DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Culture & Communication in India: An Ethnography of the English-Language Press in New Delhi

Beeman/Peterson The aim of this study is to extend the sociology of media developed in the United States and Europe to the analysis of journalism in Indian by conducting ethnographic fieldwork among the press community in New Delhi. Several questions frame the project: how do journalists bridge the tension between Indian concepts of the press as representative of popular feeling and as tool for state-guided change? What routines and practices organize news gathering? What are the basic values and beliefs inculcated by journalism schools? And, are there high order cultural patterns (macro-rules) which organize both production and consumption of news? Answers to these questions will be sought through text analysis, participant-observation, ethnographic interviews, survey, and elicitation techniques. This project builds upon current models by linking textual and ethnographic analysis, and by linking news production and news consumption research. Research on non-Western mass media serves to test sociological models based on studies of Western media and expands our understanding of the role mass media play in different societies. Studies of media and public culture allow anthropologist to move the locus of anthropological work from the local community to national, regional and global levels; to unsettle the concept of culture as a timeless and coherent force; and to write about the subject as 'modern,' as similar to rather than different from the West. *** & E & E & E v ZY X PSW& 2 & 2 _ X PSQRVWU ~ F D F D F D F 4 3 F N ( ~ & u 4 Õ _^ZY X & u U m o I K P U F ? ? U U E Times New Roman Symbol & Arial 1 Pres Elite 5 Courier New ? B ? ' h } beeman peterson thesis award thesis award abstract abstract thesis beeman peterson Raymond Hames Raymond Hames