Abstracts of research papers published in Media Watch January 2014 Issue.
Visual Proof: Identifying a Pattern in
Photographic Coverage of a Social Movement
Michael B.
Friedman
University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA
This study compared the photographic news coverage
of the Occupy Wall Street protests from two competing New York City tabloid
newspapers on opposite sides of the political spectrum, the New York Post
(conservative) and the Daily News (liberal). The purpose of the study was to
determine if there were any differences in the photographic coverage of the
Occupy Wall Street protests between the two media outlets. A content analysis was conducted to detect
and confirm any statistically significant differences in photographic coverage.
Results showed that the differences in photographic coverage were significantly
different suggesting that each media outlet may have presented the photographs
to express a specific opinion of the protests. The study also determined that
social proof is a useful theory for detecting a pattern of selection in
photographic coverage of a social movement.
Articulations of Gender Ideology: A Discourse Analysis of Online Public
Comments on the Delhi Gang-Rape on Firstpost.Com
Ruchi Jaggi
Symbiosis
Institute of Media & Communication, Pune, India
On December 16, 2012, a 23 year-old girl was brutally
gang-raped by six men, including one minor, on a moving bus while her male
friend was assaulted in Delhi. Both of the victims were attacked with an iron
rod and the girl was severely injured and later died. The media was quick to
hype cringe-worthy comments made by people in the limelight. The discourse
around status of women in the society, patriarchal norms, gender sensitivity
and umpteen related constructs became the content of comment threads on various
web pages. The articulation of these discourses on a digital medium is both
conflicting and intriguing. This paper will attempt to conduct the discourse
analysis of the comment threads on few websites that posted updates around this
mishap. Since the online medium gives people the advantage of anonymity which
may not otherwise be available to them in the public sphere, the constructs of
identity and ideology become even more critical. This research paper will
attempt to identify the dominant discourses, analyse their ideological context
and the potential and the role of digital media in these constructions. Does
the digital media ecosystem reinforce the hegemonic ideologies or does it
provide the space for liberal and alternative ideologies? Do perceptions of
gender and sexuality assume fluid meanings or get re-negotiated in the digital
media context? This research will attempt to use the discourse analysis of the
web comment threads around the brutal mishap to discuss and analyse these
questions.
Connect to Conspire: Scope of
Social Media in Gorkhaland Statehood Movement
Sharda Chhetri
All India Women’s
Conference, Darjeeling, India
The recent ‘Gorkhaland movement’ offered a story in
contrast to the previous movement of the mid-eighties which had lasted for over
22 months and had resulted in the death of over 1,200 people. This time it
lasted for slightly over a month and highlighted by the death of a youth who
immolated himself in a busy public square. Both were fired by the imagination
of a people in their ideological “search for identity.” But how were the two
different? Social media played a big role and Facebook, Twitter and other
blogspots became war zones where battles were fought and enemies vanquished. An
interesting form of communication in which people voiced dissent by locking
themselves up inside homes in the Ghaar Bhitra Junta movement was seen. Leaders
made use of the social media at a time when the administration had shut down
the broadcast of the local channels. It makes a good study in mob-mobilisation
and cyber-psychology. Twenty-seven years ago, during the previous movement when
internet was unheard of, people had resorted to ingenious means of
communication. This paper will try to bring forth the contrast and the changes
that new Information and Communication Technologies have brought in social
movements.
The ‘Rise of the Rest’:
Schumpeter’s Theory of Creative Destruction in the Age of Digital Media
Mohanmeet Khosla
Panjab University,
Chandigarh, India
The advent of ICT brought about a process of
industrial mutation that, clubbed with the recent economic turmoil, has seen
markets, businesses and managements focus on mobility, ubiquity and
entrepreneurial innovation as survival strategies. This paper analyses the fall
of the media moghuls against the rise of the twitteratti; it argues that we are
at the edge of a blast wave of consumer-driven change, one that is tight on
performance but loose on tactics; it focuses on the paradox of digital
convergence on the one hand and content diversity on the other. How can we best
define the role of mediated communication in its multiple technological
avatars? Is it becoming a God of Small Things, particularly where social
justice is concerned? Or is it just another instance of cultural imperialism?
Is it confirming or challenging the public service orientation of the media? Is
it creating tipping points that shift relationships among social, financial,
and political systems? Or is it becoming a Tower of Babel in the name of
alternative voices and discourses? – are the other specifics addressed. Given
the global interconnectedness of media today, the paper primarily seeks to take
Schumpeter’s theory of Creative Destruction out of the purview of economics
alone and link it to the larger issue of change as the new constant for our
next evolutionary leap– as cyborgs.
Technology Synergy Eco-System
between HD Video DSLR and New Social Media Platform
Gary
Chong Khin Jin & N V Prasad
School
of Communication, Universiti Sains Malaysia
This paper will engage with the concept of a
‘technology synergy eco-system’ which blends together the two core elements of
HD video DSLR and the new social media platform to determine, if this could
actually be a potent formula for the emergence of a potential alternative
virtual cinema. This alternative virtual cinema has both connotations as a
medium of transmission of a certain film to the masses and also elements of
film techniques in terms of aesthetics and etc. It is beyond a shadow of a
doubt that in this current day and age, we can see that the social new media has
impacted practically every facet of society. The question beckons then, what
about cinema? Does the level of interactivity in which the social new media
provides, combined with the affordability and ease of using a HD video DSLR to
produce videos with high production values and cinematic quality nuances serve
as a precursor to the trends and patterns which might lead up to an alternative
virtual cinema? With these exciting questions in mind, it is of great interest
to us as modern day filmmakers, in exploring and giving an exposition into this
subject matter, to deconstruct the elements and see if the possibility is
viable or merely an idealistic notion.
Culture and Globalisation: The Indian Creative Industries
Mrinmoy Majumder
Mudra Institute
of Communications Ahmedabad, India
The processes of globalization have stirred
different cultural practices resulting in cultural homogenization where local
cultures are merged into a single macro cultural domain. This macro cultural
domain is a result of the fusion of different cultures that have given the
local cultures a new order and form. Here the local cultures seem to have lost
their own identity and representation. Furthermore, due to the ambiguous nature
of the global cultural flow other cultures that are in local or national form
have sought to find their space among the chaos of global culture. Similar
effects have been felt in the creative industries due to the proliferation of
globalization further causing an air of change in the creative content and production.
Hence, this conceptual study will look into two cases of Bollywood cinema and
Indian rock music both facing an ongoing tension related to content creating
ambiguity and imbalance, among its (content) creators and audiences.
Escape and Re-Colonization of Waka Waka: Shakira’s Performance at
the 2010 World Cup
MARK
GOODMAN & DANAE CARLSON
Mississippi State University, USA
In 2010, Waka Waka was chosen as the anthem for the
FIFA World Cup held in South Africa, and Shakira, a well known vocal artist,
was appointed the task of performing. The lyrics of the song present a message
of world unity. But, a semiotic reading
of the official video presents a different interpretation. This paper examines
the conflicts between Waka Waka’s lyrics and its cinematography, while delving
deeper into its underlying colonialism.
Role of Wikis in School
Education
Hemant Shrivastava
Indian Institute of
Management, Indore, India
The main agenda of this paper is to provide a
review of literature on the role of Web 2.0 or social software tools
particularly wikis in school education because it is an under-researched area.
Though it is a versatile tool to leverage the information in multimodal
environment, including video, sound, animation, as well as, static text and image
it has not been actively used in the context of school education especially in
the Indian context. Today’s educators are hesitant in using the web 2.0
technology because they feel overwhelmed by the range of choices it offers. The
paper tries to evolve framework that can be employed to use wikis. It examines
the issues that have surfaced from the review especially those that affect
pedagogy due to adoption of web 2.0 technologies. The advantages of wikis to
students, educators and institutions as well as the challenges that accompany
such initiative and the host of problems that need to be addressed in using
wikis in school education is enumerated. This paper incorporates the analysis
out of the review and highlights the different pedagogical roles of web2.0
technologies with reference to communication, innovation, and collaborative
learning and challenging the imagination of children. The analysis answers the
concerns of academicians about the inclusion of web 2.0 technologies and the
findings can influence learning and teaching strategies in various echelons of
education. The paper integrates the perspective by consolidating a variety of
literature sources from academic publications, recent Newspaper and magazine
reports on social network sites and commentaries and views on social media
itself. A major limitation of this paper is lack of empirical evidences in the
Indian context for rigorous analysis and does not analyse the reason for this
paradoxical situation.
Revisiting the Contours of Media
Education: A Study in the Indian Context
Kapil Kumar Bhattacharya
Centre for Journalism
& Mass Communication, Visva-Bharati, India
Media
education should not be merely about making media professionals. It should
rather be about enlightening the citizens. The problem lies in the basic
approach to media education which is essentially considered to be a vocational
course. This approach in itself results in segmentation of the students from
the very beginning. While all students of political Science do not end up becoming
politicians and all students of Sociology do not end up becoming sociologists,
Media Education, unfortunately, is essentially projected as a subject whose
primary focus is upon producing media professionals. However, just as the
primary focus of teaching political Science and Sociology is creating political
and social sensibility, the primary focus of teaching media education should be
creating media sensibility/ awareness among the youth of the nation as the
media has emerged as a force to reckon with in today’s scenario. Thus, they
need to be aware of the powers and functions of the media so that they may
judge the stance taken by the media in regional, national and even the
international affairs. This paper shall strive to throw some light upon such issues
through both theoretical and practical approaches such as content analysis and
surveys.
Cultural Diversity in Television
Advertisements in Entertainment Channels
Daivata Patil
University of Mumbai,
India
Social attitudes towards multiculturalism can be
checked by measuring representations of ethnicity in television advertisements.
The current research conducts a quantitative content analysis of television
commercials. The researcher first recorded the frequency of representation of
characters from varied culturally diverse backgrounds in television
advertisements and then examined the nature of role portrayals on the basis of
religion and skin tone of the characters. The sampling technique used is
purposive wherein advertisements broadcasted during prime time of two leading
entertainment channel—Star Plus and Colors were recorded and analysed. The
criteria for selection of units of analysis in ads was that all the characters
selected had at least one line of dialog or they appeared on screen for at
least five seconds.
The Dialectical Cinema of Tomas
Gutierrez Alea: Insights for Indian Cinema
Ira Sahasrabudhe
One
cannot hope to create meaningful popular dialectical cinema by accusing
mainstream cinema of being vacuous, of having sold out to the lowest
denominator, or of functioning as a narcotic for the masses. Neither can
opposing mass aesthetics or desire for delusion swing the other extreme where
‘meaningful’ cinema gains only from its purported opposition to mass-cinema,
forcing the viewer into a discussion he might be resistant to. Lastly, a medium
of mass consumption cannot be successfully co-opted under the program of
‘instruction’ alone. I believe traditional methods of trying to qualify cinema
by framing it within an oppositional paradigm of form and content are absurd,
as they are both intertwined. The journey from mass amusement to mass
instruction or of belonging to a niche group is doomed from the beginning.
Rather than trapping the viewer into a debate, cinema can explore its potential
better by drawing him into a contemplation and discussion about the film, in
other words, making him a more participative, meaning-making entity.
