In the Name of Love: Construction of Romance and Gender on Bookstagram

The knowledge of romance books has slipped through their initial recognition as tales of true love, to now taking shape of full-fledged online communities, stacked with accounts of micro-tropes, character arcs and more than a few attempts made to re-enact the plots of one's favourite books. This space on Instagram popularly known as Bookstagram is a hub of all such content and more, sparking spirited discussions about who is the best male main character of all times, and what trope they cannot digest. This research, situating itself in this buzzing dynamic, sought to examine how romance, romantic relationships, and gender roles are constructed and communicated within the Instagram-based book community. The central research question of this study is - How do Instagram based book communities construct and communicate discourses on romance? Through purposive sampling, a hundred and fifty reels from Instagram were collected. These reels were then analysed through thematic analysis, while using critical discourse analysis as its analytical framework. The method allowed the researcher to question the implicit meaning behind the data collected and ask questions about how different concepts were being framed, and contested in this community. The findings lead to three key themes: The Discursive Construction of Love, the Representation of Romantic Relationships, and Gendered Discourses within Romance. The findings revealed that the content on Bookstagram is highly curated into stylized plots, tropes, and dramatic aesthetics, all employed to make the narrative consumable. The notions around love reflected a pattern of it being equated to emotional intensity. Relationship dynamics were put forward in a highly performative manner, often using techniques of sensationalisation. On the subject of gender, themes of male obsession, assertiveness and control emerged while the female characters were discussed in a more passive light. By situating the online book reading community as a digital discursive space, this thesis highlights how platform-specific content, reels, captions, and trends, both reflect and reproduce dominant ideologies about love and gender. Drawing its theoretical foundation from Representation Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis and Feminist Media Theories, this research argues that Bookstagram is a cultural engine, producing, packaging, and propagating gendered narratives under the guise of literary fandoms.