News as culture
Ursula Rao
The ubiquity of media across the globe has led to an explosion of interest in the ways people around the world use media as part of their everyday lives. This series addresses the need for works that describe and theorize multiple, emerging, and sometimes interconnected, media practices in the contemporary world. Interdisciplinary and inclusive, this series offers a forum for ethnographic methodologies, descriptions of non-Western media practices, explorations of transnational connectivity, and studies that link culture and practices across fields of media production and consumption. "More than just a fascinating description of newsmaking and practice in an Indian city, this book has implications for theories of news and communication that make it a timely and significant contribution to the literature on journalism and newsmaking in the changing global environment.'--Mark Peterson, Miami University. At the turn of the millennium, Indian journalism underwent significant changes. The rapid commercialisation of the press, together with an increase in literacy and political consciousness, led to swift growth in the newspaper market but also changed the way newsmakers mediate politics. Positioned at this historical junction during which India is clearly feeling the effects of market liberalisation, this study demonstrates how journalists and informants interactively create new forms of political action and consciousness. Exploring both English and Hindi newsmaking, this book investigates the creation of news relations and how they affect political images and leadership traditions. It moves beyond the newsroom to outline the role of journalists in urban society, the social lives of news texts and the way citizens bring their ideas and desires to bear on the news discourse. This important volume contributes to an emerging debate about the media's impact on Indian society and convincingly demonstrates the inseparable link between the media and dynamic cultural practices. --Book Jacket.
