REFLECTIVE ESSAY

I have lived my entire life as an expatriate in the Middle East, having split time between Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, which has naturally caused me to feel distant from various aspects of my identity as an Indian. Adding on to this is my religious identity as a Syro-Malabar Christian, already a minority in my native country and especially more so in the countries I had lived in. It was only in the last five or so years that I developed a sincere curiosity about politics, which has led me on my current academic journey and now inspires me to think critically about the world and how I interact with it, especially where identity is concerned. Since when I first started using social media five years ago, I have been keenly attuned to the various political trends that surge through social media, more so when they relate to various aspects of my identity, whether national, political, social, cultural or religious. 

With the unmistakable popularity of Hindu nationalism and supremacism across India since the mid-2010’s, the Indian political content I came across on social media made me highly aware of each of these facets in a way I never had been before, which is a feat in itself considering my aforementioned experiences as a lifelong expatriate. Based on what I was seeing - I was not a true Indian because I lived abroad and was more likely to lose my Indian identity, because I did not look or dress in a conventionally “Indian” manner, because I was Christian and not Hindu, because my Malayali culture was distinctly different from “Indian” (that is, according to a considerable number of posts and comments, implicitly north Indian upper-caste Hindu) culture, because I did not speak Hindi, because I did not like or play cricket, the list went on. As a young individual, these kinds of rhetoric were particularly confusing, even radicalizing in a sense, but what I did not realize then was that these were the sort of divides that politicians and parties across India were exploiting for their own political gain. 

This epiphany I had with regards to the sheer power and influence of social media content - regardless of its veracity or reliability - is what motivated me to pursue the Certificate in Media and Politics, creating a number of academic and professional experiences that I would otherwise not have had, and also what inspired my choice of research topic for the capstone. With an even number of courses between Georgetown and Northwestern, I have been empowered with a versatile set of skills that have since enabled me to engage in directed research and analyses in a truly remarkable variety of fields. 

Each of the courses I selected towards the certificate had a role in my conceptions for the capstone. The very first course to be attributed to the certificate, ‘The Weaponization of Hate,’ was an exclusive opportunity to study under one of Georgetown’s finest faculty in Security Studies at our Washington, D.C. campus during my semester studying abroad there, and mainly discussed extremism and violence perpetrated by the American far-right. This course resonated with my own observations of anti-minority sentiment and action upheld by the Indian far-right, and has been crucial in shaping my understanding of far-right terrorism and its implications at both the domestic and international levels, serving as the foundation for the rationale behind my capstone topic. Once back in Doha, I was able to pursue a course each towards CMAP at both Georgetown and Northwestern - ‘Comparative Ethnic Politics and Conflict’ and ‘Media and Religion’ respectively. The fact that I studied them simultaneously was like one course holding a magnifying glass to the other: the Georgetown course explained what lay under the surface of (more often negative) media representations of certain religious groups, while the Northwestern class illustrated how social tensions and divides can manifest in and be further acted upon by the media. This semester is when my capstone was essentially consolidated - as I progressed through these courses, I knew with certainty that I wanted to research how minorities were portrayed and reacted to on social media, especially when focusing on a country as populated and diverse as India. 

With these three courses done, I realized I wanted to study social media and the digital world itself in more depth, which is how I arrived at the following semester’s courses. Choosing ‘The Digital Society’ and ‘AI, Deepfakes, and Disinformation’ at Georgetown and Northwestern respectively was certainly a large and effective step in this direction. The former not only discussed the implications of transitioning to an increasingly digital landscape, but also of the digital on society as a whole, with particular attention paid to social media as a societal and political actor. The latter emphasized this role of social media in politics, as political campaigns are increasingly relying on AI technology to strengthen and widen their online reach. I rounded off my CMAP coursework this semester with a relatively light but fundamental course, ‘Big Data and Social Media Analytics’ at Northwestern. Since I was by then able to collect data for research, analyze and present it in writing, it was imperative that I was also able to present such findings in a more accessible manner by synthesizing the facts and figures into easily digestible graphs and visualizations, which this course helps me accomplish comprehensively. 

Even though I chose each of the courses for their relevance to my capstone and overall academic interests and objectives, I was still able to derive a number of connections between them, which have been crucial to adapting and adding more dimension to my research. For one, almost all of my courses have had a focus at least in part on the growing role of media - especially social media - in politics, which is an extremely important theme to me personally since I recognize my generation’s dependence on social media to stay informed on politics. Secondly, there was the matter of politicians and those seeking power regularly leveraging societal divides to serve their socio-political goals, supported (to no one’s surprise) by robust media campaigns whose effects can ripple beyond national borders. From my experience, the most important of these interdisciplinary connections by far is the power inherent in the concept of identity and how it can be harnessed to suit the user’s needs. As covered by different modules in most of my chosen courses - ‘Comparative Ethnic Politics,’ ‘Media and Religion,’ and ‘Weaponization of Hate’ especially - identity and related concepts such as belonging and partisanship can result in a variety of outcomes, from founding relatively benign groups to foster as sense of community, to being the basis for ideologies perpetrating hate and even widespread violence against particular groups.

My interest in understanding more about countering terrorism and combating violence targeting specific communities led me to attend the Doha Youth Parliamentary Forum 2024. Here, I witnessed and took part in a number of discussions, each focused on a different aspect of the United Nations’ Preventing and Countering Terrorism initiative. Watching subject experts and government practitioners speak about their work demonstrated how the theories I had learned in class translated to real life, even more so where solutions to problems of radicalization and extremism were concerned. Another experience which has enriched my journey as I worked to complete the certificate was my participation as a delegate in the first NATO simulation at GUQ in early February 2025, in which one aspect of the conclusive NATO resolution to the simulation scenario was a commitment towards improving NATO’s long-term media presence and image in certain regions such as the Middle East where their influence or action might not be immediately well-received. As a result of this simulation exercise, I was able to highlight not only the importance of media as a weapon in times of conflict, but also as a tool in times of peace and relationship-building.

In another connection to my understanding of how media, identity, and politics are intertwined, my work towards my Honors thesis has further underlined the role of both traditional and modern media in identity-building in the context of minorities balancing their own identities with the dominant majority’s. Since I am examining nationalism as it pertains to individuals from my religious community, the Syro-Malabar Christians of Kerala, I have - for instance - asked research participants whether they identify with the national allegorical figure, the Bharat Mata (“Mother India”), especially because she is dressed in traditional upper-caste Hindu attire as a goddess, which is distinct from our own cultural attire. I have also recorded these participants’ reactions to social media posts and campaigns, especially by Hindu nationalists and like-minded political figures, regarding national identity. With just these two facets of my research methodology, among others, I have been able to extract a considerable amount of information as to how different kinds of media affect individuals’ perceptions of identity and (in the context of politics) thereby their political stances and participation.

As a student who is committed to understanding more about the world around me, the experience I have curated as a result of completing this certificate has been one of constant learning and reflection, which is a mindset that I am sincerely grateful to have been able to achieve and maintain. Having grown up alongside the Internet and social media’s own development, I had always been aware of their influence on society, but the courses I chose revealed new and fascinating - even at times concerning - aspects of the various forms of media. As the media is increasingly being exploited as a political tool, the theories and real-life implications of the use of AI in disinformation was one such eye-opening lesson, delivered by Northwestern’s subject expert Professor Marc Jones, with startling anecdotes from his own research and experience. One of the core strategies that I have put in place as a result (and am in the process of fine-tuning) is remaining extremely cautious of what I see in the media, even more so when it comes to social media, because widespread Internet access means anyone can post anything, for better or for worse. 

On the whole, the Certificate in Media and Politics has proven to be an invaluable experience that has enhanced my knowledge and finely complemented my major in International Politics, in addition to having equipped me with the right skills, tools, and networks to pursue my own interests in this ever-evolving field.