Global university rankings as ‘sticky’ objects and ‘refrains’: affect and mediatisation in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT Global university rankings (GURs) have garnered increasing media attention since their inception. Yet to date, a concerted attempt to offer an affect lens – emotions, responses, reactions and feelings that are relational and transpersonal – underlying the mediatisation of GURs remains absent. Drawing on affect theories, we analysed the Indian national media's coverage of Times Higher Education rankings and Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd. rankings (between 2018–2019). Amid a globalised media ecology, we illuminate how affect plays a pivotal role in how the mediatisation process infuses ranking logic into a national context that is at the periphery of GUR outcomes. We argue that national media uses affect to confer and open up GURs for localised meaning making, allowing GURs to persevere despite their questionable legitimacy in a Global South context, thus globalising higher education policy. We suggest that affect is essential in the expansion of GURs through mediatisation in national policy arenas.