ABOUT THE BOOK

Media functions as an ideological apparatus or a cultural agent of power for the dominant and helps in maintaining its hegemony over the public psyche. The representations in media, therefore, connote the ideological hegemony of the culturally dominant. These mediated cultural constructions have received fairly good consumption in the heightened political sites of cultural nationalism. However, the mediated dominant discourse is contested at various cultural spaces of critical engagement, which in turn evokes new ways of redefining the modalities of production. The critical political categories such as caste, community, religion, gender and sexuality redefine the ways in which the production and consumption of media takes place in Indian society. This book is a collection of published and unpublished essays, written over a period of time, on various social, political and cultural issues that reflect the constructed mediated realities in contemporary political culture. It ranges from addressing the critical questions on social justice, media bias, scientific temperament, culture and sexuality to that of the political dimensions of cricket cultures.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ranjith Thankappan is presently Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, Telangana State, India. Prior to this position, he was with Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi as Assistant Professor and worked as reporter and sub-editor with various Dailies. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the production of the modern categories of print and Dalit in the narrative and representational praxis of many cultures of Journalism. His areas of interest are media studies, cultural studies, journalism cultures, media history, cinema, television and digital media.

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