scholarly journals Coping with change in India’s media: Struggles of English-language journalists in an evolving mediascape

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-278
Author(s):  
Levi Obijiofor ◽  
Shailendra B. Singh

In recent times, journalism, worldwide, has been undergoing significant changes. Some of the major revolutions have occurred in India, the world’s largest democracy. The size and face of Indian news media have seen rapid transformations owing to major economic, technological, and political developments in the country in recent decades. The focus of this research is on how India’s English-language media are dealing with the various changes, including digital disruptions and other pressures under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Hindutva’ government. The insights are drawn from the experiences and perceptions of a sample of journalists at the forefront of covering major events. Being in the coalface, these journalists are bearing the brunt of the developments, both good and bad. The email interviews reveal that while the English-language media may be a small part of India’s vast national media landscape, they are also buffeted by some major developments in the country, and fighting to maintain their independence in the face of some powerful trends and influences in technology, politics, and commerce.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Saúl Hernández Pérez

The use and management of scientific sources of information, made by the Mexican media, regarding SARS-CoV-2 is analyzed. It is investigated whether four national media, two news and two opinion, resort to verified scientific sources to inform or comment on the specialized issues about the virus. An exploratory study was carried out on the number of scientific publications made on the virus in scientific databases and in three preprint repositories. Subsequently, a content analysis of four Mexican media was conducted to identify the sources and use of specialized information regarding SARS-CoV-2. Frequently, the news media rely on agency content, although in its original content there is a use-learning curve that allows forecasting best practices The opinion media delve into reflection, but its editorial line is dominant in the face of the scientific approach to the current issue.


Author(s):  
Simon Paul Paget ◽  
Lani Campbell ◽  
Anneliese Blaxland ◽  
Jennifer Lewis ◽  
Angela Mary Morrow ◽  
...  

Daedalus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Kelly Garrett ◽  
Paul Resnick

Must the Internet promote political fragmentation? Although this is a possible outcome of personalized online news, we argue that other futures are possible and that thoughtful design could promote more socially desirable behavior. Research has shown that individuals crave opinion reinforcement more than they avoid exposure to diverse viewpoints and that, in many situations, hearing the other side is desirable. We suggest that, equipped with this knowledge, software designers ought to create tools that encourage and facilitate consumption of diverse news streams, making users, and society, better off. We propose several techniques to help achieve this goal. One approach focuses on making useful or intriguing opinion-challenges more accessible. The other centers on nudging people toward diversity by creating environments that accentuate its benefits. Advancing research in this area is critical in the face of increasingly partisan news media, and we believe these strategies can help.


2014 ◽  
Vol 652 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-221
Author(s):  
Anton Harber

Two decades of contestation over the nature and extent of transformation in the South African news media have left a sector different in substantive ways from the apartheid inheritance but still patchy in its capacity to fill the democratic ideal. Change came fast to a newly open broadcasting sector, but has faltered in recent years, particularly in a public broadcaster troubled by political interference and poor management. The potential of online media to provide much greater media access has been hindered by the cost of bandwidth. Community media has grown but struggled to survive financially. Print media has been aggressive in investigative exposé, but financial cutbacks have damaged routine daily coverage. In the face of this, the government has turned its attention to the print sector, demanding greater—but vaguely defined—transformation and threatened legislation. This has met strong resistance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yating Yu ◽  
Mark Nartey

Although the Chinese media’s construction of unmarried citizens as ‘leftover’ has incited much controversy, little research attention has been given to the ways ‘leftover men’ are represented in discourse. To fill this gap, this study performs a critical discourse analysis of 65 English language news reports in Chinese media to investigate the predominant gendered discourses underlying representations of leftover men and the discursive strategies used to construct their identities. The findings show that the media perpetuate a myth of ‘protest masculinity’ by suggesting that poor, single men may become a threat to social harmony due to the shortage of marriageable women in China. Leftover men are represented as poor men, troublemakers and victims via discursive processes that include referential, predicational and aggregation strategies as well as metaphor. This study sheds light on the issues and concerns of a marginalised group whose predicament has not been given much attention in the literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tae-Sik Kim

This study aimed to demonstrate how South Korean news media routinized and sensationalized the face mask amid two recent public health crises: the fine-dust crisis and the COVID-19 epidemic. News media appropriated the mythologized meaning of the face mask as a symbol of individual safety during the two crises. This study analyses news articles to answer three questions: (1) How was wearing the face mask mythologized as a routinized practice in days of uncertain risk? (2) How was the face mask politicized as a mythologized sign indicating China as an external threat? and (3) How was the face mask politicized as a symbolic code of the government’s responsibility for the crisis? Once signified as the primary means of individual protection in the context of Korean risk society, the face mask became politicized amid the shortage of the face mask. Placed in the context of the recent disastrous crises in Korea, China was identified as the culprit not only in the epidemic but also in the shortage of the face mask. The meaning of China as an external threat was continuously strengthened when the South Korean government opted out of the entry ban on Chinese citizens. The last analytic part presents how news media politicized the epidemic by associating the face mask crisis with the Korean government.


Race & Class ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suvendrini Perera

In the week before the attacks in the US 'changed the worldforever', a Norwegian container ship, the MV Tampa, rescued almost four hundred asylum seekers from asinking boat off the Indonesian archipelago. The captain sailed towards Australia, but was refused permission to land by a government declaring that this nation would 'not be held hostage by our own decency'. In the face of UN and international disapproval, the Tampa was boarded by armed troops and forcibly moved out of Australian waters. During the following week, capitalising on widespread general hostility towards Afghanistan and Islam in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Australian parliament rushed through legislation implementing unprecedented measures to keep out asylum seekers. The Australian government's actions chillingly foreshadowed a wider western reaction. In May 2002, Britain's prime minister Blair proposed a series of initiatives strikingly similar to those adopted by Australia, including the use of the Royal Navy to intercept and turn back asylum seekers and the internment of refugees off-shore on large ships leased by the government. The story of the Tampa, then, is part of an unfolding global story.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-70
Author(s):  
Rosamma Thomas

This paper is an historical auto-ethnographic account by a middle aged journalist who has worked in the English language media in India for about 20 years. English language media staff is among the best paid in the country. Even so, work conditions are far from ideal, and the pandemic this year has rendered several journalists jobless. This is a personal account of one career trajectory that spans book publishing, work on national radio, newspapers and a news agency. Growth prospects are curtailed for women in the news media; one boss at the Times of India¸ India’s largest English daily, told the author that her “body language” betrayed a lack of interest in work.  


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