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Papers by Sathya Prakash
India is one of the most diverse media economies in the world and presents incredible opportuniti... more India is one of the most diverse media economies in the world and presents incredible opportunities for research in the field of media economics and management. At this point in time, we find that the often scattered contours of this area to some extent are a result of its checkered history and salience within the larger field of communication studies. All this has resulted in only a limited set of problematics being explored in the extant scholarship in/on India, compared with the diverse abundance generated internationally. These problematics, outlined in this chapter, oscillate between those triggered by three main concerns: the wider debates in the political economy of media culture, the sporadic reflections on sectors of media businesses, and, over the last decade, by the flashpoints in media policy. This undulating scholarly corpus has however drawn sustenance from a wide variety of theoretical and methodological quarters. These varied influences reflect, to a large extent, conscious desires to grasp the 'economic' phenomenon constituting the media in their deeper, often peculiarly Indian, social and historical contexts, which is also perhaps one reason why we find that this scholarship has largely remained aloof of intellectual orthodoxies marking the field media economics elsewhere in the world.
Phalanx.in, 2018
Telugu Cinema in the last decade has been at the crossroads with the imaginations of statehood an... more Telugu Cinema in the last decade has been at the crossroads with the imaginations of statehood and regional identity taking the centre stage. The separate Telangana movement questioned the multiple discriminations in social, political and cultural arenas and film industry was criticised for its repeated stereotypes and demeaning representation of Telangana’s culture. The movement laid bare the dismissive nature of the film industry in representing the lives and culture of the people. This process generated a discomfort among the Telangana viewers consuming the Telugu popular cinema, where they could no longer view cinema as mere source of entertainment. Political subjectivities built around the statehood movement produced dissonance in the spectators from Telangana affecting the usual cinematic pleasures. This produced ‘Estrangement’ affecting ‘Identification’ with the star, the digesis and related spectatorial pleasures.
This paper is an attempt to deliberate on the ‘spectatorial pleasures’ and ‘spectatorial address’ in Telugu Cinema (pre and post formation of Telangana State). The discredited ‘Cinematic Apparatus’ had to recalibrate its signifying practices considering the new power matrix with the formation of new state. We seek to understand popular cinema’s attempts to reconstitute the pleasures by accommodating new subjectivities legitimised by statehood formation and the film market’s formal recognition of new power structures.
Broadsheet on Contemporary Politics (Vol.2, No. 4&5), Language Region and Community
Deep Focus Cinema, Vol.1, Issue 2, March 2013
Communication has always been an area of interdisciplinary study. Over a period of time, the rang... more Communication has always been an area of interdisciplinary study. Over a period of time, the range of social issues associated with the study of mass communication has widened, with special attention given to the questions of women in society, international communication, and the social consequences of new information technology. In continuation with the interdisciplinary tradition of communication, i am interested in studying mass media and its views and perceptions on issues pertaining to finances and financial inclusion. 1991 is held as the watershed year with regard to economic liberalisation in India.
This paper titled, “Media Education at the Cross Roads? Reflections of a University Teacher”, was presented at the Symposium on “Challenges and Opportunities in Media Education in India”, organized by IGNOU and UNESCO in Delhi, November 20-21, 2009.
There have been persistent arguments to make journalism and mass communication education, ‘indust... more There have been persistent arguments to make journalism and mass communication education, ‘industry oriented’. Among the numerous industry interactions organized by different communication and journalism departments, speakers from industry again and again ask for the ‘right-fits’, who can ‘run as they land’. They view Journalism education as a delivery mechanism. As a corollary to the argument of ‘industry orientation’, another argument has been doing rounds. This one suggests that journalism education has to have a high degree of focus on skill courses and very less on theory and inter-disciplinary courses. These two arguments reflect the concerns of this plenary session, whether Journalism education in India is at cross roads?
If Journalism education is at cross roads, probably it should be seen as an advantageous position. If it is a cross road at which various disciplines converge, it makes sense to retain it at the cross roads, rather than take it on a one way super highway. Creating disciplinary boundaries and later asking for passports and visas may not be a great idea. Communication and Journalism is not constituted on its own. As an academic discipline, it borrows heavily from psychology, sociology and to some extent from anthropology, and from many other critical humanities and social sciences. If journalism specialises as a shell, then it should be careful enough not to empty its own contents.
As someone who has worked in the media industry for five years before starting my teaching career, and as some one who at some point of time strongly believed journalism training has to be application oriented, I have had a change of heart. After teaching skill courses for more than six years, I have to make some confessions on my changed position. In the course of my presentation, I intend to critically reflect on these aspects.
Books by Sathya Prakash
This edited volume brings diverse and interconnected works on cinemas from various language tradi... more This edited volume brings diverse and interconnected works on cinemas from various language traditions -- Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Kodava together. By discussing issues ranging from identity politics, minority discourse, re-makes and the politics of gender; this books attempts a new approach for understanding cinemas of South India.
Drafts by Sathya Prakash
The debates around colloquial language movement in Andhra have been enriched from many perspectiv... more The debates around colloquial language movement in Andhra have been enriched from many perspectives in the last few decades. The role played by individuals in this movement has got a lot of attention in these debates. This paper attempts to revisit the debates from the perspective of emerging print markets in Telugu in the early 20th century. The transitions from manuscript to print cultures and patronage to market were getting crystallized during this period and they brought varied changes in the nature of discursive production. These significant shifts also rendered the divergence between the high and low registers of Telugu language undesirable. The western models of governance, mass literacy through schooling embraced by the Indian liberal leadership came along with the print ecosystem. Political mobilization efforts aimed at independence and power struggles within congress factions and other political groups were also getting increasingly centered on the printed word. The nascent market for the consumer goods and the need to advertise them along with the increasing use of print for ideological production enabled the emergence of print markets. The need to mobilise the consumer and the political actor through the printed word made diglossia, which was celebrated earlier into a hurdle, a situation that had to be overcome.
Book Chapters by Sathya Prakash
OUP, 2017
The history of newspapers in India is written within the overarching frame of Indian nationalism.... more The history of newspapers in India is written within the overarching frame of Indian nationalism. In this narrative, the history of newspapers is a saga of sacrifice and devotion to the nationalist ideals, while profits or commercial considerations were insignificant. While it is not completely untrue, such constructions pose problems to the historians and economists in putting together a historically accurate view of evolution of media and its economy. Dichotomies of pristine nationalist press and a corrupt post-independent press can only be resolved by focusing on the continuities associated with the material production of periodicals. This paper re-examines the case of Andhra Patrika, a Telugu daily and its enterprising founder Nageswara Rao to understand the significant aspects that were part of this news paper’s success.
Cambridge Scholars, 2017
In recent years the relationship between economic performance, civil conflicts, and wars has gene... more In recent years the relationship between economic performance, civil conflicts, and wars has generated a considerable amount of interest. While there is growing consensus that economics matters to conflict, there remains considerable disagreement as to how it matters and how much it matters relative to other political, socio-cultural, and identity factors. For some analysts, economic factors are analyzed alongside other factors as a means to improve understanding of the complex causes and dynamics of war; for others, economics has become the explanatory framework for conflict analysis. This chapter attempts to understand India’s tryst with economic liberalization, the changing contours of political economy, and the re-configuration of power relations by analyzing the changing nature of news media. The research attempts to engage with the trajectory involved in the near complete transformation of “news media” from being a liberal to a neo-liberal institution. This chapter examines how the human conflicts and political costs of the onward march of Neo-liberal capital are dealt with and diverted by the news media as active foot soldiers.
OUP
This paper tries to address some of the intriguing aspects related to representation of Telugus ... more This paper tries to address some of the intriguing aspects related to representation of Telugus in Tamil Cinema. It further tries to assess the impact of Tamil cultural politics in the last century on Telugu identity and the efforts of Telugus at identity re-fashioning in the public sphere(s). The paper makes an attempt in this direction by piecing together and correlating diverse evidences from political and cultural spheres, including Cinema.
India is one of the most diverse media economies in the world and presents incredible opportuniti... more India is one of the most diverse media economies in the world and presents incredible opportunities for research in the field of media economics and management. At this point in time, we find that the often scattered contours of this area to some extent are a result of its checkered history and salience within the larger field of communication studies. All this has resulted in only a limited set of problematics being explored in the extant scholarship in/on India, compared with the diverse abundance generated internationally. These problematics, outlined in this chapter, oscillate between those triggered by three main concerns: the wider debates in the political economy of media culture, the sporadic reflections on sectors of media businesses, and, over the last decade, by the flashpoints in media policy. This undulating scholarly corpus has however drawn sustenance from a wide variety of theoretical and methodological quarters. These varied influences reflect, to a large extent, conscious desires to grasp the 'economic' phenomenon constituting the media in their deeper, often peculiarly Indian, social and historical contexts, which is also perhaps one reason why we find that this scholarship has largely remained aloof of intellectual orthodoxies marking the field media economics elsewhere in the world.
Phalanx.in, 2018
Telugu Cinema in the last decade has been at the crossroads with the imaginations of statehood an... more Telugu Cinema in the last decade has been at the crossroads with the imaginations of statehood and regional identity taking the centre stage. The separate Telangana movement questioned the multiple discriminations in social, political and cultural arenas and film industry was criticised for its repeated stereotypes and demeaning representation of Telangana’s culture. The movement laid bare the dismissive nature of the film industry in representing the lives and culture of the people. This process generated a discomfort among the Telangana viewers consuming the Telugu popular cinema, where they could no longer view cinema as mere source of entertainment. Political subjectivities built around the statehood movement produced dissonance in the spectators from Telangana affecting the usual cinematic pleasures. This produced ‘Estrangement’ affecting ‘Identification’ with the star, the digesis and related spectatorial pleasures.
This paper is an attempt to deliberate on the ‘spectatorial pleasures’ and ‘spectatorial address’ in Telugu Cinema (pre and post formation of Telangana State). The discredited ‘Cinematic Apparatus’ had to recalibrate its signifying practices considering the new power matrix with the formation of new state. We seek to understand popular cinema’s attempts to reconstitute the pleasures by accommodating new subjectivities legitimised by statehood formation and the film market’s formal recognition of new power structures.
Broadsheet on Contemporary Politics (Vol.2, No. 4&5), Language Region and Community
Deep Focus Cinema, Vol.1, Issue 2, March 2013
Communication has always been an area of interdisciplinary study. Over a period of time, the rang... more Communication has always been an area of interdisciplinary study. Over a period of time, the range of social issues associated with the study of mass communication has widened, with special attention given to the questions of women in society, international communication, and the social consequences of new information technology. In continuation with the interdisciplinary tradition of communication, i am interested in studying mass media and its views and perceptions on issues pertaining to finances and financial inclusion. 1991 is held as the watershed year with regard to economic liberalisation in India.
This paper titled, “Media Education at the Cross Roads? Reflections of a University Teacher”, was presented at the Symposium on “Challenges and Opportunities in Media Education in India”, organized by IGNOU and UNESCO in Delhi, November 20-21, 2009.
There have been persistent arguments to make journalism and mass communication education, ‘indust... more There have been persistent arguments to make journalism and mass communication education, ‘industry oriented’. Among the numerous industry interactions organized by different communication and journalism departments, speakers from industry again and again ask for the ‘right-fits’, who can ‘run as they land’. They view Journalism education as a delivery mechanism. As a corollary to the argument of ‘industry orientation’, another argument has been doing rounds. This one suggests that journalism education has to have a high degree of focus on skill courses and very less on theory and inter-disciplinary courses. These two arguments reflect the concerns of this plenary session, whether Journalism education in India is at cross roads?
If Journalism education is at cross roads, probably it should be seen as an advantageous position. If it is a cross road at which various disciplines converge, it makes sense to retain it at the cross roads, rather than take it on a one way super highway. Creating disciplinary boundaries and later asking for passports and visas may not be a great idea. Communication and Journalism is not constituted on its own. As an academic discipline, it borrows heavily from psychology, sociology and to some extent from anthropology, and from many other critical humanities and social sciences. If journalism specialises as a shell, then it should be careful enough not to empty its own contents.
As someone who has worked in the media industry for five years before starting my teaching career, and as some one who at some point of time strongly believed journalism training has to be application oriented, I have had a change of heart. After teaching skill courses for more than six years, I have to make some confessions on my changed position. In the course of my presentation, I intend to critically reflect on these aspects.
This edited volume brings diverse and interconnected works on cinemas from various language tradi... more This edited volume brings diverse and interconnected works on cinemas from various language traditions -- Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Kodava together. By discussing issues ranging from identity politics, minority discourse, re-makes and the politics of gender; this books attempts a new approach for understanding cinemas of South India.
The debates around colloquial language movement in Andhra have been enriched from many perspectiv... more The debates around colloquial language movement in Andhra have been enriched from many perspectives in the last few decades. The role played by individuals in this movement has got a lot of attention in these debates. This paper attempts to revisit the debates from the perspective of emerging print markets in Telugu in the early 20th century. The transitions from manuscript to print cultures and patronage to market were getting crystallized during this period and they brought varied changes in the nature of discursive production. These significant shifts also rendered the divergence between the high and low registers of Telugu language undesirable. The western models of governance, mass literacy through schooling embraced by the Indian liberal leadership came along with the print ecosystem. Political mobilization efforts aimed at independence and power struggles within congress factions and other political groups were also getting increasingly centered on the printed word. The nascent market for the consumer goods and the need to advertise them along with the increasing use of print for ideological production enabled the emergence of print markets. The need to mobilise the consumer and the political actor through the printed word made diglossia, which was celebrated earlier into a hurdle, a situation that had to be overcome.
OUP, 2017
The history of newspapers in India is written within the overarching frame of Indian nationalism.... more The history of newspapers in India is written within the overarching frame of Indian nationalism. In this narrative, the history of newspapers is a saga of sacrifice and devotion to the nationalist ideals, while profits or commercial considerations were insignificant. While it is not completely untrue, such constructions pose problems to the historians and economists in putting together a historically accurate view of evolution of media and its economy. Dichotomies of pristine nationalist press and a corrupt post-independent press can only be resolved by focusing on the continuities associated with the material production of periodicals. This paper re-examines the case of Andhra Patrika, a Telugu daily and its enterprising founder Nageswara Rao to understand the significant aspects that were part of this news paper’s success.
Cambridge Scholars, 2017
In recent years the relationship between economic performance, civil conflicts, and wars has gene... more In recent years the relationship between economic performance, civil conflicts, and wars has generated a considerable amount of interest. While there is growing consensus that economics matters to conflict, there remains considerable disagreement as to how it matters and how much it matters relative to other political, socio-cultural, and identity factors. For some analysts, economic factors are analyzed alongside other factors as a means to improve understanding of the complex causes and dynamics of war; for others, economics has become the explanatory framework for conflict analysis. This chapter attempts to understand India’s tryst with economic liberalization, the changing contours of political economy, and the re-configuration of power relations by analyzing the changing nature of news media. The research attempts to engage with the trajectory involved in the near complete transformation of “news media” from being a liberal to a neo-liberal institution. This chapter examines how the human conflicts and political costs of the onward march of Neo-liberal capital are dealt with and diverted by the news media as active foot soldiers.
OUP
This paper tries to address some of the intriguing aspects related to representation of Telugus ... more This paper tries to address some of the intriguing aspects related to representation of Telugus in Tamil Cinema. It further tries to assess the impact of Tamil cultural politics in the last century on Telugu identity and the efforts of Telugus at identity re-fashioning in the public sphere(s). The paper makes an attempt in this direction by piecing together and correlating diverse evidences from political and cultural spheres, including Cinema.