BOOK: Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change
We are publishing a book chapter that sketches out the kind of work we are doing in a slightly more academic setting. The book Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change is published by Routledge and its fancy description at Amazon says it “starts with the premise that it is within the mass media where we can best understand how this change is imagined. From a kaleidoscope of perspectives the book interrogates this articulation and the myriad forms it takes – across India’s newsrooms, television sets, cinema halls, mobile phones and computer screens.”
Our co-written chapter is called “Emerging Digital Cultures in India: Theory and Practice” is described in the book as follows:
In the eighth chapter, ‘Theory and Practice in Emerging Digital Cultures in India’, Soumyadeep Paul and Matti Pohjonen look at how rapid changes in the digital media has problematised both the academic research into these technologies as well as the practice behind creating them. Because of the speed of development, the chapter argues, we need to come up with a new method of ‘creative experimentation’ to keep up with the pace of change. The problem is both theoretical and practical. From the theory perspective, the slow turnover of academic publishing and conservative frameworks of analysis prevent us from seeing what might be new and innovative and relevant in especially theemerging digital cultures in India. From the practice perspective, the rapid development of such new technologies and the necessity to constantly innovate, does not allow for structured ways of developing new technologies. The article therefore argues for a more collaborative approach where such theoretical and practice-based work can escape the ‘double bind’ of theory-praxis by working together to create and criticise both how new digital technologies are developed and what their broader social implications might be. Focusing especially on a software project the two authors havebeen involved in, the article concludes that it is exactly such collaborative theory-practice experiments that are better suited to capture this object of change rather than older frameworks of analysis, based on slow reflection and analytical certainties.
In addition, Matti here is one of the editors of the book and has written its introduction. He has also provided the cover image for the book and compiled a set of illustrative pictures for the book together with photographer Kazumuddin Ahmed. Both have included six pictures exemplifying the theme of mass media and change in India.
