amplificatory research tools and centring researcher well-being to support critical examinations of power in digital spaces.