Indian News Media Research Articles

INFLUENCE OF POLITICAL POWER ON INDIAN NEWS CHANNELS COVERAGE: A STUDY OF HATHRAS CASE 2020

This study investigates how political power influences the coverage of the Hathras 2020 case in Indian news media. They use a qualitative content analysis to investigate how political interests influence the framing, emphasis, and tone of cases in media reports. The study focuses on agenda-setting through political goals, prejudices, and sensationalism, all of which are linked to media integrity in India. A thorough examination of the coverage of the Hathras-Fall demonstrates the need of maintaining journalistic independence and transparency in the face of political interference. Keywords: Political hegemony, Media representation, Hathras tragedy, Broadcast journalism, Dalit women victimization, Societal impact

Representation of child abuse in Indian news media: confronting the ethical interface

Representation of child abuse in Indian news media: confronting the ethical interface

Paradoxical inclusion of India’s ex-untouchables in New Casteist media

Media as a site of reproduction of existing social relations and inequality is a significant area of research. This article explores how mainstream print media contributes to an area of entrenched inequality in India: caste-based inequalities and dominant-subordinate power relations. It explicitly examines how Dalit communities, who for centuries were forced to abide by casteist notions of hierarchy, are framed by Indian news media. A comparative approach using content and framing analysis have been undertaken to analyse the news media reports on Dalit discrimination published in the leading English (Times of India) and Hindi newspaper (Amar Ujala) from 2011 to 2014. Conceptualising the data along the lines of framing theory in a transitioning society, this study explores a new-casteist approach to reporting Dalits. The news media reports the Dalit grievances but ignores the complexities of ethnocultural minorities in a transitioning democratic society and involves Dalit passive-fixation and/or demonisation.

Propaganda Warfare: Indian Disinformation Campaign against Pakistan

Access to sources of information has allowed states to use media as a tool of propaganda warfare. It can be observed that within the South Asian theatre, India and Pakistan are involved in propaganda warfare, spreading disinformation campaigns with the aim to disrepute the other's international image. To understand the techniques of propaganda warfare, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model provides a befitting conceptual cushion to study propaganda warfare techniques using news media to propagate disinformation. This paper tends to focus on how New Delhi exercises control over news media to portray Pakistan as a failed state, a safe haven for terrorist organizations, installing anti-army information, building war hysteria in South Asia, and targeting Pakistan's stance on Kashmir and Balochistan. The paper argues that Indian news media has become a tool in the hands of the Indian political elite in generating false propaganda against Pakistan.

Framing China’s Belt and Road Initiative by U.S. and Indian news media (2013–2018)

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is regarded as China’s new silk road, has attracted worldwide attention since it was proposed by China’s President Xi Jinping in 2013. News framing of the BRI in the United States and India plays a significant role in shaping people’ s understanding and attitudes toward China. The economic aspect of the project was the most frequently used frame. The overall negative tone indicated that the two largest democracies focused more attention on the potential threat and negative impacts of the BRI as Sino–U.S. relations deteriorated and the conflict between China and India increased.

Celebrity drug use reporting in Indian media and its impact on drug-related online search behavior: An infodemiology study.

Aim:We aimed to examine and interpret the changes in internet search volumes for keywords representing different drug use-related themes before and after the drug use started being discussed in the Indian news media during recent celebrity drug trials.Materials and Methods:Data were extracted using Google Trends framework in health-related research. Search keywords were prepared under four broad themes: General interest in cannabis use, drug use being a criminal/unlawful act, help seeking for cannabis use, and help-seeking for drug-related problems. The mean relative search volume was analyzed and compared pre- and post-media discussion about celebrity drug use using SPSS V23.0.Results:A significant increase was noted in online search interest for keywords related to themes of general interest in cannabis use and drug use being a criminal/unlawful act once the media discussion on the celebrity drug use started. However, no corresponding increase was noted in online search interest for themes of help seeking for drug-related problems in general and cannabis use in particular.Conclusion:Media discussions on celebrity drug use may impact the online search behavior of the general public adversely. There is an need to develop and adhere to drug use reporting guidelines by media professionals.

Media Polarization and Assertion of Majoritarianism in Indian News Media

Media Polarization and Assertion of Majoritarianism in Indian News Media

The Struggle for Climate Justice: Three Indian News Media Coverage of Climate Change

ABSTRACTClimate justice involves two crucial matters, namely, ensuring that rich nations take responsibility for their past emissions and supporting developing nations’ efforts to protect vulnerable people from climate disasters. Although there is a growing interest in climate justice from a global standpoint, this concept has yet to receive due critical attention from a local perspective. This study focuses on the local perspective and examines how climate justice was represented in three Indian newspapers during COP21 (Paris, 2015) and COP22 (Marrakech, 2016). It utilizes the selected Indian news media content and reveals that the newspapers have emphasized on the harm avoidance justice during the international climate conferences when an emphasis on the burden sharing dimension was instead expected. The publications strongly criticize rich countries for the emissions but less vigorously criticize the local authorities who are responsible for containing pollution and emissions. This finding along with the emphasis on the harm avoidance signifies the growing importance of local environmental issues in global deliberations.

Farming on Facebook, Camera-less Food Photography and a New Indian Pastoral

Lacunae in media images and reports of death and agrarian based suffering, experienced by India's debt prone farmers, have only begun to be addressed in the Indian news media. While the agrarian crisis is spectacularized through 24 hour news cycle images, analysis of underlying causes is less common in print and digital media. Kheti Badi, a photo-series produced from screenshots of FarmVille (an Adobe Flash gaming application on Facebook), interrogates this media impasse. It critiques homogenized images of food and farming, which rise to the top of web search results, and photojournalistic images showing the dignified suffering of Indian agricultural workers. Kheti Badi's computer made images are an alternative to visual stereotyping of rural India in photojournalism. Its technological inventiveness neither spectacularizes farmer protests or suicides nor aestheticizes pastoral qualities associated with the land. To make visible the changing nature of food production and need to reform farming in India, and its media coverage, Kheti Badi supplants the Indian pastoral with a new pictorial.

News media, movies, and anti-Muslim prejudice: investigating the role of social contact

ABSTRACTThis study examines the relationship between Indian non-Muslim adolescents’ Western and Indian news media use, exposure to Hollywood and Bollywood movies, and their prejudice against Muslim minorities. Based on contact hypothesis, the moderating roles of out-group contact were tested within this framework. Multivariate analyses revealed that Western news media use and exposure to Hollywood movies were significant predictors of anti-Muslim prejudice, while frequent, enriched contact with Muslims reduced out-group prejudice. The relationship between Indian news media use and prejudice was statistically insignificant. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

News Media and Corporate Representation of CSR in India

ABSTRACTApplying stakeholder theory in an international context, this study examined how Indian news media and corporations communicatively define corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the relationship between their narratives. Content analysis of 242 news articles and 200 corporate websites shows that although there are signs of a progressive CSR attitude, the news media and corporate discourse are still ignoring current issues and challenges relevant to Indian society. However, there were also indicators of tensions between moral and strategic intent, as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that previous studies have argued should define CSR in the Indian context. Implications for international CSR research and practice in the context of sociocultural and media environment are discussed.

Framing Disability in the Indian News Media: A Political Economy Analysis of Representation

This article argues that the amount and nature of disability representation in English and Telugu news media directly and indirectly serves neo-liberal objectives. Disability construction in the Indian print news media may be construed as a product of the political economy of representation. News articles present disabled people as having ‘use value’ in society, ready to be offered for ‘exchange value’ in the market. These insights are derived from a close reading of news articles using framing analysis, which allowed us to explore the underlying political economy of disability coverage in mainstream news. This article situates the symbiotic economic relations established through the media’s consciously placed disability representation within the existing discourses related to disability. It also attempts to reevaluate the available themes on disability and media representation with a view to uncovering the implied meanings of political economy recurrent in print news in India.

Book Review: Usha M. Rodrigues and Maya Ranganathan. 2015. Indian News Media: From Observer to Participant

Book Review: Usha M. Rodrigues and Maya Ranganathan. 2015. Indian News Media: From Observer to Participant

Indian news media: From observer to participant

Indian news media: From observer to participant

Polarizing Indian political Discourse and Rising role of New Media: A study on Web Sites Content of Indian News Media

Internet based New Media have been changing paradigms of News-Media and News-concept itself in the recent past. Now, with the combination of streaming video and faster 3G internet connections in India, the internet based New Media has become the fastest way to find news stories. The internet based New Media appears to differ from other mass media from the point of degree of niche targeting of political information-oriented Web-sites. India has been witnessing the increasing role of Internet media over a decade into political awareness among masses. During elections (Pre & Post) period, all major parties utilize the new media in campaigns and publicity as they use blog sites, emails and a lot of news writings through public relations firms streamed via internet based websites of all major print and electronic media. A small political update gets streamed instantly on web pages of newspapers and television channels and public get to know it within seconds. Our this research study focuses upon the increasing role of new media into political dialogues or political communication between political leaders and public who use the new media or masses. Indian media has witnessed a sea-change in media scenario since 2000 year. Be it newspaper, magazine or television news channels or radio channels, every news media now have their own news websites on internet or live video streaming or live channels on internet or e-papers or websites i.e. dot.com and audience members now find it easy to watch or read those newspapers or magazines or television channels on internet and their laptop or computer systems because all media form is now being converged at one point- technology i.e. internet. So, in the period of convergent media, political groups, parties or political communities have to be one step ahead to connect public or voters.

Publics, issues, and nanotechnology in Indian news media

This article explores the relation between nanotechnology and the public in India. Nanotechnology is expected to have far-reaching consequences for developing countries and India has been particularly active in supporting the technology. This article contributes to the emerging literature on nanotechnology and the public by using a concept of the public that diverges from conventional accounts. Rather than assuming the public view coincides with the average opinion of the population of a certain territory, this article uses a concept of the public that was developed by the pragmatist philosopher, John Dewey, who defines the public in relation to the issue at hand. As an experiment, this article empirically studies the views of issue-based publics by analyzing the nanotechnology coverage of the Times of India. A total of 273 articles were identified between 2000 until 2010. The findings suggest that the main issue is the concern of missing out on the benefits of nanotechnology, in particular for various social groups in India and for the country itself. The view of the issue-based public is that more care is required for the positive consequences of nanotechnology to land in India.

Re-Legitimizing the Institution of Journalism

In late 2010, a series of tapes containing damaging conversations between 30 Indian journalists and Niira Radia, leading lobbyist for major business interests, became public. The tapes revealed journalists across the entire Indian news industry violating fundamental professional norms and offering the lobbyist's clients scripted interviews, giving advice on how to place stories in media outlets, talking about writing columns relying on positions articulated by Radia, and even apparently conveying messages on behalf of political interests close to the lobbyist. This paper explores how Indian news media responded to these revelations that posed a threat to the institution of journalism due to the pervasiveness of normative breaches. We propose that the Indian news media's response can be understood as an attempt to repair the institutional myth of the profession broadly defined as the way in which the public views journalism and its norms, using strategies associated with image restoration.

Watchdog journalism: India's three largest English-language newspapers and the Right to Information Act

India's Right to Information Act (RTIA) has been described as one of the strongest laws in the world for access to public information. The preamble spells out its promise to expose government corruption. Given that the Indian news media is the largest in the world and has a storied history of unearthing public corruption, this exploratory study employed the normative theory of the monitorial role of the news media to examine the extent that the RTIA was used to uncover government corruption. This content analysis examined a census of 221 articles published in India's three largest English-language newspapers in the period after the RTIA was adopted in October 2005 and then five years later. Slightly more than 80% of the articles referencing corruption fell into four thematic categories: progress on implementing the law, public education about the legislation, the watchdog role of activists and other non-journalists, and a brief mention of the RTIA. During this period the English-language dailies reported their own use of the RTIA to expose corruption in 2% of the articles.

Comparative Perspectives on Islamic Identity and Issues of Education in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001Confronting Islamophobia in Educational Practice edited by Barry van Driel. Stoke‐on‐Trent, UK: Trentham, 2004. xiii+209 pp. $27.50 (paper). ISBN 1‐85856‐340‐2.Islam and English in the Post‐9/11 Era edited by Sohail Karmani and Sinfree Makoni. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005. 95 pp. $30.00 (paper). ISBN 0‐8058‐9483‐7 (originally

Comparative Perspectives on Islamic Identity and Issues of Education in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001<i>Confronting Islamophobia in Educational Practice</i> edited by Barry van Driel. Stoke‐on‐Trent, UK: Trentham, 2004. xiii+209 pp. $27.50 (paper). ISBN 1‐85856‐340‐2.<i>Islam and English in the Post‐9/11 Era</i> edited by Sohail Karmani and Sinfree Makoni. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005. 95 pp. $30.00 (paper). ISBN 0‐8058‐9483‐7 (originally

“The Largest Gathering of the Global Indian Family”: Neoliberalism, Nationalism, and Diaspora at Pravasi Bharatiya Divas

On 9 January 2003, more than 2,000 people from around the world arrived in New Delhi to participate in an event that was touted as the “largest gathering of the global Indian family.” Banners prominently displaying the Indian tricolor lined the roads leading to the convention site, superimposed with the slogan “Welcome Back, Welcome Home.” Surrounded by intense media attention, India’s prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, inaugurated Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, proclaiming that this event commemorated the “Day of Indians Abroad.” Over the next three days, in the midst of the coldest winter Delhi had experienced in years, the Indian government and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) spent twenty-two crore rupees (US$49 million) on lectures, seminars, trade exhibition booths, lavish amounts of food and drink, and spectacular stage shows featuring Bollywood actors. Advertised widely on the Web and in the Indian news media, Pravasi Bharatiya Divas was the first government-sponsored event that brought together Indians in India with representatives of the nearly 20 million Indians who live overseas.