Il Buono, il bruto, il cattivo of communications
Khorjei Lang *
Sergio Leone would have loved this. A book on the good, the bad and the ugly or Il Buono, il bruto, il cattivo of communications in India.
When one recalls the work of the legendary 'Spaghetti Western' film director, one is obviously not making an innocent attempt at the business of 'meaning making' by all forms of communication or reading the multiple layered stand-offs between the protagonist, antagonist and whosoever are in between.
And this book surely does not deal with the business of 'meaning making'. Pradip Ninan Thomas' Political Economy of Communications in India, instead, throws lights on issues and concerns that are often forgotten “in the context of the general euphoria with India's satellite days and cable nights.”
This book deals with, as Thomas says, what the cheer leaders of India's growth mania along with most media professionals and academics have chosen to ignore. It is a discursive exploration of the national and international context to understand the media in India.
How do we understand the phenomenon of selling personal or 'celebrity' information by the media?
Where does one locate the Tamil superstar Rajnikanth's attempt to extend copyright over the use of his 'style' and 'pose' in the film 'Baba'?
How did Bollywood acquire the potential to impact South Asia and beyond?
And when did plain IT companies formed their own 'life sciences' division?
To understand these questions, Thomas lists six areas in contemporary political economy of communications — Media Concentrations, Commodification, Intellectual Property, Media Policy and Governance, Audio-visual trade and Informationalisation and the Cross-Sectoral Digital Economy.
These areas of concern in short can be better digested if we familarise ourselves with the ideas of power, profit, dominance and resistance.
While pointing out that there is a sea difference between the power of a media moghul like Rupert Murdoch and the empowered blogger, Thomas also talks about commodification — converting “use value into exchange value”.
What is potentially marketable becomes commodities. In an age of globalisation and digital technologies, there is also a "marriage" between previously sepatate technologies – IT and Biotechnology and, IT and Militay Technology. Thomas brings them all under a scanner.
For him, understanding the global media industry from a political economy approach is important as they are “involved in the production and circulation of symbolic goods and services” that have the potency to influence individual and group choices and decisions.
Quite distinct from the classical vision and assumed role and function of the media, he implores us to think that contemporary global media is also about wielding power and making profit. This does not mean that there is uniformity of impact of communication technologies worldwide.
Thomas says the growing influence of “regional and national hubs of cultural productions”, “adaptations and localisations of culture” have challenged communications scholars to come up with a new and profound understanding of global communications.
Thomas has deftly divided his work into three sections. The first section deals with the history of structures, the second with processes and means and the third one with resistance.
Through this three sections, he manages to show us the contextualised picture of communications in India with a formidable perspicacity.
Not that he gives us easy clues to identify who are the Il Buono, il bruto, il cattivo but empowers the consumers of information to understand how realities are constructed by contemporary communication patterns.
Serious scholars, media professionals and policy makers would abundantly benefit from this work.
* Khorjei Lang wrote this article for Hueiyen Lanpao
This article was posted on January 24, 2015.
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