Writing effectively...

Writing: A Guide for College And Beyond (Sample Chapter) by Lester Faigley

Writing for Change: An Interactive Guide to Effective Writing, Writing for Science, and Writing for Advocacy (Web Resource) by Alan Barker and Firoze Manji

Audience Research...

http://www.audiencedialogue.net/sitemap.html

http://www.cemca.org/books/

Four key concepts in Media Studies

To know about how media works, what role it plays in our daily life, it’s important to understand four key concepts for studying the media. These are: Language, Representation, Institutions and Audience.

Language: Media messages are encoded and then decoded by audience. Encoding is the process by which a source performs conversion of information into data. Decoding is the reverse process of converting data into information understandable by a receiver. Encoding is the process of formulating messages, that is, person's skill of using language to convey messages. Decoding is the process of analyzing the message, that is, a person's skill of understanding language. Language is a code established through rules and regulations. These rules govern the meaning and usage of the code. The understanding (decoding) and production (encoding) of the code is also based on mutual agreement of these rules.

This process of communication requires the use of media language. News and information, analysis and interpretations, education, public relations, sales and advertising are mass messages. These messages are the perceptible part of our relationship to the media and it is for these messages that we pay attention to media.

Representation: The process of presenting information about the world to the world is called representation. The key issue here is to explore, who is being represented and why, and by whom and how? Fairness of representation has always been a critical area of enquiry in Media Studies. According to Patricia J. Williams, “The media do not merely represent; they also recreate world as desirable, and saleable. What they reproduce is chosen, not random, not neutral, and not without consequence”. The key questions are: who produces (creator or author), who are the target audience, what is missing & why?

Institutions: Media institutions arrange, create, illustrate, design, put together, print or broadcast, advertise and distribute media products to the masses via existing delivery systems. It’s important to understand how these media institutions work and how they work can influence the media products. How a text is influenced by various institutions? How ownership and other organization controls and affect text?

Concentration of media ownership is a serious concern for many. Though, there are few who would still align with the cultural imperialism thesis, but very few will disagree on the fact that six global media giants regulate the entire world opinion. It is also important to realize that concentration of media ownership seems to work against the alternative sources of opinion, voice of the dissent, diversity and ultimately against democracy.

Audience: An audience is/the recipient of message. An audience is the/a group of people who participate & experience work of art, literature, theatre, music. An audience is the/a group of consumers for whom the media text is constructed & who is exposed to the text. Audience is an abstract concept and can’t be defined in terms of space and time. Audiences can’t be controlled but they can be sought. It’s an abstract concept for those persons who use a medium. Audience is a part of the whole, made up of individuals but measured as a collective and can be established by quantitative and qualitative methods. Individuals differ from audience in terms of usage of different media to meet their wants. Individuals spend different amounts of time serving different wants with different media. Collections of individuals meet different wants through different media use create audiences.

Reference:

• Wall, Peter (2007), Media Studies for AQA GCSE, Harper - Collins
• Picture source: Business World (India)

Some useful web links on Human Communication

• http://www.ablongman.com/samplechapter/0205353908.pdf
• http://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/PDF/IESBS.pdf
• http://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/PDF/HSP.pdf
• http://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/PDF/Adv.pdf
• http://evolutionarymedia.com/papers/rolesInMedia.htm
• http://evolutionarymedia.com/papers/hammerAsMedium.htm
• http://davis.foulger.info/research/unifiedModelOfCommunication.htm
• http://davis.foulger.info/papers/ecologicalModelOfCommunication.htm
• http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/mass/massintro/chap4/toc.mhtml
• http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262530384chap1.pdf

India’s National Broadcaster Turns 50

As Doordarshan, India’s National Broadcaster Turns 50, I look at the evolution of Indian television programmes via Doordarshan.

Within the evolution of programmes on Doordarshan, entertainment programmes were closely aligned with two popular cultural elements - theatre and the feature films.[i] Entertainment programmes on Doordarshan appropriated liberally from these cultural form, eventually developing a set of texts that were /are unique to Doordarshan. In the process, tele-plays as the part of the large array of programmes set the stage for the development of television serials. Film-based programmes, and regular screening of feature films, also facilitated this process, primarily by establishing entertainment programmes as a principal element of Doodarshan. It is important to recognise that feature films and feature film based music are perhaps the two most important aspect of Indian popular culture.

Feature films, and feature-film based programmes, are significant in two ways. First, these programmes establish the relation between films and television in Indian popular culture. No other corpus of programmes did as much to popularize television as feature films and feature film music programme. This inter-textuality also provide the foundation for the emergence of a body of programmes that would appropriate from the textual strategies of feature films and tele-plays, to develop an entire new body of text that has loosely been called ‘soap opera’.[ii] Within the context of Doordarshan, the terms ‘soap opera’ and ‘serialized programmes’ are often used interchangeably and is of primary importance since these two names have entered the Doordarshan vocabulary. The label ‘soap opera’ was appropriated from the Western lexicon of the television terms.

The Mexican experiment of “Come with Me” and “Come Along with Me” telecast in the late seventies influenced the introduction of the soap opera in India. The idea was to use the traditional form of the soap opera to sell social messages. In their Handbook for Reinforcing Social Values through daytime Serials it was observed that even when soap operas were specifically used “ to reinforce positive social values”. Thus, the series “Come Along with me” was directed towards motivating people to adopt family planning methods. It is claimed that after the serial began to be aired over 5 lakh people visited family planning clinics and National Family Planning Board received nearly 500 calls in a month for information.

The rapid expansion of television hardware in India during 1984-85 increased the need for developing more programmes software to fill the broadcast hours. Programme production, previously a monopoly of Doordarshan, the government run television system in India, was opened up to an outside pool of artists, producers, directors, and technicians. Most of these talented individuals were connected with the Mumbai film industry.

Doordarshan in its genre of television programming started with Hum Log, which was a pro-development soap opera. A pro-development soap opera is a melodramatic serial that is broadcast both in order to entertain, and to subtly convey an educational theme to promote some aspect of development. Pro-development soap operas are an unusual type of media messages, in that their design is based on human communication theories.[iii] In order to analyse the changing values on Doordarshan we shall take few popular serials and soap operas as our case studies.

Hum Log: A Pro-development Soap Opera for Indian Television Audiences.

The Indian soap opera of 156 episodes Hum Log (“We People”) was aired by Doordarshan twice a week in 1984-85 in collaboration with a private agency, Time and Space Video Communications and sponsored by Nestle’ (Maggi). Hum Log was inspired by the earlier Mexican experience with pro-development soap operas. It sparked off virtual programming revolution at Doordarshan. Hum Log, written by Manohar Shyam Joshi and directed by P. Vasudev Kumar, was about the life of a middle class family and characterised in the following manner:

“Amelioration of women’s status, family harmony, family planning, national integration, maintenance of Indian traditional culture, problems of urban life, dowry and alcoholism”.[iv]

The series was especially successful in northern India, scoring switch on rating of up to 90%. In 18 months it ran in 1984-85 it reached 60 million viewers, as it was entertaining, socially relevant and educative.[v] Unintentionally, Hum Log helped commercialize Indian television and led to proliferation of domestically produced programmes, and also encouraged the Mumbai film industry to become heavily involved in television.

In that context Hum Log offered many a contradictions and divergence. But it did set a base for the soap opera to assert itself for an identity in India. From then, at a given time, any one soap opera reigns supreme on Indian television. The soap operas which have dominated the Indian television for the decade are Hum Log (1984-85), Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi (1984-85), Buniyaad (1986), Ramayana (1987) , Mahabharata (1988), Fauzi (1989), The Sword of Tipu Sultan (1990), Chanakya (1991) Humrahi (1992), Chandrakanta & Sri Krishna (1994), Akbar the Great & Swabhimaan (1995). Around the time of Hum Log came another soap, a comedy called Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi which rivalled Hum Log in terms of its popularity. It entranced the viewers for over years with antics of the characters. Technically it was nearer a sit-com serial than a soap opera. In fact most of the serials that followed these two suffered by comparison because the serious ones were compared with Hum Log and light hearted with Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi. Together these two soaps made a substantial contribution to Doordarshan’s software variety in those initial years.

Another popular soap opera that came on the television was Khandaan, which may be compared to the internationally renowned American soap, Dynasty. This was another type of soap in that it reflected the day to day life of the people who were far removed from the lives of the vast majority of the viewers - intrigues, conspiracies and rivalries intervening the smooth life of the high class business class. The viewers who belonged to the upper strata found reflection of their life style for the first time in the Indian soap. Another aspect about this soap was the concept of the extra-marital affairs or abnormal man-woman relations. This did not go down well with a traditionally conservative audience.

Buniyaad: Recalling Country’s Contemporary History

The main lesson from the Hum Log experience was that indigenous soap operas in India could attract large audiences and big profits. Buniyaad (“Foundation”), a historical soap opera centred on the partition of India and Pakistan, followed Hum Log in 1986-87. Telecast twice a week of 104 episodes Buniyaad scripted by Manohar Shyam Joshi and produced by G.P. Sippy as a sponsored show for Doordarshan overshadowed even Hum Log in its popularity, achieving ratings of up to 95 per cent in northern India. Buniyaad was woven round the life of a family of the pre-partition Punjab. The sufferings as well as the acts of fortitude of those affected were recaptured in Buniyaad. It became very popular with the masses all over the country. Not only with those who had witnessed the holocaust, but also those born in free India. Buniyaad recalled an important chapter of the country’s contemporary history.[vi]

Ramayana: Revival of an Epic on Small Screen

In 1987-88 followed, Producer- director Ramanand Sagar’s TV 93-part serial Ramayana, based on India’s legendary religious epic , and was broadcast by Doordarshan. Sixty millions Indians watched it, many Hindus took a bath to purify themselves prior to the serial’s broadcast.. During the sacred 45 minute Ramayana broadcasts, many viewers lit incense-sticks before their TV sets, crowds thinned on the city streets, and trains screeched to unscheduled halts at railroad stations with public TV sets. Doodarshan earned $ 20 million in advertising revenues, and the serial’s audience ratings reached 95 per cent in several North Indian towns and cities.[vii]

Ramanand Sagar read fourteen different versions of Ramayana to create his serial, which stressed such human values as morality, obedience, discipline, and loyalty. Chaupaiyaas (Verses) were put to melodious much, each conveying moral theme. While Ramayana’s critics labelled the serial as a rather poor representation of the original epic , many lauded its positive influence on the viewers. Nevertheless, Ramayana’s tremendous popularity helped sell videotapes of the serial, books about the epic which earned heavy profits for Sagar and his business associates. Doordarshan, the major beneficiary of the serial’s advertising incomes, seriously considered reviving the serial in late 1988 to coincide with Dussehra festival, which celebrates Lord Rama’s victory over the Demon King Ravana. Encouraged by the tremendous success of Ramayana, the another Indian epic serial, Mahabharata, began broadcasting in India in late 1988.

Mahabharata on Doordarshan

Of all programmes, the most popular belongs to the category that has been called the ‘religious soap operas’, particularly Mahabharata and Ramayana. In 1990 the second and longer of the two great epic poems of India, Mahabharata, went on air as a 50 part soap. Normal life was disrupted in town, city and village as watching B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharata on television became a ritual in itself. Mahabharata aroused and fulfilled many aspirations, fantasies and needs of the spellbound audience. Popular narratives deal with the fundamental oppositions of good and evil or in this case, dharma and adharma, which are set up within recognisable narrative structures. Mahabharata meant many things to many people and this is reflected not in the viewership ratings, which regularly reached 90%, but also in the many studies dedicated to analysing the reasons behind the ratings.[viii] Mahabharata combined religion and entertainment, history and myth, dreams and desires, constructions of past glory with the promise of golden future. It helped to define a community, complete with values, a history and a future, and invited its audience to partake of its vision. It re-established traditional values in a society confronting modernism.[ix] There is no doubt that all these factors helped to create the appeal of the television remake of the great Indian epics.

Many studies have attempted to account for the reasons behind the unprecedented appeal of Ramayana and Mahabharata, while others have debated the question of popularity of these serials was a cause and effect of the rise of Hindu chauvinism as reflected in the growing Hindu militancy of the Sangh Parivar and the gain in the vote bank of the Bhartiya Janta Party, a Hindu rightist political party in India. One such effect is the growing sense of Hindu nation, a growing awareness across India, where the hegemony of the Hindu faction has become increasingly oppressive. There is an informal body of argument that claims Mahabharata is not necessarily a religious text; on the contrary, it is a social documentary on a Hindu way of life as serial has recorded the original Mahabharata text in such a way it highlights its Hinduness more than its secular social commentary.[x]

Is it a mere accident that mythological serials on Doordarshan coincided with Ramjanambhoomi agitation? Unlikely. Rarely have culture and politics marched in such perfect unison: So potent was the cultural symbolism of the mythological that L.K.Advani’s rath of his yatra of 1990 was a copy of raths in B.R. Chopra’s tele-serial Mahabharata. What probably began as an assertion of cultural identity has become commercial imperative. Since Ramayana in 1985, Mahabharata, Uttar Ramayana, Viswamitra, Sri Krishna, Chanakya, Om Namah Sivay, Jai Hanuman have been Doordarshan’s highest rated programmes other than films and film-based shows, and more significantly, its highest revenue earners. Thus, commercial not cultural imperatives ensure the continuation of mythological on Doordarshan.[xi]

This generic formula could and has been translated into other contexts and has also found, if not equal, at least substantial numbers of viewers. The ‘secular’ nature of Doordarshan had to be upheld by following Mahabharata with The Sword of Tipu Sultan, signifying strategies reproduce the representations in Islamic tradition, closer in form to the text book depiction of the struggles of Tipu Sultan - a Muslim king - against the British, Mullah Nasruddin, Mirza Ghalib, Akbar the Great and Bible ki Kahaniya for Christian viewers while Hindu serials like Sri Krishna, Jai Hanuman and Om Namah Shivay continued for the dominant Hindu population. There is a more recent and worrying expression of Hindu ideology to propagate Hindu way of life among children, passing it off as the true Indian way of life in Mukesh Khanna’s Shaktimaan, the comic super hero.

Whether its commercial or cultural imperatives it is worth mentioning that culture ultimately can never be fully managed by society’s political-economic power brokers and media managers. Articulations of official or dominant ideologies do not determine culture. Under certain circumstances, dominant ideological expressions can even inspire violent resistance to the power holders. Ideological discontinuities and social disruptions are especially evident in today’s fast-paced, contradictory, conflictive world. Although social institutions and information technology clearly serve their managers and backers in certain ways, they can also combine to shake dominant political versions and cultural traditions to the core. This can bring about dire consequences”.[xii]

Swabhimaan: India’s Answer to The Bold and Beautiful & Santa Barbara

Doordarshan in 1995 started a new soap title Swabhimaan (“Self- Esteem”). Media critics say 524 episodes of Swabhimaan, which has been scripted by Shobha De, and directed by Mahesh Bhatt, is a sure sign that marathon serials are India’s answer to The Bold and Beautiful & Santa Barbara. This also signals the revival of the mega-serials syndrome which was at its zenith a decade back with hugely successful Hum Log and Buniyaad later Ramayana and Mahabharata. Swabhimaan is the longest television series on India television. It airs in Hindi, Bengali and Tamil and its content is radically different from Hum Log, Buniyaad, Ramayana, and Mahabharata. Swabhimaan is about the fate of the enormously rich Malhotra family. The head of the clan dies, leaving behind a mistress named Svetlana, an alcoholic wife, a handsome son and an embittered younger brother to fight over the family business. Son Rishab hates Svetlana and freezes her bank accounts; the wife tries to destroy her rival through black magic. Rishab’s cousin is seduced. The plot spans two generations and has more than 100 characters. Swabhimaan is “The Bold and Beautiful Meet Dynasty in Baywatch for All Eternity” of Indian television.

These contemporary soap operas Swabhimaan, Shanti, Junoon or Waqt ki Raftar use the conventions of melodrama to undermine the aspect of social realism. Characters are usually archetypal and true to melodramatic conventions. The use of coincidence in the plot structure and of passions like ambitions or revenge are exaggerated beyond psychological motivations of behaviour in the characters remove the serial from the everyday realities of viewers. The use of such devices serve to undermine the values of rationalism and enlightenment.[xiii] There are certain obvious questions. Are these new soaps and new television families a sign of the time? Are we seeing television, which reflects life? Or is this a case of art imitating art. Hindi soaps, as never before, borrowing elements and formulae from successful Western soaps beamed to us by STAR TV?

Today, Doordarshan is just like any commercial network, vying for advertising, measuring its success in terms of audience ratings, and producing very few programmes for itself. It was left to serials based on literary texts - Malgudi Days, Wagle Ki Duniya, Munshi Prem Chand Ki Amar Kahaniya, Katha Sagar, Maila Anchal to represent a more secular, multi-cultural tradition on Doordarshan. Earlier, Doordarshan’s literary serials and others like Nukkad, Neem Ka Ped gave space to varied class cultures. Now, it’s only Doordarshan’s regional channels, which articulate them. One area where social and cultural barriers appear to be crashing down and opening up is in the depiction of women. Doordarshan’s record has been equivocal. In the late 1980s, it saw the liberator and educator of women: serials such as Hum Log, Rajni, Kashmkash, Adhikaar, Stree, Udan, Humrahi explored the oppression of women and their struggle for independence existence. Now, programmes aimed at highlighting positive interventions by people like the documentary series Sahas that dramatised stories of women fighting for their rights and was presented by Shabana Azmi are becoming rare indeed. Instead, Doordarshan is commissioning and selling programme time to the highest bidders. The content of the programmes and the style of presentation, the production values are the same as those of commercial network and heavily influenced by the American soaps in which values and attitudes are homogeneous. The progressive intent of earlier programmes is rare. Thus, period from Hum Log to Swabhimaan has been an eventful journey for the soap format in India, though predominantly inconsistent.

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[i] Anand Mitra (1993). Television and Popular Culture in India: A Study of the Mahabharata. Sage. New Delhi/London. p. 81.

[ii] Ibid. p. 84.

[iii] A. Singhal & E. Rogers. (1989). India's Information Revolution. New Delhi, Sage. p.208.

[iv] Ibid p.114.

[v] Ibid. p.331.

[vi] Gopal Saksena (1996). Television in India: Changes and Challenges. New Delhi. Vikas Pub. House Pvt. Ltd.

[vii] Madhu Jain (1988). “Ramayana: The Second Coming”. India Today. Aug. 31

[viii] Anand Mitra.(1993). op. cit. P. 86

[ix] Nilanjana Gupta (1998) Switching Channels: Ideologies of Television in India. Oxford University Press. Delhi. p. 48.

[x] Anand Mitra (1993). Op. cit p.88.

[xi] Shailaja Bajpai (March, 1999) “Culture and Television”. Seminar. 475.

[xii] James Lull (1995). Media, Communication and Culture: A Global Approach. Polity Press. Cambridge. p. 114

[xiii] Nilanjana Gupta (1998), op. cit., p. 50

Silence in Human Communication is Golden

"To know of some is good; but for the rest, silence is to be praised."- Dante in The Divine Comedy

“The deepest level of communication is not communication. It is communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words; and it is beyond speech; and it is beyond concept”. - Thomas Merton

“Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence. That is why it has been said that nothing in this world is so like God as silence. All you have to do is pay attention to it”. - Eckhart Tolle

Silence means the condition or quality of being or keeping still and silent or the absence of sound. Silence is quietness, soundlessness or stillness. If word is a sound which has meaning, does this mean that silence holds no meaning?

In personal or in the professional life, silence does indicate hostility but also determines level of sophistication. Silence at times indicates disagreement but also reflects self-profoundness. Silence is also used to manifest intentional rudeness but also indicates respect, contemplation, and empathy. One of the most important communicative functions of silence is the creation of listening space. Remember the mantra: Listen to learn and learn to listen.

In all religions and religious practices, silence has long been understood as an important step in spiritual development. In Christianity, there is the silence of contemplative such as Centering prayer and Christian meditation; in Islam, there are the wisdom writings of the Sufis who insist on the importance of finding silence within. In Buddhism, the descriptions of silence and allowing the mind to become silent are implied as a feature of spiritual enlightenment. In Hinduism, including the teachings of Advaita Vedanta and the many paths of yoga, teachers insist on the importance of silence for inner growth. Holy Scripture warns us of the perils of the tongue, as "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21). Nor is this advice less insisted on in the Testament; witness: "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man" (St. James3:2 sq.).

But surprisingly, contemporary culture appears suspicious or contemptuous of silence…

References & Web Resources:

• http://www.puresilence.org/
• http://www.siteofsilence.eu/
• http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Silence
• http://www.urban-monk.org/pages/spiritual/Silence.pdf
• http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/arts-letters/silence-please
• http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13790a.htm
• http://www.linse.uni-due.de/linse/publikationen/silence.html