Orientalising the Emerging Media Capitals: the Age on Indian Tv's ‘Hysteria’

Abstract

This article foregrounds the manifestation of a contemporary Orientalist discourse in the global media sphere by reading the increasingly robust non-Western ‘other’ that is the Indian TV media through its remediation in the Melbourne-based paper, The Age. The particular institutions have been chosen due to the ‘quality journalism’ reputation of the latter outlet, and the frequency of references to the Indian media – particularly its numerous news television channels – during the spate of allegedly racist attacks on Indian students in Melbourne in 2009–10. Feature articles, news items and opinion pieces appearing in the paper on this issue from May 2009 to June 2010 are examined for mentions of, and comments on, the Indian TV media. Conclusions are then drawn about how the remediation of India and its media offered by The Age effectively redraws a nation previously receiving limited coverage (literally and discursively) in Australia. What is significant here is not the resurgent Indian as reflected in the coverage of the Indian media, but its specific television might remediated by The Age as powerful yet Bollywood-esque in its drama and spectacle.