Portrayal of Women in Indian Crime Web Series: A Narrative Analysis and Survey

Abstract

Portrayal of women in the webseries differs according to the genera like, crime, comedy, thriller, drama etc. A new order of communication started after covid-19 lockdown where online viewership has increased tremendously on OTT platform especially when it comes to crime webseries in India. India is male dominated society and many issues related to women like, empowerment, education, suppression, harassment etc are still a matter of high concern. These Crime series are high on content like abusive language, explicit sex content, violence etc. and research finding shows that these series are liked to watch more by men in comparison to women. When it comes to the content as these webseries unlike films doesn’t have any censor board to control the content and this freedom is seen in the creation and presentation of these series. Aim of the following study is to do a narrative analysis to understand the cultural influence and to have a deeper understanding about the way the women is portrayed in these crime webseries of India. Media have always stereotyped women and created an ideal image of women through its content. The study does an analysis how the women characters are portrayed and whether any ideal women image is portrayed.  The study also collected opinion about portal of women in these series where (N=323) and interesting findings were presented both in qualitative and quantitative form.