Indian News Media: From Observer to Participant

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SAGE Publications, Nov 26, 2014 - Business & Economics - 256 pages

This book makes a new and significant argument that Indian news media are no longer just observers but active participants in the events that direct the nation. It explores the changing role and performance of Indian news media in the past 25 years by examining their coverage of some of the landmark events and issues within the context of the India’s ‘globalising’ polity, increased privatisation, new communication technologies and the rise of individualism.

The challenges of globalisation have resulted in significant changes in news processes and procedures, which this volume details by scrutinising the media’s reportage of several events and issues, such as anti-graft movement, paid news, sting journalism, 24-hour news and coverage of terrorism and politics–media nexus. The theoretical exploration of the changes in the Indian media landscape draws from academic disciplines of media studies, journalism, cultural studies, political science and sociology.

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About the author (2014)

Usha M. Rodrigues is currently teaching journalism across multiple platforms including new participatory media technologies at Deakin University, Melbourne. She received her PhD from the University of Queensland in 2006. Her PhD thesis, entitled The Impact of Private and Foreign Television on News and Audiences: 1991–2001, was a landmark study of the changing nature of Indian television industry since 1991 when the Indian government embarked on economic liberalisation, ensuing the process of globalisation of the Indian economy in general and the Indian news media in particular. She co-authored Indian Media in a Globalised World (2010) with Dr Maya Ranganathan. She has also co-edited Youth, Media and Culture in the Asia Pacific Region (2008) with Dr Belinda Smaill. Dr Rodrigues has published in scholarly journals such as Media International Australia and Australian Journalism Review. She is a regular contributor to the media watch web site Thehoot.org and has published media commentaries on the Australian ABC and The Age online sites. Her current research interests are Indian news media, new media technologies and their impact on journalism practices and citizen journalism.

Maya Ranganathan currently teaches media and international communication at Macquarie University, Sydney. She was awarded a PhD by Monash University, Victoria, for her work on online nationalism in 2004 and completed a two-year postdoctoral project on Sri Lankan Tamil online nationalism in 2009. She is the author of Eelam Online: The Tamil Diaspora and War in Sri Lanka (2011). Her research spans media in South Asia and currently revolves around Indian media and the ways in which it has adapted to the changes wrought by globalisation. She has published widely in scholarly journals, such as Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Continuum and South Asia, and is a regular contributor to the South Asian media analysis web site Thehoot.org. She has over a decade’s experience as a journalist in the New Indian Express, Chennai, India.

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