Friday 29 May 2015

University of Mumbai's PG Diploma in Advertising & Media

Following from Prof. Sunder Rajdeep:

Admission open
University of Mumbai

Garware Institute of Career Education & Development

Part Time

PG Diploma in Advertising & Media

Last Date of submission form July 29, 2015

Entrance test will be on August 3, 2015

Contact : 022-26530258/ 59/ 64, 
Fax : 022-2653063.

Website : www.mu.ac.in/garware

Dual Degree Course : Students can do one full time Master Degree along with this course.

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Pune University's New Norms To Make Publishing Research Papers In Dubious Journals Difficult

Pune Varsity gives policy push to responsible, ethical research

Times of India
Vishwas Kothari
Research publication by faculty and students under the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) will now be sub jected to more strin gent scrutiny in terms of quality, impact, outcome and ethics.
The university has come out with a comprehensive policy on research publications, primarily to curb the growing tendency to publish papers in dubious and predatory journals, which, in turn, lowers the quality of research and affects the reputation of an institution.
Papers published in private in-house journals, workshops, seminars, refresher or orientation courses will no longer be considered research publications. Independent committees of renowned experts will draft faculty-wise list of quality journals and reputed publishers for each subject.
“This list will be used in matters of recognition as research guides, PhDMPhil submissions, selection, increment and career advancement,“ SPPU vice-chancellor Wasudeo N Gade said on Tuesday .
“Only those papers which get published in journals or publications mentioned in the list, will be considered as research publications,“ said Gade. “The whole exercise is aimed at curbing the commercially driven activity of publications for merely meeting performance norms or for meeting career advancement criteria,“ he said.
The policy , finalized by a seven-member panel chaired by head of SPPU's school of interdisciplinary health sciences Bhushan Patwardhan, contains several other recommendations and comes in the wake of calls by leading international journals and publishers to check spurious and commercially driven publications.The TOI is in exclusive possession of the final report submit ted recently by the panel to the VC.
“We have accepted the panel's report and will soon publish a notification regarding the new policy and the ways for affiliated colleges, postgraduate departments and institutions to implement it,“ said Gade. The policy will also be tabled before the faculty members and the academic council of the university for wider circulation and awareness.
Patwardhan said, “We have taken every care in the new policy to see that there is open, transparent, objective and unbiased evaluation of research papers and that the same are based on globally recognized publication ethics and best practices.“
“As of now, an increasing number of publications in most Indian universities are coming out of compulsion. It is important that the universities change the present system of number-driven assessment and give more emphasis on quality of papers than mere quantity of papers,“ he added.Among other things, the panel has dealt with issues like what should be considered as “research publication“, the difference between reputed, recognized and reference material and plagiarism.
Patwardhan cited the Beall's list of predatory publishers and journals to point out that the number of such publications has grown in size from a mere 18 in 2011 to 7,000 in 2015. “Several reputed journals like Science, Nature, The Royal Society of Journal of Medicine and Current Science have appealed to the academic community to take stringent and immediate measures to curb academic pollution created by bogus, predatory journals,“ he said.
“Bogus authorship which involves tendency to include every member of laboratory as an author in papers without identifying specific contribution by each author, is another problem,“ he said. “Similarly , many book publishers and bogus conference organizers have mushroomed and they are being used to increase API score,“ he said.
“The University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines have not explained what constitutes a “peer reviewed“ journal and puts an emphasis on the eight-digit international standard serial number (ISSN) or the 13-digit international standard book number (ISBN), which are merely codes for identification purpose and are no true reflection on the content,“ he said. Subjective terms like “recognized“ and “reputed“ often lead to issues of interpretation. Also, there are issues about the impact factor of research.
The committee dealt with all these issues in detail prior to finalizing its report. Heads of various university departments including D D Dhavale (Chemistry), Sujata Bhargava (Botany), Rajeshwari Deshpande (Politics), Aniket Jaaware (English), Saroj Ghaskabdi (Zoology) and Mahendra More (Physics) were part of the Patwardhan panel, which also consulted senior faculty members and some eminent national academicians from the IISER, the Indian National Science Academy , and Current Science, Bangalore..


For Key Recommendations, please visit

http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Gallery.aspx?id=20_05_2015_004_018_011&type=P&artUrl=Varsity-gives-policy-push-to-responsible-ethical-research-20052015004018&eid=31814

Wednesday 6 May 2015

Berhampur University needs faculty in Communication

Following from Dr. Mrinal Chatterjee, Professor and Head of the Institute, Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC)

Berhampur University, Odisha State has advertised for recruitment of one Professor (UR) and one Lecturer (SC) in Journalism & Mass Communication. The appointments will be carried out against regular vacancies.
The last date for submission of offline application has been fixed 25th May 2015 and the text of advertisement can be accessed at www.buodisha.edu.in
The incumbents will teach and guide research at the Post Graduate Department of Journalism & Mass Communication. The 41 years old Department is one of the oldest media training institutions of the country which have awarded bachelor’s and master’s degrees to more than 1,200 students and Ph.D. degrees to about 32 scholars over the years.
One faculty member of the Department retired from services during last June 2014 and two others will retire during July 2015 and October 2015. A post of Reader (UR) was advertised during last February 2015. Hopefully recruitment for all the 3 posts will be completed by next July 2015. The new appointees will work with one Lecturer who joined in August 2013.
Post Graduate Council of Berhampur University comprises of 20 teaching departments with 80 regular faculty members and 1600 students and scholars at the campus. There are over 50 vacancies of teaching posts which are expected to be filled-up in the near future.
Berhampur is a small town of about 4 lakh population situated at eastern coast of southern Odisha. It is about 165 kms from state capital Bhubaneswar and 250 kms from Visakhapatnam, the port city of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Berhampur is well connected with railways (Brahmapur Railway Station) and national highway (16). The campus of Berhampur University is situated in the outskirt of the city 10 kms away at Bhanja Bihar and 5 kms away from Gopalpur-on-Sea. Public transport includes well connected town bus and auto-rikshaw service.
Berhampur has a glorious past of about 300 years. The town comprises of both Odia and Telugu speaking population. The citizens of the city are visitor friendly and people from other parts of the country will find it pleasant. Living cost in Berhampur is low in compression to neighbouring places. The first time visitors to Berhampur can check into a hotel situated at the entrance gate of railway station or ask auto to go to Kama’s Inn, Moti, Radha, Nandan International, Bhubaneswari Classic or Shankar Bhavan to name a few lodging houses.

Abstracts of May 2015 issue of Media Watch

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.

* * * * *
For more information about Media Watch journal, contact:

Deepak Ranjan Jena
Managing Editor
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Puri-752 001, Odisha, India
http://www.mediawatchglobal.com
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mediawatchjournal@gmail.com
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