Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1 Introduction
- Part One Elaborating Audiences: Meaning, Use and Social Context
- 2 Talking Back to ‘Bollywood’: Hindi Commercial Cinema in North-East India
- 3 ‘Adverts Make Me Want to Break the Television’: Indian Children and their Audiovisual Media Environment in Three Contrasting Locations
- 4 Urdu for Image: Understanding Bangladeshi Cinema through its Theatres
- 5 Musical Media and Cosmopolitanisms in Nepal's Popular Music, 1950–2006
- Part Two Telling Texts: Media Discourse, Identity and Politics
- Part Three Alternative Producers: The Articulation of (New) Media, Politics and Civic Participation
- List of Contributors
3 - ‘Adverts Make Me Want to Break the Television’: Indian Children and their Audiovisual Media Environment in Three Contrasting Locations
from Part One - Elaborating Audiences: Meaning, Use and Social Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1 Introduction
- Part One Elaborating Audiences: Meaning, Use and Social Context
- 2 Talking Back to ‘Bollywood’: Hindi Commercial Cinema in North-East India
- 3 ‘Adverts Make Me Want to Break the Television’: Indian Children and their Audiovisual Media Environment in Three Contrasting Locations
- 4 Urdu for Image: Understanding Bangladeshi Cinema through its Theatres
- 5 Musical Media and Cosmopolitanisms in Nepal's Popular Music, 1950–2006
- Part Two Telling Texts: Media Discourse, Identity and Politics
- Part Three Alternative Producers: The Articulation of (New) Media, Politics and Civic Participation
- List of Contributors
Summary
Introduction: ‘Indian’ Children, ‘Global’ Media?
The media environment surrounding children in a metropolis like Bombay, India has altered almost unrecognisably in the last two decades. Despite the introduction of hundreds of cable and satellite channels and broadband internet into many middle and some lower middle-class homes, however, discourses about children and media have remained surprisingly stagnant. These discourses tend to fall into one of two paradigms. The first is an effects paradigm, which focuses on content in either a negative or a positive manner. Instances include the protectionist stance that sees most Western media products as dangerous and having negative effects on ‘Indian values’, or the argument that the liberalising of the Indian media economy has brought about changes in content that challenge sexist and other negative attitudes. The second paradigm posits content as irrelevant. It views all innovations in the Indian media and communications environment as socially beneficial because they, apparently, make India more modern and competitive. While a host of other positions exist amongst parents and young people, these are rarely articulated publicly. The voices that get most coverage in the public sphere are usually those calling for censorship and/or technological skills development. Complexity is seen as problematic, and hence sidestepped.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- South Asian Media CulturesAudiences, Representations, Contexts, pp. 51 - 72Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2010