Following is from Deepak Ranjan Jena
Managing Editor, Media Watch:
Abstracts of May 2015 issue of Media Watch
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DoI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65673
Interfaces in
shaping newsroom and readership: Switching between news making and consumption
in web synced platforms
NITHIN KALORTH
Issue Editor
Amity University,
Rajasthan
“Every new medium
begins as a container for the old” - Marshall McLuhan
The relation
between mass media and digital environment is practiced and studied over the
two decades. The web-synced journalism, not only changed the storytelling, but
also the reception of
the news. The
user could do act upon the news making process and information sharing, which
itself questions the role of the journalist in the digital age. There are
various media interfaces reinvented and restructured which plays a vital role
in journalist work space. The myths behind such computer communication systems
and their output need to be studied which will pave the way for understanding
journalism and mass media from a digital age perspective.
Making it simple, understanding the interface in the mass
media context is a collaborative body of hardware and software which connect to
share information. It will be the combination of various levels of operating
systems, computer languages, applications, software, hardware and other
features. The popularity of social media in the making and reception of the
news enables interface controlled newsrooms. From the traditional use of
microphone to the latest touch and talk applications, interfaces do make a
greater shift in the mass communication. It not only lay platform for the
communication, but also enabling them to perform in its method. The job of a
news reporter or editor becomes very perfunctory that their role is to fit the
space which combined with such interfaces.
On the other hand, interfaces liberate the
journalist from work of words. They could report the stories by incorporating
various digital data tools. The news stories could be presented along with the
dynamic numerical and statistical data. When it comes to collection of the
news, reporters of the digital age could contact the source of the news by a
few touches on the screen. The shared journalism between the journalist and
citizen reporter became much easier to collaborate. The contents generated by
the citizen and netizens become the thread for traditional print and television
journalists. The social media application like Geo- tag, hashtag and trends
amass the analogous stories together and reaches the news desk. The space based
satellite platform GPS (Global Positioning System) which is enabled with
digital cameras help the news desk to track the geographic locations of the
photographs. During the Arab Spring, the photographs posted on Twitter with
Geo-tag was useful for the newsroom to organize report according to the
geographic locations.
The news platforms in electronic media also
incorporates the digital interface for better appearance and simple
presentation of news. However, the interface was introduced in the television
news reporting as early as 1973, when BBC patented teletext which could
subtitled along with the video. But digital interface came to prominence in
news appearance after the invention of HTML. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
language got its prominence during the emergence of blog and later it became a
popular language for news portals. The websites could not only present the news
with attractive designs, but also drive the readers to give feedback. The
social media pages also helped to connect with the readers in real time. The
growth of multi-platform news credited to
users who are accessing the news from greater diverse
platforms. Moreover, the communication services like Email and other social
connections can be combined with the news interfaces.
The latest human computer interfaces like Google
Glass, Optinvent Ora, iOptik, and other smart wearable technologies enables
instant reporting and uploading of news. But this impulsive act of reporting
will lead to the ethical issues which will question the accuracy and
verification of the information. The social media interfaces of the news medium
are designed in such a way that users could select the news or stories which
they like to follow. This often leads to user demanded news stories. The reader
of traditional newspapers becomes the users and subscribers which are enabled
by just “like”, “re-post”, “share”, “retweet” or “comment”. These social media
features become the bookmarks of news media. In turn, the web desk of news
organization also goes for the stories which may become more popular or the
interest of the reader. The market force, however, plays an imperative position
in determining news and readership targeting. From the audience point of view,
a good interface provides flexible, ready-made and controlled platform. They
could read news and stories as they like. And what to do they do with the news?
They could even give an opinion, manipulate, update and engage with the story
as they wish. The newsroom often goes blind over the user behavior since these
engagements result in gaining endorsement and popularity for the organization.
In this context of emerging technology, the response from academia is to look
closely the shift happening between the news producer and consumer. The role of
journalist and editor here needs to be redefined by accumulating various global
and regional digital news occurrences. Our future media classroom need to
address more than “writing for the web”, or in other words focus should move on
to “administrating the web”. Amidst these developments, this issue of Media
Watch provides a space for scholars to discourse on social media interfaces and
technological explosion.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65659
Effect of Audience Personality Traits on
Reality Show Watching Motives
VARSHA
JAIN1 & SUBHADIP ROY2
1Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad, India
2Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur, India
The relationship between viewer personality and reality
show watching has been a point of discussion among media researchers but
has been rarely tested. The authors in the present study explore: (i)
Reality Show Watching Motives (RSWM) of viewers, (ii) further investigates
the impact of viewer personality on RSWM in a developing nation context.
The authors followed mixed method approach to this end. A qualitative
approach was applied to investigate consumer perceptions about reality
shows and generate RSWM items. This was followed by a large scale survey
to relate viewer personality to RSWM. Structural equation modelling was
applied to generate findings in the quantitative phase. Five RSWM
dimensions emerged from the qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Consumer personality was found to have a significant impact on RSWM
dimensions. However, there was variation on the effect of individual
personality dimensions on individual RSWM dimensions. The study has
theoretical and managerial implications.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65660
Mapping the
Portrayal of Females in Contemporary Indian Advertisements
SHYAMA
KUMARI & SHRADHA SHIVANI
Birla
Institute of Technology, Mesra, India
The role of advertising as an effective vehicle of
communication has long been acknowledged. It has become the important
‘part of the cultural and economic fabric of a society and continues to be
a primary tool for marketing communication’ (Lane et. al., 2005). The
current study examines the portrayal of women in contemporary Indian
magazine and television advertisements in various product and service
categories. The present study is an effort to fill the gap of limited research
on gender representation in Indian context. Using content analysis, a
total of 275 advertisements comprising print and television ads were
examined. The result reveals the dominance of female stereotyping
in Indian advertising where females were mostly depicted as a housewife,
predominantly endorsing household products and mostly young female models
were preferred for brand promotion by advertisers.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65662
Rural Women
Psychology and Emotional Contents in Indian Television Advertisements
SANJAY
JERATH & MRINALINI PANDEY
Indian
School of Mines, Dhanbad, India
The current study examines the effect of emotional contents
in television advertising on the rural women and how they understand and react
towards these advertisements. The study further leads us to the issues of
cognitive behaviour of rural women after the advertisement has influenced
their emotional corridor. For this study 167 women are selected from rural
districts of Maharashtra and cluster sampling approach is used. 5 point
Likert scale with the range from strongly disagree to strongly agree is
used along with structured questionnaire. Contents of the advertisement are
broken down it to defined parts like model, slogan, jingle etc for the
easy understanding and correct answering from the respondents and it helps
us in understanding the role played by each variable in the
emotional outcome of the respondent after viewing the advertisement. This
study provides the insights to the marketers and advertisers about the
factors which actually influences the rural women and persuades them and
further provides a direction in developing an effective communication approach
towards this particular market segment.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65664
Recognizing the
Politics of Visual Imagery through Transplanted Traditions in Indian
Television Soap Operas
KAIFIA
ANCER LASKAR
Tripura
University, India
Television is known to be a powerful provoker and
circulator of meanings. The attempt in this article is to read the
discursive elements of female soap opera protagonists and find out if they are
idealised partly as religious devotees in their whole existence. Wars of
production and re-enforcement of meanings are often waged in media space.
Therefore an analysis of ‘character reading’ of the soap operas broadcast
in the Hindi networks will help focus analytical attention on different forms
of hegemonic power that constitute the text. The objective of this article
is to delve into the textual and semiotic codifications used in the
characterisation of the protagonists of the select soap operas
under study. These codes will help in describing the phenomenon of
creating religious devotees in soap operas.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65665
What Gamification
Tells Us about Web Communication
MARK
GOODMAN, DANAE CARLSON, LACI KYLES & NICK GOODMAN
Mississippi
State University, USA
The games that have become a staple on Facebook provide
lessons on how to make websites and Internet marketing more successful. We
highlight these points that gamers have accomplished: Provide ideological
agreement, Create a community, Provide a sense of control or autonomy, Create a
way for people to communicate with each other, Recognize gender
differences, Provide rewards, and Convince people to commit.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65666
Fictional Depictions
of Youth in School in Films Made in China and United States
WANG
CHANGSONG & ROHANI HASHIM
Universiti
Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
This study discussed the differences between Chinese youth
film and American teen film through the perspective on cultural
foundation. The authors argue that Confucianism was an alternative that
greatly affects the depiction of young characters and the causal
relationship of morality and fate of the characters in films. The
objective of such a comparison was not to advocate for either Chinese
or American youth cinema in portraying young people, but to promote a
better understanding of the strengths and impacts of youth cinema and
youth genre. In addition, this study examined cinematic depictions of
young characters portrayed in Chinese youth films and American teen films. It
was argued that Chinese youth films and American youth films differ in
depictions of school settings and even their purposes.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65668
Glocalisation,
Cultural Identity, and the Political Economy of Indian Television
AMARENDRA
KUMAR DASH
Rajiv
Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, India
From its Delhi moorings in the late 1950’s till date, the
Indian television has gone through steady evolution marked by phases of
silent or radical revolution. Born with a political agenda of national reconstruction
and turning out to be an ideological hegemony, its course has been redefined
by absorbing transnational media participation and the dispersion of ideas
in regional channels. It is to be noted that the Indian media market has
shown resistance to both global as well as national cultural hegemony.
While large scale glocalisation by the transnational media networks these days
is the recognition that Indian market and culture cannot be radically
colonised, the expansion of regional language channels later has weakened
the hegemonic authority of national networks. The Indian market today is
defined by the simultaneous presence of the global, the local, the regional,
and the glocal media signifiers. Taken together, these significations point
at a larger picture of glocalisation of market culture, especially, where
the consumer agency consists of participants across space, class, gender,
and generation.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65669
Political Mapping of
Media in India
SHEKH
MOINUDDIN
Kalindi
College, University of Delhi, India
Every day media is interpreting the space with a new name,
identity and representation. The media discourse shaped in such extent
that the identity of a space is deflecting from original and existing
together with new name both together as well. The constructed identity and
existing identity of the region is shaped in such an extent that the space
is known with a new identity apart from original social, cultural and
geographical identity. How the issue of reservation, caste and corruption
being fixed with a regional space and the issues found more or less
everywhere same in the country. How media fixed these spaces with new
identity where roles of media was inevitable. The study inhibits
specific issues based news from both print and visual media and assessing
viewers through it and mapping the region over it. The study based on
field surveys across six capital cities (Lucknow, Patna, Ranchi, Delhi,
Jaipur and Bhopal) of northern India where political fever remain found
high and both media and politicians supposed to shaping and
reshaping these spaces in order to reflect a mediated identity apart from
traditional identity.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65670
Twittering Public
Sentiments: A Predictive Analysis of Pre-Poll Twitter Popularity of Prime
Ministerial Candidates for the Indian Elections 2014
KALYANI
SURESH & CHITRA RAMAKRISHNAN
Amrita
Vishwa VidyaPeetham, Coimbatore, India
Twitter is a useful tool for predicting election outcomes,
effectively complementing traditional opinion polling. This study
undertakes a volume, sentiment and engagement analysis for predicting
the popularity of Prime Ministerial candidates on Twitter as a run-up to
the Indian Elections 2014. The results from a survey of 2,37,639 pre-poll
tweets finds tweet volume as a significant predictor of candidate vote
share, and volume and sentiments as predictors for candidate engagement
levels. Higher engagement rates evolve from the horizontality of
conversations about the candidate, therefore indicating a high degree of
interactivity, but do not translate into a higher vote share.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i2/65672
Indian Television in the Eras of Pre-Liberalisation and
Liberalisation
SHANTHI
MATHAI
Jagran
Lakecity University, India
India witnessed a revolution in the television
communication landscape following the shift in the economic policies in
1991. This analytical study looks into the changes and additions in the
functions performed by mass communication using television medium before and
after the implementation of liberalization policies in India. Tables
are included to provide overviews of the historical developments at
different periods and to distinguish the functions performed by television
communication. In addition to information, education, entertainment,
correlation and mobilization functions, empowerment and need satisfaction
are also accounted as functions added in the due course of mass
communication progression in the transnational and digitized era.
* * * * *
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Watch journal, contact:
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Managing Editor
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Club
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