top of page

Media and the Constitution of the Political

This project is supported by M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’

The thematic module, Media and the Constitution of the Political, is the seventh, and most recently formed in the modular organisation of the International Centre for Advanced Studies: Metamorphoses of the Political (ICAS:MP). The module addressed a diversity of topics and methods to explore media as an integral aspect of life, and the distinctive way it configured the political as a field of sensory engagement. We proposed research into the uses of print media, photography, film, television, video and digital media, sound technologies and cultures. The module, also known as TM7, privileged a focus on the technological and material affordances, how cinema and television, books, files and paper and online texts, gramophones, audio and video cassettes, compact disks, audio files and closed circuit tv, microphones and loudspeakers channelled information and affect. A focus on a machine-driven 21st century media, and its significance for agency and memory, was also signalled. Institutions and industries were to be key sites, from media schools and studios cultivating journalists, filmmakers, sound-designers and editors to data analytic start-ups, from courts of law to forensic labs. We encouraged research into media deployment not only in formal politics, but in unexpected and unsettling irruptions of the political, as in media panics that circulated hate and fear, but also in social media interventions that unsettled a new dominant, for example through a multiplication of internet broadcasts that challenged media corporations during the huge farmer’s agitation that erupted around Delhi in 2020-2021. 

 

Starting in July 2018, the module had a “seed” phase of three years, to be focused on research projects and workshops. After an inaugural workshop in June 2019, which enabled us to develop a module membership to oversee our activities and outputs and to select fellows when TM7 acquired full modular status in July 2021, the pandemic prevented further physical meeting until quite recently. 

 

Apart from module fellowships  a research a research team supported by TM7 from July 2018 in Delhi has been housed in the Sarai programme of the CSDS. This team has worked on individual projects which came willy-nilly to be part of two broad themes: Media and Publicity, and Law and Media. Weekly meetings of researchers, regular research diaries, and field/archival work shaped the work of the module. By 2020 the covid-19 pandemic and resultant lockdowns set up a constricted environment for field research. The pandemic began easing only by the Spring of 2022. In spite of these difficult conditions, the module has been remarkably productive. Two important edited books have emerged from the module: Media and the Constitution of the Political by Ravi Vasudevan, and Acts of Media, by Siddharth Narrain. Researchers have written peer reviewed articles, online academic texts, while more essays are under process with journals for eventual publication. Two unique sets of researcher diaries have emerged from our ethnographic sites. Collections of research materials have been curated, the scope of which will expand in the coming period.

Research Projects

Sagorika Banner_edited.jpg
More

This project looks at the evolution of viral media through the prism of the local, in this case through the geographic lens of Northeast India. Fieldwork focused on three notorious events dating to 2007-2012. Researching media circulation in a pre-WhatsApp era, the project takes regional news media as a key source, and has undertaken interviews with media practitioners and people involved in these cases, and collected news articles, media reports, court testimonies, social media posts, and legal documents.

More

This project provides insight into the use of media evidence in the jurisprudence of Sedition, examining cases from the onset of this colonial law to its current uses. The research extends to examining the procedural requirements of cases filed under Chapter VI of Indian Penal Code, 1860 (Crimes against the state) often applied in combination with charges of Sedition. It also provides an account the media practices of speakers accused of sedition, with special focus on Indian comedians.

Shruti Banner_edited.jpg
More

This project aims to understand the socio-legal life of video technology in its evidentiary role in Indian legal systems. It has generated research collections which include newspaper reports, trial and appellant courts’ judgements, government and police reports, case files with relevant documents. Initial ethnographic work, has yielded detailed field notes from Delhi’s district courts along with interviews with lawyers, judges and court staff.

Shikhar Banner_edited.jpg
More

This project details how truth telling is transformed after widespread media proliferation with a focus on public inquieries into the communal violence in North-East Delhi in 2020. The project seeks to detail how investigations assemble evidence and articulate the evidentiary value of media, special attention is given to practices associated with open-source investigations, online publication and archiving, and the management of risk associated with such human rights media practices.

Susan Banner_edited.jpg
More

This project seeks to understand the experience and affective ramifications of war as rendered in media practices sponsored by State agencies, private media, and individual practitioners. It places particular emphasis on media technology, infrastructure and memory. The project has generated an archive of government documents, newsreels, documentaries, fiction films, newspaper articles, photographs, advertisements, cartoons and interviews.

Mallika Banner_edited_edited.jpg
More

This project focused on sound and media cultures in urban India. More specifically, ethnographic and archival research was conducted in Delhi and Allahabad to study sonic amplification and public address systems as critical infrastructures for mass mediation in public spaces. Field sites included the Delhi Metro and the Kumbh fair, where fieldwork was conducted for about a year, and archival sources were accessed from the National Archives of India and the Central Secretariat Library in Delhi.

Mehak_edited.jpg
More

This project explores urban archives in publicity and public relations.It considers the relationship between commercial, governmental and political forms, as in the relationship between commercial advertising and governmental publicity and public relations, and in the deployment of advertising and public relations by political parties. Since January 2020, the project has extended earlier focus on institutions and practices of publicity to explore political campaigning as a media and information paradigm constituted by new, digital forms, information flows, and a panoply of mediating agents and networks.

Media Evidence in Crimes Against the State_edited.jpg
More

This project focuses on crowd formations in and through media, from photography and poster art through newsreel and fiction film and sonic technologies such as loudspeakers, to video and the contemporary virality of social media circulation and aggregation. It explores how media have been deployed to capture, project, invite identification with and mobilize people as mass formations.

Media Evidence in Crimes Against the State (2)_edited.jpg
More

This project explores the National Archives of India for how various departments of the Indian government, from the First World War through to the 1960s, used media technology for publicity. This includes governmental use of cinema, radio and print publicity, the type of works commissioned from commercial media, the forms of circulation of such media publicity, including modes of transportation, and the systems of exhibition through which media were placed before audiences.

6c cinema car_edited.jpg
More

As part of my work at Sarai-CSDS during this period I worked on a project related to law, media, and violence in contemporary India. My work focused on the relationship between law and media in relation to hate speech online on social media platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp. I examined contemporary incidents of violence in India such as the 2012 exodus of persons in the Northeast from cities including Bangalore, Chennai, and Pune, in relation to the circulation of content on social media platforms and the virality of this content.

Media Evidence in Crimes Against the State_edited.jpg
More

This project sought to look at the phenomenon of the Media Trial through four important cases -Tarakeshwar Case, Bawla Murder case, Nanavati murder case, and the Gandhi murder trial. A reading of the first three cases explore the theme of scandal and the media trial. Research notes provide a sense of the media ecology around these trials and their afterlife. The research project looks at popular magazines, newspapers, official documents, and novels as sources.

Sonali Banner_edited.jpg
bottom of page