Phungawari goes Digital: Emergent Online Materialities and Shifting Paradigms of Meitei Folklore

This project examines emerging online materialities of Phungawari (a form of traditional oral tales of the indigenous Meitei community of Manipur) as user generated content (UGC) which embodies the convergence of Meitei folklore with digital technologies. These digitized phungawari signal a sub-cultural phenomenon of indigenous identity expressions. This inventive, re-embodiment and adaptation of phungawari on online spaces (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook) by indigenous players range from animation, digital comics, visual illustrations etc. This sub-cultural phenomenon led by phungawari based UGC renders a form of digital cultural archive and a new mode of digital storytelling of these traditional oral narratives.