Preferences and Consumption of WhatsApp and Instagram by Women in Punjab State: A Study Based on Secondary Data

The spread of social media at an alarming rate has essentially changed the daily communication, cultural expression, and information accessibility in India. But female presence in the digital world is not even and it is very much influenced by the gendered societal systems. This paper is a critical analysis of the preferences and consumption behaviour of two of the most influential social media networks WhatsApp and Instagram among women in the Indian state of Punjab. The study is based on secondary data on the use of such platforms by women as a means of interpersonal communication, self-expression, information-seeking, and limited livelihood-related actions and concurrently, managing structural constraints through unequal access to digital technologies, limited digital literacy, online harassment, and social surveillance. The paper is based on the conceptualizations of WhatsApp as a comparatively segregated, domesticated and socially approved digital space within the framework of kinship and community networks, and Instagram as a public, visual and algorithmically governed environment marked by increased visibility and gender critique. It is argued in the analysis that although these platforms also provide conditional opportunities to agency, they mostly recreate offline hierarchies of power, respectability, and control. Placing the social media practices of women in the socio-cultural context of Punjab, the research paper has made contributions to feminist digital media studies as well as the need to introduce gender-sensitive digital inclusion policies and empirical studies that are geographically based to promote meaningful digital citizenship among women.