Document details

India's State-Run Media: Broadcasting, Power, and Narrative

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2019), xiii, 210 pp.

Contains bibliogr. pp. 177-204, index

ISBN 978-1-108-63108-2 (ebook); 978-1-108-48170-0 (hbk)

"India's State-run Media presents a new perspective on broadcasting by bringing together two neglected areas of research in media studies in India - the intertwined genealogies of sovereignty, public, religion, and nation in radio and television, and the spatiotemporal dynamics of broadcasting into a single analytic inquiry. It argues that the spatiotemporalities of broadcasting and the inter-relationships among the public, religion, and nation can be traced to an organizing concept that shaped India's late colonial and postcolonial histories - sovereignty. The book contends that studies of television have glossed over the meanings, experiences, and practices of the religious in televisual narratives and viewers' interpretations of television programs. Drawing on the philosophical writings of Paul Ricoeur and Michel Foucault, connecting their ideas with media, cultural, and religious studies, it examines cultural discourses, power relations, repertoire of meanings, social events, etc. in broadcasting in late colonial and postcolonial India." (Publisher description)
Introduction, 1
1 Broadcasting, Spatiotemporalities, and Power, 24
2 Doordarshan, Literary Drama, and Narrative Identity, 63
3 Televisual Representations of Socio-Spatial Conflicts, and the Religious–Secular Imaginaries, 83
4 Patriotism and Its Avatars: Tracking the National–Global Dialectic in Music Videos and Television Commercials, 107
5 Remembering Doordarshan: Figurations of Memories and Nostalgia on Blogs, YouTube, and in Oral Interviews, 127
Epilogue, 159