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This article explores tehelka.com as a critical turning point in Indian investigative journalism. Tehelka.com, an independent and alternative news website, setup a fake defense deal for shedding light on how rampant corruption was devouring democracy at the highest levels. In this sting operation code named "West End" reporters from Tehelka.com contacted top army officers and politicians, by posing as traders of defense equipment.

The object of this paper is to examine how the digital enables knowledge decentralisation and political mobilisation in the context of higher education in the discipline of Women's Studies (WS) or Gender Studies in tier II cities in Tamil Nadu. Scholars have questioned the loyalty of current gender studies tertiary education in non-metropolitan locations to the originary politics of the feminist movement, pointing out that the State's "disproportionate stress on extension activity ... substantially diluted the earlier conceptualisation of women's studies as a critique of knowledge production" (Anandhi & Swaminathan, 2006). In this scenario, this paper hopes to explore the potential of the digital to complicate the binaries of theory/experience, academics/activism, feminism as politics/feminism as epistemology that the discipline of gender studies has always had to grapple with. Historically, the women's movement in India has had the comfort of „speaking for? underprivileged women (Niranjana, 2010). Can the digital, through peer knowledge production and sharing systems, social networks and pedagogic interventions democratise knowledge and enable political participation and mobilisation? Moreover, how can practices like social network „lurking? and refashioning feminist language contribute to this process? How do first-generation graduates pursuing tertiary education in WS position themselves Digital Natives - "strategic use(rs) of technology" (Shah, 2010)? These are some of the questions that this paper seeks to explore. Using the qualitative methods of in-depth interviewing and non-participative observation, this paper hopes to examine Tier II cities as key sites for the generation and articulation of knowledge-based political projects. It argues that WS scholars in these locations, operating from hybrid geographical and digital places, enable a decentering of feminist scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding what is happening to identities and sense of self-hood in the contemporary era of global cultural and economic exchanges. Sociologists contend that sense of selfhood and Self as a concept is increasingly beleaguered and probably dysfunctional in the post-modern world where it is assuaged by multiple choices to define and create selfhood. The paper argues that perhaps this is not so. If the sense of self is a process and not a destination then built into the flexibility of the process is its inherent sustainability. It illustrates this through example from popular cinema from one of the most static cultures in the world - India (which only of late is confronted with alternatives to the dominant order). Self is able to keep its coherence by toying with new alternatives and internalizing those that are not in open opposition to the old. It is a very active process of creation and perhaps Self is more alive today then ever before. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of participatory communication, Freirean thinking has shown promise to advance both theory and praxis. By applying Freirean concepts of dialogic communication, problem-posing and empowerment, the present paper analyzes the case of a comprehensive rural health project (CRHP) in Jamkhed, India, which is looked upon by many as an exemplar of community-based health and development. This analysis is guided by one-and-a half months of intensive field work in Jamkhed and a dozen surrounding villages. This paper relies on observational data and 32 interviews with the participants who were either CRHP staff members or Jamkhed villagers actively involved in the community-based health project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to look at how the television industry in India and abroad, especially in the US, developed from the 1990s. The paper traces the history of Indian television channels' proliferation into the United States. It looks at changes that took place in technical, regulatory and economic spheres that have allowed the medium to migrate. The media has been a catalyst in creating hybrid cultures around the world. The easy access to various media like films, television and the Internet has created dualistic identities that Indians within India and abroad have been trying to negotiate. The easy access to media, which is a direct result of the growing Asian Indian population in the US has been one of the main reasons for some of the psychological and cultural dilemmas within the communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines the implications of investigating power relations in organizing processes where the organizational structures are less stable and static, and where an intervention for social transformation occurs at the intersection of multiple and conflicting discourses. The paper is based on an ethnographic inquiry into an intervention program in India to change the socio-economic status of devadasis in Belgaum District of Karnataka State in South India. The paper focuses on how devadasis negotiate the power relations of which they are targeted subjects and what opportunities are available for resistance. The present paper emphasizes the importance of both sovereign and disciplinary power. The paper argues that discourses of domination and resistance combine and coordinate to produce emergent discourses of domination and resistance. However, these emergent discourses involve different actors with different interests and having different reasons for producing relationships of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To underestimate the role of film in contemporary society is to ignore the historical influence that it has had in constructing identity, both of community and Self. The following paper looks at the film Fire, a 1996 release by Indian born Canadian film maker, Deepa Mehta. Specifically, the paper discusses the controversy surrounding a review of Fire in India?s renowned women?s magazine Manushi . It attempts to connect the various dialogues that arose on the South Asian Women?s Network (SAWNET) in reaction to the review and looks at the identities that were constructed both in denouncement and defense of the film. An analysis of the reactions from the members of SAWNET, who are women in and outside of India, both lesbian and heterosexual, highlight the complexity of claiming ?authenticity? as Indians, especially Indian women, ?outside? of India and the struggle to balance pastoralized tradition with new world (post)modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing penetration of mobile phones and the Internet in India, citizen journalism has experienced a steady growth in the last few years. This paper contributes to the growing scholarship on citizen journalism by exploring the motivations of Indian citizen journalists to produce online news content. Through a web-based survey of citizen journalists (N=134) contributing to the leading news portals in India, this study addresses, among other things, the role of traditional media experience among citizen journalists' reporting practices. One of the findings of this study is that, unlike American citizen journalists, Indian citizen journalists who have not worked in traditional media are less likely to work collaboratively than those with a traditional media experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a global digital privacy culture? Is Facebook with its global brand, algorithmic structures and privacy settings universalizing digital experience? Facebook has become the internet for much of the poor in the global South. Given this context collapse, it has become a forum of public expression as well as state control on morality and privacy rights. This study investigates how low-income youth in Brazil and India, exercise and express their notions on digital privacy, interpersonal surveillance and trust on Facebook. This ethnographic study reveals a convergence in the perception of Facebook as a public and 'happy' place. However, disjunctures arise on the motivations for such affections: escapism from chronic violence in the case of Brazil and aspiration for romance in the case of arranged marriages in India. Overall, this paper provides a nuanced perspective on how privacy is pluralizing for a globalizing and emerging digital data public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As billions of dollars are invested in mitigating the digital divide, stakes get higher to gain validity for these cost-intensive endeavors, focusing more on online activities that have clear socio-economic outcomes. Hence, farmers in rural India are watched closely to see how they access crop prices online, while their Orkuting gets sidelined as anecdotal. This paper argues that this is a fundamental problem as it treats users in emerging markets as inherently different from those in the West. After all, it is now commonly accepted that much of what users do online in developed nations are leisure-oriented. This perspective does not crossover easily into the ICTD world where the utilitarian angle reigns. This paper argues that much insight can be gained in bridging the academic communities of ICTD and New Media. By negating online leisure in "Third World" settings, our understandings on this new user market can be critically flawed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper is concerned with issues of representation, production and circulation of (alternative) media texts (pictures, video clips, reports, pamphlets, videogames and graffiti), which are used in offline and online protests, and appear on YouTube, newspapers and in the advocacy websites and blogs related to the tragedy. The advocacy movement around the Bhopal Gas Tragedy (BGT) has worked in recent years to align the movement with other related discourses and movements of feminism and environmentalism, organizing protests, and managing information campaigns in innovative ways by transgressing national boundaries and other institutional constraints. The paper aims to study how the rhetoric of the advocacy protests around the BGT as it gets organized and represented by alternative mediations, connects with the larger goals of the movement. Through a textual analysis of alternative media texts and interviews with BGT activists in Bhopal (India), United States and Britain, I argue in this paper that the alternative media texts produced as part of the BGT movement 'are shaped by' and 'shape' the organizational dynamics and movement goals of transnational activists who are participant actors in it. More specifically, undertaking a semiological analysis (Barthes, 2000) of various protest related media texts, I comprehend how BGT activists engage in acts of semiotic contamination (read 'subvertising') of Dow's own advertising campaigns (Human Element) and logo designs to demystify the "myth" of Dow Chemicals as a socially responsible organization. Symbolic performances by women survivors have included brandishing of broomsticks as part of the Jhadoo Maro (Beat Dow with the Broomstick) campaign and selection of monuments/buildings from Dow corporation offices to Gandhi Statues at the Indian Embassy as sites of resistance. These performances, I contend, demonstrate an attempt on their part to move beyond unjust established social boundaries in imaginative ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HIV/AIDS is a serious health problem in India today. Research suggests that illiteracy and lack of knowledge about HIV/AIDS is a factor in the growth of the epidemic in India. As a result, entertainment-education campaigns in the form of television and radio shows, plays and films have been conceptualized in order to communicate the truths and myths about HIV/AIDS to Indians. In this paper, I conduct a semiotic analysis of a set of short entertainmenteducation films aimed at destigmatizing HIV/AIDS within Indian society. Using Greimas and Rastier's 'Interaction of Semiotic Constraints' model, I propose in this paper that these films -even as they aim to relocate the categories of 'myth' and truth vis-à-vis HIV/AIDS, -reconstruct their own notions of myth and truth, thereby merely replacing, not removing the value-frames in HIV/AIDS discourse. I use Dutta's (2006, 2008) critique of entertainment-education campaigns to critically analyze the values constructed through these texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In designing digital content for disenfranchised settings, we need to garner local resources to structure engaging and meaningful media experiences. This paper examines the socio-cognitive impact of Stills in Sync (SIS) on learning, an innovative literacy multimedia initiative funded by Hewlett Packard in rural India. This product encapsulates a multiplicity of media forms: text, audio and visual, with social-awareness themes, endemic to the locality. It uses the karaoke 'Same-Language-Subtitling' feature that won the World Bank Development Marketplace Award in 2002. This product is innovative in its combined goal for cultural regeneration, value-based education, incidental literacy and language practice through entertainment. This paper investigates how this product addresses engagement and empowerment simultaneously, based on elements such as emotional appeal, multimodal stimulation, interactivity, contextual content and local representation. This paper is useful for practitioners and scholars interested in the design of novel edutainment content for international, underrepresented demographics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arundhati Roy?s essay, Greater Common Good, decries the construction of the Narmada Dam in India in scathingly ironic and emotive rhetoric. The project she argued benefited a few at the expense of the poor and illiterate and the anti-dam protest was more than a fight to save the river valley, it was a question of justice in Indian democracy. However, the pro-dam lobby, whose views were represented in a formal reply by civil society activist BG Verghese, dismissed her careful scholarship and powerful prose as mere Poetic Licence - an anti-development diatribe not based on evidence. Ironic tropes, critics argue, render the text open to polysemic readings. However, the Narmada dam debate reveals that there is preferred reading of the text and a deliberate misreading of the author?s intent that is hard to explain as mere effect of the textual characteristics of irony as a rhetorical trope. The paper argues that the current theories of irony only clarify why ironic texts are open to multiple interpretations. They are unable to explain the misreading or preferred readings of text as they do not take into account the evidence of reception of the text or pay adequate heed to the surrounding context. This paper calls for a more reader-centered approach to interpretation of ironic text which takes into consideration a formal evidence of reception and the context of communication. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization has impacted countries in the South on many levels, including in areas of media and journalism. Debates have been raging about the perceived homogenizing influence of the global media industry on local identities, cultures, and ideologies. Recent trends toward international concentration of mass media ownership, deregulation and privatization of national cultural industries, and new alliances between transnational media corporations and complacent governments, have led to the consolidation of market-driven journalism.This investigation will seek to outline some of the ways in which journalism and ethical practices are being shaped by the complicated processes of globalization, especially journalism in two countries of the South: South Africa and India. The paper will contextualize the broader debates about media globalization by considering journalism ethics and occupational ideologies within their material – political, economic, and cultural – contexts. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The differences in the coverage of two religious groups were studied. The New York Times was chosen for the study and a content analysis was done. The analysis examined framing of two religious groups--Hindus and Muslims--in 130 stories about the partition and independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. The analysis looked for three frames--attention, prominence and treatment. The study found that while Hindus were placed in the frame of prominence, Muslims were placed in the attention frame. Finally, the study found that both groups figured in the treatment frame-Hindus dominated the number of partisan assertions, and the Muslim groupÂ’s problems and policies were highlighted. This paper was presented at the Global Fusion Conference (2005) in Athens, Ohio ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working with the assumption that visual culture, specifically film, draws on wider hegemonic discourses circulating within the public space to construct its own narrative, this paper explores two Indian films from the 1990s when the Hindu nationalist movement had gained momentum, to identify the discourses that surrounded “maleness” during this time. A discourse and social semiotic analysis of the two films, Roja and Sarfarosh, revealed three key themes – “the centrality of home and duty,” “the link between an individual male’s biography and the nation’s narrative,” and “the nation and religion’s role in defining male identity” – which suggest that a certain form of masculinity had acquired hegemonic status in India in the 1990s. Even as Hindu nationalism defines India as a Hindu nation, neatly collapsing the terms “Indian” and “Hindu” and describes Islam as “alien” to the Indian nation, I argue that the forms of masculinity that became hegemonic during this period accorded primacy to patriotism, duty and virility and marginalized all other forms of masculinity not linked to nationalism and the nation in specific ways, including that of the Muslim male by delegetimizing them. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the copyright law and its implementation in India using two case studies- New York based author Barbara Bradford Taylor’s copyright infringement case in India against Sahara Televisions network and Indian music composer Bappi Lahiri’s lawsuit in a district court in Los Angeles against Dr. Dre who is the producer of the song “Addictive” by “Truth Hurts”. The second case study is used to analyze the differences of the Indian copyright law to that of the US. The study highlights the loopholes in the copyright law in India, a country where piracy is in abundance causing the U.S. an estimated loss of 500 million dollars in 2004 alone. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, the number of dowry-related deaths has been increasing exponentially. This study explores newspaper coverage over a period of five years to examine media content. The study also includes interviews with editors of the papers to observe the factors that led to this coverage. Using the hoopla hypothesis, the study employs a content analysis of 3,358 newspaper articles and interviews with a convenience sample of 23 editors from the same newspapers. Across all four newspapers studied, there were discernable pre-hoopla, hoopla, and post-hoopla stages. The hoopla period, characterized by the most number of stories, was ushered in by identifiable triggering events. A comparison of the national and regional newspapers’ coverage showed that the coverage was more intense in the national newspapers that produced longer and in-depth articles. The results also show that regardless of the scope of coverage (national vs. regional), coverage intensity is related to the prevalence of dowry within a sub-national region and the “newsworthiness” of dowry cases—a characteristic that is reiterated in the editor’s responses. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the role of a popular Hindi film, Phir Milenge (We Will Meet Again), in stimulating the AIDS-related public discourse in India. Starring mega-actors and directed by an award-winning director, the Bollywood Hindi film Phir Milenge exemplifies what is commonly referred to as the entertainment-education communication strategy. We discuss the entertainment-education strategy in HIV/AIDS prevention, including the role of popular mainstream feature films in stimulating the public discourse on HIV and AIDS. Our multi-pronged research design to gauge Indian audience responses to Phir Milenge is described, and the results presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sankhya Vahini was an ambitious project to build an education-oriented broadband fiber-optic network in India. It started in 1998, gained momentum in 2000, ran aground in 2001 and was officially buried in 2002. Using media and government sources, this paper traces the chronology of Sankhya Vahini and examines the controversies about the project. It analyzes the political and procedural circumstances that surrounded its failure, and suggests lessons from the case study for the formulation of future ICT policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the neocolonial discourses and desires that surrounded the birth of consumer television in India in the late 1980s by analyzing policy statements, advertisements, and popular responses to the medium. This historical period marked India's transition from a state-led planned economy to its fuller integration into the global economic by 1991. I demonstrate how state-owned television as a commodity, as a medium, and as a new discourse of representation, played a significant role in transforming the ideologies of consumption and desire, rewriting gender and racial politics, and re-imagining the nation in ways that decisively departed from the postcolonial development agenda. Television was advertised through racially hybrid images that signified transnational masculine productive power and oriented desires towards westernization/whiteness. The reception of the medium reflected anxieties that coalesced around westernization of national culture, gender modernization, and class conflict. These contradictions were partly resolved by constituting the "consuming family" as the legitimate citizen-subjects of the televisual nation, excluding classes and communities on whose behalf television was first introduced in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper systematically documents the portrayals of India and its peoples in the Western film media. A content analysis methodology was used to observe and analyze feature films produced in the U.S and/or U.K from 1930-2000 where India and/or Indians feature in the storyline. The study identified, described and analyzed portrayals at three levels ? movie, scene and character. The findings suggest that there are significant differences in the portrayals of India and the West with respect to climate, scene locale, poverty, calamities, pollution, religious practices, death rituals, modes of transportation, attire, arts and leisure, and, treasures. Indian and non-Indian characters differed significantly with respect to occupation, place of residence, economic class, language, role, health, and religion. Overall, four stereotypical formulae emerge ? India as a land of the wild, of misery, of mystery and of luxury. The role of media in dispelling misconceptions and breaking uni-dimensional stereotypes about other cultures are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how poorer women in West Bengal, India balance the ideas of modernization and tradition in their choices to use birth control. Ideologically, Indian women have traditionally been placed within the context of the home and valued principally as wives and mothers. Children, therefore, are tremendously important for women within this framework. In contrast, the ideology of the relatively well structured and very large family planning program asks especially poorer women to have fewer children for the good of the family and the nation. How do poorer, predominantly illiterate women balance these two oppositional ideas in an area that is of such importance in their lives? Qualitative feminist interviewing conducted in government family planning clinics is used to investigate how these women negotiate fertility control decisions with themselves and others, and how they place these decisions in the chronological borderlands between tradition and modernity in a changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of information technology is increasingly becoming a part of NGO work. This paper seeks to examine the overall context and effects of discourse on information technology in India by analyzing themes in "I.T. Talk," as well as ways in which members of a particular NGO interpret and discuss their use of information technology. The study finds that while I.T. Talk is techno-optimist, in that it is characterized by themes of efficiency, centrality and inevitability, member discourse is characterized by themes of inevitability, support, potential and problems. Gramsci's concept of hegemony, interpreted in the context of institutional theory, is used to explain this difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa and India had taken their cues from the British Broadcasting Corporation and set up public service, commercial-free monopoly broadcast radio systems, but by the 1950s large parts of their listening public were tuning in to advertising-heavy "pirate" stations beaming in from neighboring territories. In southern Africa, radio broadcast from Mozambique captured the youth market with rock 'n' roll that the South African Broadcasting Corporation found ideologically and aesthetically distasteful. In India, the national radio system's mission of education and cultural renewal ran headlong into listeners' preference for popular music. Radio from the Portuguese enclave of Goa used the Mozambique model to crack the Indian market, but Radio Ceylon came to dominate the airwaves in the sub-continent with its powerful shortwave transmitter, popular Hindi film music, smooth DJs and western business management. India was forced to change to accommodate advertising and popular tastes, while South Africa grudgingly tolerated cross-border rock. This paper examines how that happened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to generate greater understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as constructed in non-Euro-American contexts, by examining dialectics in corporate discourse on key themes and drivers of CSR in India. Qualitative in-depth conversations with business leaders and senior managers who define thought leadership in the space, selected from the Standard & Poor India ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) Index, were the main method of data generation. Results, based on 19 interviews with participants from 16 companies revealed that participant understandings of key themes and drivers of CSR are riddled with multiple layers of dialectical complexities simultaneously negotiating the apparently contradictory notions of nation building and inclusive growth, paternalism and egalitarianism, and duty and consequences. The paper also proposes that the ancient Indian concept of dharma might be a probable theoretical framework within which duty and consequences, the dialectical drivers of CSR in India could be further understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although much theorizing has been done in the past few years regarding audience perceptions and practices relative to popular Hind i, or "Bollywood," cinema, there have been relatively few studies providing empirical data as evidence for such theorizing. Given more recent scholarly acknowledgment of the active and participatory nature of the Bollywood viewing experience (Gehlawat, 2010), in this paper we report the findings from a broad survey of more than 400 Hindi film viewers located throughout the Indian subcontinent and abroad who were asked to reflect upon their own perceptions of Bollywood film content and to report on persona l practices often associated with these themes. The results provide a rare, quantitative look at processes related to the interpretation of Hindi film content within an increasingly hybridized and globalized viewing context. By comparing data from Indian and diasporic viewers, the results also provide quantitative evidence of a cultural proximity effect at work with respect to perceptions and practices associated with popular Hindi cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universal education is only a dream in most developing countries. While public education has made great strides in countries like India, it still falls far short of quality education for everyone. Furthermore, many children are unable to attend school regularly because of work obligations to their families. Mobile phones have tremendous penetration even in poor villages, and show great potential to improve education. But to do so for working children, cell-phone learning must happen outside the classroom. Adoption and use of learning applications must be spontaneous by the children, and supported by their parents. There must be appropriate times and places for learning, which mesh with children's routines. Designing such informal learning applications requires deep understanding of the contextual forces in the children's environments. This paper summarizes the results of two phases of fieldwork aimed to chart the contextual forces that would influence technology use by children in rural villages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the "corporate colonization of the life-world" (Deetz, 1992), and the dialectic between silence and communication (Clair, 1998), it is necessary to go beyond organizationally produced discourse and study institutional linkages and external narratives - in particular, the media's role in creating "organizational reality" (Mumby, 1988) for society-at-large. In this paper, I use a narrative approach to examine the media discourse surrounding the launch of the world's cheapest car in India, and reveal the construction of national pride through globalization, the 'new' national citizen, and the silencing of the alternative subject by reframing him/her as 'anti' national. A dialectic is seen not only between traditionally perceived Indian-ness and 'global' business culture, but also within the idea of national culture, further problematizing the resolution of being Indian in the age of globalization. Not only is the corporate depicted as hero and the alternative subject as villain, but the larger citizenry is painted as 'victim' to be 'saved' by the organization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will be an attempt to look at recent representations of same-sex desire in mainstream Indian films. It will connect these films to the discourses surrounding identity and nationalism in a post-colonial environment. It will look at how these representations intersect with class, domestic family dynamics and hegemonic notions of nationalist identity. In doing so, it will also analyze how gay and lesbian characters are positioned within the main narrative. If we look at the globalization phenomenon in India, it is ironic how certain "western" discourses to do with development and progress, are unproblematically adopted by a country which views the West as a defiling agent otherwise. This contradiction comes through very strongly when dealing with homosexuality which is erroneously and conveniently attributed to "western" culture. This picking and choosing of "modernity" is a fascinating phenomenon that is also brought out in GLBT visibility in Indian cinema today. These films thus offer a lot to be examined in terms of content, as well as packaging of same-sex desire. I will analyze these films according to how these characters are portrayed as gay/lesbian, their placement in the main narrative and their class identity. Some questions that I will attempt to answer in my analysis: How do these films offer positive spaces of visibility for these characters? Are the films with "positive" representations of gay characters really successful in breaking away from the homophobic portrayals of gay characters as seen in other films? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an ethographic investigation of how do young Muslim women belonging to a segregated and exclusively Muslim enclave of Jamia Nagar in New Delhi engage with media narratives of new Indian womanhood. Indian womanhood has been transformed in media narratives from a coy and submissive persona to a bold assertive, and sexualized/eroticized personality after the globalization and liberalization of Indian economy. This research reflects on how audiences (especially members of religious minority communities) interact with media messages that diametrically opose their values and culture. The author seeks to understand how young women balance the tension between media messages and their religious ideology and how does this struggle inform their identity and aspirations for the future. This research proposes that interacoins between media narratives and identity of young Muslim women should be seen within the context of rising consumerism and job insecurity in transformed Indian economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing outsourcing of technology services jobs to India, that achieved a media crescendo in the years leading up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections, pointed to more than the waning days of job creation in yet another industry in America. It intensified the U.S. media recognition of the arrival of India as a rising economic power in the global scene. Free market advocates in the American media, despite angry reactions from American technology workers who lost their jobs, believed that economic globalization was good for America and India as it would eventually lead to the opening up of Indian economy to international trade in the long term. However, in the hostile labor atmosphere of the United States free market advocacy was not easy, just as the acceptance of it was severely contested in India. This paper, through a narrative analysis, brings out the struggle of American and Indian newspapers in reconciling the clash between competing economic and political ideologies to illustrate the media representation of the fragmented nature of globalization and its contested acceptance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insofar as a nation's telecommunications reforms are concerned, do the state and markets necessarily play opposite roles in the reform processes? China and India, as two fast growing economies, have experienced rapid growth in their telecommunications in the last two decades. Behind the two nations' similar growth paths in mobile telephony, China and India adopted different policy approaches to their telecommunications development. To de-monopolize mobile telephony in the early 1990s, China opted for a state-led telecommunications system with managed competition through creating a second state-owned operator to participate in markets. On the other hand, India had aimed at a more liberalized telecommunications market through a licensing policy that would introduce multiple private operators into the market. These two seemingly contradicting mechanisms (China's state-led and India's market-led approaches), nevertheless, have respectively helped the two nations to achieve the same rate of rapid growth in mobile teledensity. This paper explores how state interventions and market forces have concurrently contributed to each of the two nations' development in mobile telephony, though their policies are quite different. The discussion shows that the two nations' reforms were not driven either by the state's active participation in the sector or withdrawal from the industry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the extent to which the Internet can facilitate the mobilization of India's rural Dalits ("untouchables") even though access is entirely urban and the language used online is largely English. We center our analysis and discussion of this potential around a 2003 Internet campaign waged by activists after the alleged beating of a Dalit employee by a Brahmin executive at a non-governmental organization devoted to rural development. While the e-mail campaign addressed the immediate indignities of the event, the millennia-old oppressions of untouchability were a dominant subtext. Even though a small minority of educated Dalits in recent years has become economically viable and with access to both the Internet and the English language, they are yet to fashion a counter-hegemonic public sphere. We posit that existing political and media theories are inadequate to explain the dynamics of Dalit identity formation and media use in 21st-century India. In our analysis, we take issue with the prevailing NGO strategy that maps Dalits as local and autonomous, and argue for the re-imagining of Dalits as a pan-national community. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In moving towards policy and regulatory frameworks that support convergence between media and telecommunications, governments often overlook the numerous components that will determine success or failure of such a general and far-reaching policy program. Legal anthropology informs us that congruence between general policy and its implementation is typically difficult to achieve. This has significant implications for policymakers everywhere as they try to adhere to assumed policy principles. This paper will use the Indian experience with the principle of technology neutrality to demonstrate that not only do larger policy objectives such as convergence depend on the operationalization of such components, but they too might evolve over time. Hence, we need to be concerned with not only the larger program and its outcome, but also its constituents. Understanding these processes of adjustment and evolution will help us predict better the outcome of important policy projects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine whether cultural differences exist in defining family, friend, relative, colleague and neighbour, non-student samples were drawn from Canada, China and India. The data generated several unexpected findings. (1) The Indians were most interdependent, followed by the Canadians and the Chinese. This result seems to contradict theories of I-C and Independent-interdependent self-construal that the Chinese culture is collectivistic and Canadian culture individualistic, and that the Chinese perceive the relational self more interdependently than Canadians (2) Females were more interdependent than males in the Indian and Canadian groups but not in the Chinese group. (3) In the Indian and Chinese groups, participantsÂ’ age was negatively correlated with closeness with friends, indicating that a personÂ’s attachment style changes over the life span. Results of past research using student samples need to be interpreted with caution. Findings of this study corroborate that culture is ever changing. To portray its intricate dynamics, new measures, developed from open-ended questions, in samples drawn from all age groups, are needed. To unpack the Chinese culture, data from rural areas and large cities within China would make meaningful comparisons ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has had a sharp increase in the estimated number of HIV infections, from a few thousand cases in the early 1990s to around 5.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS today. With a population of over one billion, the HIV epidemic in India will have a major impact on the overall spread of HIV in Asia and the Pacific, and worldwide. This article discusses the impact of a mass media entertainment-education campaign to prevent HIV/AIDS in three low HIV-prevalence north Indian states, New Delhi, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. We used three waves of data from an evaluation study to measure the effects of a mass media, entertainment-education campaign to prevent HIV/AIDS. Results showed that individuals who were exposed to the campaign were more likely (1) to be aware of condoms, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS, (2) to know about the sexual routes of HIV transmission, (3) to have fewer misconceptions about HIV transmission, and (4) to talk to others about STIs, condoms, HIV/AIDS, than those who were not exposed to campaign messages. The impact of the campaign was limited with regard to changing condom-use behaviors. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the global popularity of Hindi cinema continues to grow, increased scholarly attention is being paid to the themes and tensions explored by Indian directors within both domestic and diasporic contexts. In this essay, I draw upon GiddensÂ’ metatheory of structuration and Habermassian public sphere theory to focus on key thematic fault lines that have emerged in contemporary Hindi cinema, including the binaries of tradition-modernity, popular-artistic, east-west, local-global, and motherland-diaspora. Through this analysis, I illustrate how structuration helps to explicate the production and reproduction of these tensions within the context of globalized media. I conclude by outlining an agenda for research. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study which identified the communication issues involved in addressing men having sex with men (MSM) and addresses questions concerning identity and community ties in reaching this population. It reveals certain socio-political, economic and cultural factors that influence risk perception among MSM in India.

The article presents a comparative analysis of news coverage of environmental activism in India and the U.S. Theoretically, policy making in democracies is informed by a well-gauged public opinion echoed by media. News stories are supposedly both a reflection of events and public sentiments of those events. Stories in disjunctive formats imply a battle for power, need for public intervention and a potential threat to status quo, all of which are required for a robust democracy.

The article tests the hypothesis that online dating is a common practice among Indians living in big cities. A population sample of students at Saint Xavier's College in Kolkata, India is used. The students have profiles as highly proficient in English, high education grades and coming from diverse communities in India. They come from families with mid-level to high socio-economic incomes. The students have easy access to computers and the Internet, either at the university or at home.

The article discusses the factors associated with condom use among female commercial sex workers in India. Findings showed that knowledge and awareness of HIV/AIDS was related to an increase in perceived vulnerability of contracting HIV/AIDS. Moreover, perceived vulnerability of unprotected sex with clients increased the confidence of sex workers about condom use efficacy. It was also found that outcome expectancies were related to condom use self-efficacy. However, clients' objections to use condoms on the basis that it was uncomfortable and inconvenient or that it reduced sexual pleasure, posed a serious constraint.

The article explores the effects of U.S. television consumption on feelings or relative deprivation in South Korea and India. The Korean data revealed that U.S. television viewing was positively associated with estimates of U.S. people's affluence, and those affluence estimates, in turn, were negatively associated with satisfaction with Korean society. On the other hand, the Indian data revealed that U.S. television viewing was positively associated with materialism, though only among Indian people who have no or few friends and relatives in the U.S., and materialism, in turn, was negatively associated with satisfaction with Indian society.

Defining Women in American and Indian Prime Time is an in depth analysis of viewer's perceptions of the roles played by women on prime time, in two different cultural settings. The research is directed towards respondents with two different media and cultural experiences. The first are interviewees who are simply familiar with American prime time and the second are those who are acquainted with both the American and the Indian content. The research questions address specifics of representations associated with the American and the Indian media: the roles women play on prime time, whether the viewers can associate with the characters, possible difference between prime time representations and reality as well as possible overlaps between ways of reading media's constructions of femininity in these culturally different stage sets. Findings in the study acknowledge more similarities in analyzing gender reproductions between viewers familiar with American and Indian media, rather than distinct perceptions of gender images in the respective cultural settings. Most of the overlaps in observing gender representations on prime time have evolved from the viewer's unconscious narration of media experiences rather than categorically referring to the similarities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective was to examine the relative vulnerability of different categories of female commercial sex workers (CSWs) to HIV infection. In this study, we considered the consistent use of condoms as an effective preventive measure against HIV infection. Research has shown that condom use is predicted by several cognitive and environmental variables such as AIDS knowledge, perception of vulnerability, perception of outcome expectancies, perception of social support, peer-group comparison, and condom use self-efficacy. Therefore, to examine the relative vulnerability to HIV infection we examined the variance in factors listed above among three categories of female CSWs in the city of Chennai in India. The study found significant differences among the three groups of CSWs on the following factors: AIDS knowledge, perception of vulnerability, perception of social support, and peer-group comparison. The study will have wide implications for designing HIV/AIDS prevention interventions, public health campaigns and policies that are targeted at the vulnerable CSW population in Chennai and other places in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Images of nations, however right or wrong they might be, seem to form, fundamentally, through a very complex communication process involving varied information sources. The process starts with one's experience in very early life. Research has demonstrated that images of nations are very stable and resistant to change. The influence of schoolbooks in forming images of foreign nations and countries should not be underestimated. In the study about 40 schoolbooks (on religious education, geography, history and German language education) still in use have been analysed. In the textbooks India very often is compared with with China whereby the disadvantage is on India's side. The main feature of India's image is unbalanced development:On the one side there are incredibly rich people, on the other side so many people are living in absolute poverty. India is used as example for Third World problems like poverty, population explosion, child-labour and discrimination of women. In the textbooks on religion there is a partition in the good (Christians) on the one side and Hinduism on the other side. Only sometimes is India which seems to have no history introduced as a democracy. Proposals for the embetterment of the quality of textbooks are developed because schoolbooks in use today still present the very old stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation of community values and objectives through exposure to foreign programming remains a primary concern for several media observers. However, an analysis along unilinear lines cannot explain the ramifications of global media?s entry into areas previously protected from such forces. Deeply institutionalized domestic values may manifest in the new competitive environment as global media strive to become a platform for local expression. I show this by examining the national cohesion, an objective considered essential goal for a modern-state. Historically, national media participated by providing a practical channel for diffusing this value. The current opening of this national communicative space to global players appears to present a significant threat to this objective. As several observers note the global integrative forces increase the possibility of linkages between national communities and extra-national networks that may undermine national unity. Foreign media may also impress upon national cohesion by introducing different concepts that influence sentiments of national belonging. In multicultural India, early strategies of national development highlighted the importance of national cohesion. At the same time, several contending approaches for achieving this objective appeared on the scene. In the decades following independence in 1947, the institutionalization of this objective with its different manifestations influenced national television?s infrastructural expansion and programming. Surprisingly, one finds these differing notions of national cohesion also present in the productions of diverse transnational and subregional enterprises. Furthermore, few of the transnational productions get involved in presenting different nationalisms as part of their strategy for acceptance in the new region. The state, local institutions, and the audience perform a critical role in shaping transnational strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COMMUNICATION ACROSS BORDERS: EXPERIENCES OF RURAL INDIAN WOMEN IN USING CYBER CAFES ABSTRACT Rural Indian women have found the newly located cyber cafes (internet booths) in their villages a good medium for crossing the border of geographic isolation in the villages of India. Providing 651f employment to the rural population, agriculture is the main occupation and women are mainly secondary workers. They are able to cross this economic border through information on weather seeds, pesticides and fertilizers obtained from the Internet booths. Female foeticide, less access to food, education and other resources, early arranged marriage and child bearing, are cultural borders that restrict the village woman and yet she is becoming empowered through the Internet. Highly patriarchal, the village power structure is a political border, which has to be crossed by the rural Indian women. Now many are standing for election in the local Panchayat. Case studies of the Internet booth usage by women facilitate the crossing of all these borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tabloid News in the Film "Page Three": Gender, Generation, and the Decline of the Nation Radhika Parameswaran Twenty years ago, most Indian newspapers were black and white and the rich and the famous rarely made it into the pages unless they were involved in political scandals. The legacy of India's robust tradition of "hard news" and development reporting can be traced to the anti-colonial independence movement. Adapting to the changing climate of a rapidly globalizing India, the "Times of India," the oldest newspaper in the country, has stepped into the controversial arena of tabloid news with its production of colorful city-based supplements that are filled with entertainment news, gossip columns, pictorial collages of the city's elite, and images of scantily clad celebrities. Industry insiders and cultural critics in India refer to this new genre of tabloid news as "Page Three" journalism. Set in Mumbai, India's center for global commerce and Bollywood film production, Madhur Bhandarkar's acclaimed 2005 film "Page Three" follows the story of one young, female tabloid journalist, Madhavi Sharma, as she frequents the Page Three circuit of parties, events, and lavish media conferences. The film chronicles Madhavi's growing disenchantment with her glamorous life through her interactions with a strong cast of secondary characters including a passive and opportunistic editor, a prominent socialite, a crime reporter, and two supportive female room-mates. In the course of covering the frivolous Page Three agenda, Madhavi uncovers a child abuse story and wants to do a hard news report for the main newspaper, but her editor fires her for violating protocol. In the end, she returns to Page Three journalism for a competing newspaper. How does Madhavi Sharma, a prototype of the emerging female tabloid reporter in Indian journalism, embody the tensions between tradition/modernity, nationalism/imperialism, and mainstream (hard)/tabloid (soft) news? This paper will examine the film's representations of the young Indian female journalist, who tries to break free from the Page Three ghetto of tabloid news, but fails to find a place in the nationalist narrative of respectable journalism. In the absence of any academic work on popular constructions of journalism in India, the paper will use this case study to argue for a more sustained scrutiny of journalism in Indian films. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]