Papers by Sushmita Pandit, PhD
Journalism Practice; VOL: 12, ISSUE:2, 2017
On 29 September 2016, the Indian army conducted a surgical strike along the India–Pakistan border... more On 29 September 2016, the Indian army conducted a surgical strike along the India–Pakistan border. The mainstream news media in India followed the event with assertive nationalistic rhetoric. What was supposed to be a covert military operation against terrorism became morphed into political rhetoric aggravated by the unwarranted jingoism of television news channels and social media. The coverage of the strike on television news is typically characterized by a confluence of militant nationalist discourses, and the ideologically imbued labelling of specific communities. Within this context, drawing from the close reading of the coverage, this article analyses how Indian television news sustains the construction of a fictive “we”, conflated with the government policies and military strategies, and speaks for a supposedly homogeneous national consensus that also consciously obscures the dissent through minority voices. The article emphasizes the relationship between communities, formal politics, and the supposedly non-political spaces and practices of news media in India.
Media Asia; VOL.:45, ISSUE:2, 2019
While studies on alternative media and community radio stations have primarily focused on the med... more While studies on alternative media and community radio stations have primarily focused on the media content and production techniques, scant attention has been paid to audience participation, a crucial aspect of community radio. This paper is based on ethnographic interview with the listeners and program producers of RadioJU, the community radio station of Jadavpur University, which was the first community radio station of West Bengal. The radius around RadioJU covers two districts of the state that includes urban areas as well as suburban regions, including a large refugee colony. The paper focuses on the three dimensions of alternativeness: the relationship with social context, nature of the content, and organizational structure. The objective of this study is to explore in what manner community radio continues to be relevant in contrast to the mainstream media and in what way audience participation positions community radio within the alternative– mainstream debate. The paper also points to the challenges and the limitations of audience participation in community radio, and suggests that the notion of supplementary media can be an important move towards opening up the category of the alternative media in an increasingly commercialized broadcast environment.
tripleC; Vol: 19 Issue: 1, 2021
The aim of this paper is to understand the emerging practices of work from home drawing from the ... more The aim of this paper is to understand the emerging practices of work from home drawing from the works of Friedrich Engels. Situating the rising debate on work from home, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this article revisits some of the texts by Friedrich Engels to understand the issues of distribution, freedom, necessity and work. The idea of work from home becomes especially critical in the context of a developing country like India, with its limited access to digital infrastructure, inadequate work-space at home, and precarious work conditions. However, the digital network and devices play a pivotal role under these conditions and often offer a promise of "new freedom" and flexibility. It is not just the middle-class professionals, but several other dimensions of work and labour are implicated within the idea of work from home under sudden economic and social disruption. The new organisation of production, assisted by capitalism, forges new relations of production, and new predicaments and Engels's thoughts on freedom, work and the condition of the working class become increasingly relevant to understand these shifts, particularly in neoliberal, developing country like India under nationwide lockdown.
Journal of Digital Media & Policy, VOL: 10, ISSUE:2, 2019
The introduction of the mandatory Digital Addressable System (DAS) with strict, phase-wise deadli... more The introduction of the mandatory Digital Addressable System (DAS) with strict, phase-wise deadlines for different provinces within India has compelled us to reconsider not only the television apparatus itself but also broadcast policies, television industry, content and reception. The introduction of DAS can be posited within a series of similar public policies starting from the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) project in 1975 to the more recent Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or Aadhaar project and Digital India campaign, all folded into the developmental rhetoric of the welfare state. The rollout of DAS provides the site to explore the relationship between the government, neo-liberal market and digital technologies that underscores the contradictions which are constitutive of modernity, and invests in the study of the neo-liberal cultural sites of statist intervention. Within this conceptual framework, this article would focus on West Bengal as a case in point to read the implementation of mandatory DAS both as a site of hegemonic projects embodying promises of neo-liberal development
Global Media Journal, 2011
In this article I seek to discuss the changing nature of media in India and attempt to outline th... more In this article I seek to discuss the changing nature of media in India and attempt to outline the ways emerging communication technology reshape the public sphere, particularly in this present period of rapid globalization, when the instant interconnections of the world has ensured that the existing nation-states find itself ever more constrained and contested by transnational forces which frequently compel it to be subservient to international treaties, multinational corporations and global media institutions. However, in this essay, I primarily discuss the emerging social media in India, which hold the promise to create an alternative, perhaps more democratic, public sphere. In this essay, I revisit Luis Althusser's theorizations on state apparatuses to make sense of the complex relationship among social media, democracy and the nation-state amidst the neo-liberal public sphere and in the process, I wish to suggest the notion of Ideological Network Apparatus to identify the position of social media "networks" within the category of emerging non-state elements.
Global Media Journal, 2011
In this article I seek to discuss the changing nature of media in India and attempt to outline th... more In this article I seek to discuss the changing nature of media in India and attempt to outline the ways emerging communication technology reshape the public sphere, particularly in this present period of rapid globalization, when the instant interconnections of the world has ensured that the existing nation-states find itself ever more constrained and contested by transnational forces which frequently compel it to be subservient to international treaties, multinational corporations and global media institutions. However, in this essay, I primarily discuss the emerging social media in India, which hold the promise to create an alternative, perhaps more democratic, public sphere. In this essay, I revisit Luis Althusser's theorizations on state apparatuses to make sense of the complex relationship among social media, democracy and the nation-state amidst the neo-liberal public sphere and in the process, I wish to suggest the notion of Ideological Network Apparatus to identify the position of social media "networks" within the category of emerging non-state elements.
Books by Sushmita Pandit, PhD
Information Nightmare: Fake News, Manipulation and Post-Truth Politics in the Digital Age, 2020
Fake news has become a significant issue in the Indian context. A number of violent incidents hav... more Fake news has become a significant issue in the Indian context. A number of violent incidents have taken place recently, which are directly or indirectly related to the distribution and circulation of fake news in India. In India, WhatsApp and Facebook have been struggling to curb the impact of fake news, messages, photos and videos peddling misleading or outright false information. While a number of measures are being taken to curb the proliferation of fake news in India, including limiting the number of forwarded messages on Whatsapp, publishing advertisements in print and television media, training the journalists through workshops, fake news still continues to be a pressing concern for various stakeholders. Under this backdrop, this chapter seeks to understand how suburban college students negotiate with fake news. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with suburban college students, the chapter would question in what way the young consumers of news and information identify and manage the manifestation of fake news. The demography is significant, since most of the studies usually focus on the urban context. The objective is to explore the nuanced and multidimensional relationship between truth, media, and socioeconomic background.
Rethinking Media and Socio-Cultural Change: India and the Globe in Times of Pandemic, 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected almost every aspect of daily life and nearly every industry ha... more The Covid-19 pandemic has affected almost every aspect of daily life and nearly every industry has witnessed decreased spending. Advertising, particularly in traditional media formats has been severely affected. However, the sweeping and sudden transformation of everyday life has also influenced the content, strategies, and approach of advertisements published during the pandemic crisis. This chapter engages with the advertisements published in daily newspapers in India during the pandemic and nationwide lockdown. The aim is to understand, in what degree and manner newspaper advertising is influenced by the crisis and how is it reflected in the advertisements published during this period. Using a qualitative textual analysis approach, this chapter studies the display-advertisements published in the two highest circulated English language dailies in India, The Times of India and The Hindu. Considering the context of the pandemic induced health anxieties, nationwide lockdown, disruption of public life, precariousness, and long-drawn economic threat, the symbolic attributes of advertisements of different products and services, that are used to express meaning, are studied within specific ideological frames that supplement them. This article posits the analysis of the advertisements within the discourse of large-scale reduction in discretionary spending, fundamental shifts in consumer buying behavior and media consumption, and a continuous shift towards advertising in digital platforms, which point to particular characteristics and trends reflected in the published advertisements.
Transnationalization of Turkish Television Series, 2021
Turkish television series have become increasingly popular in India, particularly since the telec... more Turkish television series have become increasingly popular in India, particularly since the telecast of the dubbed version of Adını Feriha Koydum in 2015. While India has a strong market of regional language TV series or serials, as they are known locally, international shows, except for syndicated television content from the United States, have hardly been popular in traditional television broadcasting. However, the rising popularity of Turkish television series and their circulation through digital media in India have opened up a rich site for exploring changing practices of audience engagement with transnational television content. This paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork among audiences of Turkish television series in India. Presently, there are hardly any Turkish series available on Indian cable television channels, barring a few on video on demand (VoD) platforms. However, social media platforms, such as Facebook, video-sharing sites, like YouTube, and file-sharing torrent sites, have continued the circulation of Turkish television series in India. These alternative modes of distribution compel us to rethink the notions of technology, medium, and emerging viewing practices and underline the parallel, often illegitimate circuits of distribution and access to international television content. Hence, this paper broadly addresses how Turkish TV series become an emblematic instance of understanding transnational media flow through alternative digital channels in a neoliberal, developing country like India.
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Papers by Sushmita Pandit, PhD
Books by Sushmita Pandit, PhD