Researcher: Chaitanya R K

Paper Title: Decoding “The myth of being happy and happening invariably”- A social media
construct

Designation: Assistant Professor of English, St. Francis College for Women, Hyderabad.

Decoding “The myth of being happy and happening invariably”- A social media construct

Abstract:

With the advance of innovation and technology, humankind has witnessed surplus modes of
socializing and networking. Social media has enabled itself to be the largest means of
communication to share information, ideas, content and glimpses of personal lives. Apps and
interfaces such as Instagram and Facebook have emerged as an integral part of social activity
that influence and shape the attitudes and ideologies of people across ages.

In this regard my paper attempts to analyze social media as a ‘social stage’ and its engagement as
a ‘highly performative act’ that an individual appropriates- to project an impression on to the
perpetually prying audience. Subsequently the individual contrives and presents an ‘idealized
impression’ of being ‘happy’, a corollary associated with success and ‘happening’; an eventful
life as opposed to mundane, routinal, repetitive life. Photographs in this context effectuate as
multimodal texts that narrativize the experience and performance of being happy and happening
invariably.

My research purports to decode these ‘myths’ that signify and construe identities of individuals
in the virtual society as individuals struggle to sustain their ‘performances’.

The research assumes significance as it analyses the role of social media and the intensified
stress that the individual endures in creating an arcadian impression of oneself and one’s life that
seem to corrode one’s mental statis leading to various mental problems. The paper seeks to
address these as significant factors influencing people as the world gears towards increased
awareness and treatment of mental health disorders.

The paper also discusses the dynamics of accessibility, class and culture in the mobilization of
these impressions on to the social media and subsequently to the populace.