Indian media and its transformed public

Abstract

Indian media has witnessed an unprecedented growth over the last two decades. This expansion does not necessarily lead to greater democratic participation for the very idea of the ‘public’ has undergone a transformation, evident in: the ideological content of the media, the extra-national membership of the public sphere and the interactive form of publicness. The article argues that the media plays a crucial ideological role in recasting public discourse in India, a role which is rendered more effective because of a strong synergy between its substance and style. An often strident appropriation of the nation and the Indian ‘public’ by a middle class ideologically aligned with the project of liberalisation is most evident in the media today. This is done in two ways: by an overt ideological defence of an unbridled market and an attack on the very idea of an interventionist and welfare state; and by the everyday quotidian features and news that inscribe corporate speech, create a new imaginary of a global Indian and a global Indian middle class. This contention may be sustained from a scrutiny of the media even when the period is a random month (24 May–23 June) of a random year (2007), as is the case here.