This review undertakes a comprehensive synthesis of how the media construct social reality through representation. It argues that representation operates through three interlinked mechanisms—framing, filtering and powering—which together organise what becomes visible, what circulates and who is authorised to define public meaning. The review first synthesises classical and contemporary scholarship on media effects, discourse, political economy and news production. It then situates these theoretical traditions within India’s historical media trajectory, tracing continuities and transformations from colonial print cultures and state broadcasting to post-liberalisation commercial media and platform-based digital infrastructures. By reading these phases relationally rather than sequentially, this review proposes the framing–filtering–powering triad as an integrative analytic lens for examining representation in plural and hybrid media systems. In doing so, it highlights how narrative structuring, institutional gatekeeping and credibility allocation operate in concert in shaping democratic visibility within India’s complex public sphere.
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