#Kashmir 2016: Notes toward a media ecology of an occupied zone.

This paper explores the necessity of understanding contemporary Kashmiri contestations of hegemonic Indian state, media and social media discourses through a media ecology framework. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of Kashmiri usage of social media. Analysis of this usage offers an insight into the ways in which Kashmiris and their allies have been able to offer counter-narratives to Indian state and media narratives which have historically underreported, even silenced, dissenting Kashmiri perspectives. A media ecology framework also conveys a sense of the affective publics as Papacharissi notes, involved in deeply polarized debates regarding the relationship between the Indian nation-state and the region of Kashmir (5). Building on an earlier cultural representation framework, this paper argues for a media ecology framework as a way of understanding evolving polarized discourses in the context of Kashmir as an occupied zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]