Examining the South Asian Diaspora through Online Humor

Abstract

The goal of this project is to study online South Asian diasporic spaces. I gathered data from Subtle Curry Traits (SCT), a Facebook group for jokes aimed toward South Asians. I created a dataset containing hundreds of popular posts by scraping the SCT Facebook page for all the top posts on one day in March 2023. The final dataset contains 360 posts representing 251 unique users and includes post images, captions, reactions, and comments. Additionally, I analyzed post content and group interactions through word token frequencies and topic modeling to determine popular topics within the group. All the results of this dataset are also contextualized historically with discussions around caste, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression operating within South Asian communities.