Journal Articles

Television news and democratic change in India

---

This article examines the impact of India’s ‘television news revolution’, or the rapid growth of privately owned television news channels, on substantive democracy, or the ability of ordinary citizens to access social, political, and economic power. Existing scholarship has largely relied upon content analysis (or textual interpretation) and reception studies to address this question. In contrast this article examines media practice, drawing upon ethnographic field research on the social and political worlds of television news production in contemporary India. Through a specific focus on the experiences of freelance stringers in the news industry, one main argument is advanced: television news expansion has had a ‘provincializing effect’ of enabling the social, political, and economic empowerment of small-town, non-metropolitan, or provincial actors. This finding nuances and unsettles the common conflation of television news media with the interests of the urban middle-class elite in India. At the same time however, a detailed exploration of the political dynamics and consequences of ‘provincialization’ cautions against its reading as empowerment, subversion, or resistance to extant patterns of power and privilege: practices and structures of exclusion and inequality persist within these newly mobile social worlds.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Media Culture Society

Call Number

-

Publisher

Thousand Oak : sage publisher., 2011

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

01634437

Classification

-

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

Vol. 33 no. 5, July 2011,pp. 761-777

Subject(s)

Journalist
Liberalization
Neoliberalism
Television news and democratic change in India
Aspirations and power
Media and democracy
News production

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment