Dissenting Counter-Publics in Pakistani Social Media and Café Culture

This book analyses the ways in which anti-state/counter publics have emerged across mediated and physical spaces to respond to the state-led narrative on Pakistani identity. It aims to locate the rise of the counter public spheres/anti-establishment discourses across different spaces: Twitter, YouTube, and local coffee houses. These spaces (on their own and together) enable unprecedented affordances that push the boundaries of traditionally immutable subjects, such as the use of blasphemy as a political tool, nationalism, and national identity in Muslim contexts. As such, these counter public spheres have allowed spaces for episodic deliberation on national identity and religion, and how both shape the individual and collective identity of the Pakistani nation.