Journal of Creative Communications recent issues

Imaginary Homes, Transplanted Traditions: The Transnational Optic and the Production of Tradition in Indian Television

Moorti, S. — 2008-01-14

This article calls for an understanding of Indian television as a transnationally mediated apparatus, rather than examining it as a national enterprise. At the production, distribution and reception levels, contemporary Indian television is enmeshed in an interconnected network of ‘contact zones’; its storylines and rhetorical strategies are shaped by the transnational traffic of programming and peoples, and the national–cultural identity it articulates is transnational in character. Consequently, its programming is, at least, double–sited and offers a double–vision, simultaneously referencing the transnational and the local to produce a global–parochial sensibility. Using the concept of the transnational optic, I analyse prime–time melodramas produced in India as well as in the diaspora to highlight the central role women have come to occupy in narratives about the Indian nation. Although the national and diasporic melodramas offer different definitions of ‘Indian tradition’, it is the figure of the woman who is presented consistently as the ‘bearer of tradition’. Paradoxically, in the melodramas I examine, this ‘traditional’ woman, who is located firmly in the domestic realm, is the primary figure through which the shows stage anxieties concerning national and global issues.

Changing Ambivalences: Exploring Corporate Sponsorship in the New Culturally Diverse Artistic Practices

Saha, A. — 2008-01-14

This article explores the commodification of difference in relation to the corporate sponsorship of the photography exhibition, Changing Faces. At first the article considers how the exhibition's collection of images of British Asian youth challenged stereotypical representations of Asian youth cultures, but then argues that this counter–hegemonic potential was undermined by the corporate sponsorship of telecommunications company 02. Yet that is not to say that the ethics of such explicit commerciality are immediately guaranteed; instead, there is the suggestion that the epistemological outcomes were much more complex. Indeed, the article adopts a cultural economy approach that shifts from dialectical political economy models of the culture industry and stresses the elaborate and entangled relations through which the production of culture is mediated. This article argues that it is only when these micro–processes are identified and then situated within the wider logic of global capitalism that the ethical implications of the corporate intervention in the culturally diverse arts can be more effectively ascertained.

Feeling Good? Look Again!: Feel Good Movies and the Vanishing Points of Liberation in Deepa Mehta's Fire and Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham

Donnell, A. — 2008-01-14

This article discusses two very different South Asian diasporic films that both promise an identity politics congruent with the objectives of postcolonial feminism alongside a distinctive ‘feel good’ factor: Deepa Mehta's Fire (1997) and Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Both films explore the pressure that certain ideas of India exert on female subjectivities in the diaspora a.nd at home, and their success as feel good films depends on the viewer's ability to understand and ally themselves with the liberation of the central characters from these pressures. By reading the limits as well as the triumphs invoked by the emotional crescendos of these films and the politics of liberation that they endorse, this article also considers other points of continued silence and struggle (specifically queer diasporic subjects and sex workers), not foregrounded by the visual or narrative persuasions of the films themselves.

Indian Movies, Narratives of Dissent and Objectification

Narain, A. — 2008-01-14

This article examines negative attitudes around Indian films generated in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, to engage in the changing politics of Indian marginality, media representation and political relations towards Indians. By juxtaposing a series of ethnically charged speaking positions ignited by Indian cinema I highlight how the capital is seen as, essentially an Afrocentric space, contested by the shift in political power towards a ‘perceived’ Indian government. These various positions present how Indian films are made synonymous with Indian culture and how that culture is performed, celebrated and disavowed in this urban space.

'UK is Finished; India's too Corrupt; Anyone can become Amrikan': Interrogating Itineraries of Power in Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice

Malik, S. — 2008-01-14

This article attempts to understand the representations of American exceptionalism in Indian diasporic popular film through an analysis of reconfiguration of model minority racialization in Gurinder Chadha's films Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice. The films underscore that the model minority racialization of Indians in the United States is being constructed in transnational South Asian diasporic framework through an engagement with British imperial history and the British colonial subject, and with Indian nationalism. While United States’ imperialist structures invoke model minority racialization in form, they simultaneously evacuate its content through racialization of Indians as potential terrorists. Thus, in a post–9/11 world marked by convergences between racialization processes of Britain and United States, the Indian diaspora is characterized by a project of transnational racial management. The diaspora is, thus, structured by management of anxieties generated by Indian gendered and racialized bodies: anxieties of economic success gendered male are diffused through fear of potential terrorists; anxieties of sexual and cultural purity are managed by racialization of women as native informants, who come to embody continuities between the national and the global.

The Politics of Emotion in British Asian Experiences of Bombay Cinema

Jha, M. R. — 2008-01-14

British Asian subjects articulate their emotional and embodied engagement with Bombay cinema,1 making visible glimpses of their social life. This article scrutinizes the Bombay cinema experience through a sociological, empirical and ethnographic analysis of 24 semi–structured interviews undertaken in London, Manchester and Oldham. I employ the ‘circuit of culture model’ (du Gay et al. 1997; Johnson 1986) to explore the relations between the processes of production, representation, reception and regulation in the diasporic circulation of Bombay cinema. The ambiguous and ambivalent, but clear polarities that define the respondents’ relations with the cinema articulate a dialectical dynamism of affect and criticism. Combining the ‘keeping in touch with back home’ discourses of earlier South Asian generations with other desires of ‘recognition’, ‘visibility’, ‘consumption’ and ‘drudgery of culture’, they convey their understanding of themselves and their world. Some respondents were reflexive about their complicity in the dominant ideologies, and the holding together of the contradictions enabled discussion and debates. The desire for ‘glimpses of ourselves’ is full of contradictions in a neo–liberal global culture, and Bombay cinema practice becomes a site for the postcolonial diasporic imagining of identity. I argue that the contradictory and ambivalent identifications in Bombay cinema experiences are reconfigured to desire a decolonized subjectivity where an inter–subjective sensibility is valued through a prioritizing of an emotional connection and relationality. This, I propose is a critique of Western liberal notions of ‘individual self formation.’

Pantomime Terror: Diasporic Music in a Time of War

Hutnyk, J. — 2008-01-14

I find it increasingly problematic to write analytically about ‘diaspora and music’ at a time of war. It seems inconsequential; the culture industry is not much more than a distraction; a fairytale diversion to make us forget a more sinister amnesia behind the stories we tell. This article nonetheless takes up debates about cultural expression in the field of diasporic musics in Britain. It examines instances of creative engagement with, and destabilization of, music genres by Fundamental and Asian Dub Foundation, and it takes a broadly culture critique perspective on diasporic creativity as a guide to thinking about the politics of hip-hop in a time of war. Examples from music industry and media reportage of the work of these two bands pose both political provocation and a challenge to the seemingly unruffled facade of British civil society, particularly insofar as musical work might still be relevant to struggles around race and war. Here, at a time of what conservative critics call a ‘clash of civilizations’, I examine how music and authenticity become the core parameters for a limited and largely one-sided argument that seems to side-step political context in favour of sensationalized—entrenched—identities and a mythic, perhaps unworkable, ideal of cultural harmony that praises the most asinine versions of multiculturalism while demonizing those most able to bring it about. Here the idea that musical cultures are variously authentic, possessive or coherent must be questioned when issues of death and destruction are central, but ignored.

Communicative Flows between the Diaspora and 'Homeland': The Case of Asian Electronic Music in Delhi

Murthy, D. — 2008-01-14

Indian cities are experiencing significant processes of social, economic and political change, bringing together new configurations of urban identities. This is hardly a new phenomenon. During Imperial rule, nineteenth and twentieth century Bombay, for example, experienced considerably rapid metropolitan reconfigurations (Morris 1991: 235–37). Indian partition is, of course, the most glaring example in contemporary Indian history. However, what is distinct about recent changes in urban India is how they have been shaped by the wide-ranging economic liberalization policies of the early 1990s spearheaded by P.V. Narasimha Rao's Congress Party coalition. The previously socialist sheltered economy was ‘structurally reformed’ as the selected means to avert a near currency collapse.1 Over the last decade, Indian urban centres have seen enormous growth in the forms of upmarket housing (Appadurai 2004: 263), stylish coffee bars such as Baristas and Caf� Coffee Days, the building of high-tech private hospitals (Ray 2003) and other developments targeting the burgeoning middle to upper classes. Indian metropolises have been experiencing massive inflows of national, international and diasporic capital that have transformed the cities at an astonishing pace. New Delhi is no exception to this trend; its society has been the site of deep shifts ranging from kinship to consumption over the last decade (Mathur and Parameswaran 2004). Some very striking shifts have arisen from cultural, political and economic interactions with the diaspora. As India's capital, Delhi has also experienced unique political interactions with the diaspora. The lobbying by first-generation diasporic ‘non-resident’ Indians (NRIs) for dual citizenship is one example.2

'Indian Art' in Trinidad? Ethnicity at its Limits

Wainwright, L. — 2008-01-14

Addressing present day art making in the southern Caribbean island of Trinidad, with specific attention to the notion of a diasporic ‘Indian art’, this article offers a genealogy of some relationships between ethnicity, nationhood and visual imaging. Focusing on the painter and sculptor Shastri Maharaj (b. 1953), who is descended from South Asian indentured migrants to Trinidad, it shows how artists in the Caribbean have negotiated the region's period of strident anti-colonialism to the present. Examples of Maharaj's art comprise works of figuration and landscape, including depictions of local architectural styles and Hindu ritual, as well as more ambiguous and abstract forms, also presented as gallery installations. Paying attention to these the discussion highlights the problematic relations between the exegetical tendency for ‘reading’ such visual materials, and the ambitions of artists seeking to transcend the limits of expectations about ethnicity and cultural difference. In place of those limits it recommends an alternative historiography able to enjoin the critical search among contemporary artists for perceptual and aesthetic agency.

Globalization, God and Galloway: The Islamisization of Bangladeshi Communities in London

Hussain, D. — 2008-01-14

In this article I want to investigate the strategic values of ethnicity, class, religion, global, local and transnational processes as resources for political mobilization, struggle and resistance in the global city. Though some of my argument can be applied to many global cities, I will do this by exploring it in the context of the Islamisization of Bangladeshi communities in the global city par excellance, London. This will be an attempt to analytically link actual state policies, capitalism, transnational and global networks to forms of cultural reproduction, inventiveness and possibilities. This analysis can in turn provide us with an understanding of the role played by migrant communities in the context of a contemporary multicultural Britain. This study is timely. Not only due to the subject matter of the global rise of religious movements, but also because local case studies—not local in the sense of fixed and bounded communities, but as sites from which mobility as well as fixity can be empirically observed—are vitally necessary for elaborating the nature of the contemporary world. This article is aiming to contribute to a conversation, partly public and partly taking place within the political sciences.

'Not Something We're New To. Its Something We Grew To': Reflections on Urban Cultural Identities, Anthropology and Cultural Representations

Smith, H. — 2008-01-14

On a global scale, new images are chasing out the old. Contemporary cultural experiences have new international inflections and connections: ‘households’ cross continents, teenagers in the Philippines don sequinned flares with nostalgia for the days of Elvis, white English city kids use Jamaican Creole and African American slang to articulate their experiences, and British-born second-generation West Indians identify with bhangra music and pan-Africanism. As ‘insights into other cultures... are brought into one's living room’ (McGrane 1989: 115), the ‘scapes’ (Appadurai 1994) that comprise our social and cultural worlds show us that there are multiple ways of knowing, doing and being. As members of families, neighbourhoods, institutions, academies, cities, classes and so on, we are all living in, and engaged in making, an ‘all change world’ (Prescod 1997). In a context of the daily reworking and reconstruction of meaning-making processes, the question becomes ‘how are we to live in the world?’ (Rushdie 1981[1991]: 17). The following discussion looks at how ideas about culture and cultural diversity have changed since Boas’ time; how societies have themselves changed; and how contemporary social research, and the subjects of study, are continually developing ways to understand and represent ‘the diversity of ideologies and discourses that they both consume and engage with’ (Back 1996: 53).

Travels in Negotiations: Difference, Identity, Politics

Brah, A. — 2008-01-14

There are three parts to the article. First, it addresses the figure of the Asian in British cultural formation, charting the major changes in its configuration since World War II. Second, it considers negotiations through the terrain of feminism, with particular reference to the debate between ‘black’ and ‘white’ feminism. And third, it addresses certain debates and issues across the field of difference and identity.

Book Reviews

2008-01-14

Technology Inclination-based Segments of Indian Customers

Adhikari, A., Rao, A.K. — 2007-01-11

Although technology plays a significant role in service management, adoption of technology-enabled services depends not only on technology readiness of service consumers, but also their inclination towards technology from traditional way of marketing. This article attempts to identify the dimensions that influence consumers’ inclination to use technology-enabled services, and to segment service consumers. Primary data were collected from consumers in 12 cities in India, and analysed using factor analytical techniques. Six dimensions were identified, which were used to segment the consumers. Using cluster analysis technique, four customer segments with distinct response styles were identified. These clusters are validated. The implication of the results to researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Attitude and Perceptual Factors in the Adoption of Computers in a School System: A Case Study of Trinidad and Tobago

Sooknanan, P., Melkote, S. R. — 2007-01-11

The advent of new communication technologies has significantly influenced the direction of diffusion research. Initially, the focus was on adoption with individuals as its units. However, with the increasing importance of new communication technologies, it is now considered the responsibility of organizations. As a result, current research in diffusion is mainly concerned with implementation since the innovation process in organizations is only considered successful if it leads to implementation and possibly institutionalization. This article examines the relationship between the independent variables (teachers’ attitudes towards computers and perceived innovation characteristics) and the dependent variables (teacher satisfaction and utilization). Ten hypotheses were formulated to examine the relationship between the variables. Using regression analysis, seven hypotheses related to perceived innovation characteristics were supported. One hypothesis related to attitudes was also supported. The results demonstrate that the implementation of educational computing was successful. This achievement can be attributed more to the importance of attitudinal and perceptual factors than the prescribed linear approach to the diffusion process in organizations. More specifically, the findings emphasize that the degree of implementation is a critical variable in diffusion research.

Jobs are Going Overseas: The Discursive Construction of Outsourcing

Pednekar-Magal, V., Remlinger, K. — 2007-01-11

In this article we examine the discourse of outsourcing and globalization in India and the US as represented in global popular media; and show that it is rooted in a given range of ideological positions—revealed by identifying key arguments, vocabulary and linguistic structure of the texts. Ideological material, we argue, is enacted in the discursive structures of the text; and that the role of the state is discursively constructed through those positions.

Entertainment-Education and Possibilities for Second-Order Social Change

Singhal, A., Rao, N., Pant, S. — 2007-01-11

Inspired by the entertainment-education radio soap opera, Taru, a family from the upper-caste brahmin community in Bihar, India, allowed men from the lower caste dalit community to serve water to guests during their daughter's wedding. While most social change projects achieve first-order change, that is, change within a system which itself remains unchanged, Taru seemed to have engendered second-order changes, that is, changing the system itself. The present article investigates how Taru generated second-order changes in Bihar, distilling lessons for how entertainment-education programmes can be strategically positioned to create and sustain systemic social change.

Blogs and Business Conversations

Raghavan, S. — 2007-01-11

The Internet has moved human interaction to a virtual dimension. The World Wide Web has helped create online communities that link to one another and form a complicated web of interactions. Corporations that operate in these environs have begun to listen to the ‘voice’ of their communities and participate in their ‘conversations’. Blogs are quickly emerging as a useful media of participating in consumer conversations. This article articulates the role of blogs in a computer-mediated society with specific reference to its use in the business world.

Telecommunications and Development: The Cellular Mobile 'Revolution' in India and China

Kumar, K. J., Thomas, A. O. — 2007-01-11

Until the mid-1990s the ownership of a telephone in India was considered a luxury, not a consumer item. The waiting period for a landline could extend from five to 10 years. Even in 1996, for instance, people were waiting for a telephone after having paid a hefty amount as an application deposit for three to five years. Today in many states companies are competing to gain customers and there is no waiting list. Mobile telephone services have become so cheap now that subscriptions have outpaced fixed line connections. In 2005 and 2006 on average 4.5 million new mobile subscribers were added every month. The rapid spurt in tele-density has been exceeded only by China. This article will offer a political economic analysis of the dramatic growth of the cellular telephone industry during the last decades in India and China, and the public policy on deregulation that has driven this growth. In India the liberalization of telecommunications was ushered in the early 1990s by the Congress regime; the nationalist BJP regime further liberalized the industry. The article will also discuss the ‘mobile divide’ in the country, and between the urban and the rural sectors, and how this divide has had an impact on economic development. Some experiments in taking cellular telephony to the rural poor will be described. Finally, the article will ex-amine the uses and gratifications provided by cellular telephony, especially among the Indian youth.

Book Reviews

2007-01-11

Index To Volume 1

2007-01-11

An Exploratory Study in Celebrity Endorsements

Roy, S. — 2006-08-31

This study raises three questions and attempts to provide tentative explanations for them. The first two questions relate to locating, in the consumer's perceptual space, the relative position of Indian celebrities and brands on a set of personality attributes. The third question relates to determining the fit between the celebrity and the brands endorsed by her/him. The results suggest that consumers differentially rank both celebrities and brands. Specifically, Amitabh Bachchan ranks high on five personality attributes, and brands such as Pepsi and Coke rank high on four personality attributes. The study further shows that although celebrities may endorse several brands, their personality does not fit well with the personality of the brand they endorse. Evidence offered here supports the basic assumptions of the celebrity–product congruence model.

Public Relations as a Profession An Analysis of Curricular Content in the United States

Sriramesh, K., Hornaman, L. B. — 2006-08-31

This study attempts to evaluate the efficacy of undergraduate public relations programmes in the United States. The study surveyed 155 public relations educators and practitioners to determine their impressions on factors such as whether students are being imparted the knowledge and experience to become public relations practitioners, the knowledge and skills respondents thought students ought to possess to become successful professionals, the skills new graduates should possess, and the characteristics of the public relations profession. Results revealed agreement among educators and practitioners about the subjects that should be taught in undergraduate public relations programmes, including the knowledge and skills recommended by the Commission for Public Relations Education. Respondents did not agree on the best career plan for future public relations professionals. However, a majority felt that majoring in public relations with a minor in business was the best thing for students who want to work in this field. Respondents felt that not all of the subjects they deemed important were currently being taught in all public relations programmes. Both practitioners and educators agreed that graduates were well trained in the use of new technologies for public relations. However, the percentage of practitioners who felt that graduates were prepared to enter the public relations profession was considerably lower than educators.

Communication and the Semiotics of Space

Gaines, E. — 2006-08-31

The purpose of this article is to explicate some common situations relevant to communication and the semiotics of space. Semiotics provides a systemic way to analyse and understand the characteristics of signs expressing meaning. In everyday life space is rarely considered for its independent qualities, but is more generally taken as a category of conceptions that act as a background, or a context for the meaning of other objects. The study of space as a semiotic phenomenon suggests that the meaning of space, as a sign, is generally understood in relation to other concerns. Communication draws attention to the content of messages while space contributes to the meanings of those messages without being obvious about its role in constructing meaning.

Antecedents and Consequences of the Immoral Traffic Prevention (Amendment) Bill, 2005

Mohan, A. — 2006-08-31

Originally phrased as the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act, 1956 (SITA), to prevent trafficking for sexual exploitation, this law has undergone many changes. In 1986 the Act was amended and rephrased as the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA). The Act and amendments made from time to time have failed to achieve its objective. Now the union government is proposing to bring in some more amendments and the cabinet has assented to the same. The most contentious provision of the proposed amendment is the penalization of a client found in a brothel with the intention of exploiting a trafficked victim. Sex workers have been raising their voice against this provision as they fear that it will adversely affect their profession and put them in a situation where they cannot negotiate for safer sex practices. Furthermore, the proposed amendments are at odds with government-run HIV/AIDS intervention programmes.

HIV/AIDS Treatment Legal and Political Choices for India

Menghaney, L. — 2006-08-31

Multinational pharmaceutical companies patent essential drugs routinely in developed countries. Patents grant a monopoly to manufacture and sell a particular drug to one pharmaceutical company. Drugs are therefore very expensive in developed countries as availability and pricing is dependent on one pharmaceutical company.

In contrast with the absence of product patents, Indian pharmaceutical companies manufacture and sell generic drugs at a fraction of the price of patented drugs. In developing countries therefore affordable generic drugs from India are imported and used in the treatment of diseases and illnesses which are life threatening and chronic. AIDS, cancer, mental illness, asthma, and tuberculosis are some of the diseases for which generic drugs are sourced from India.

All this is now set to change. The ability of generic pharmaceutical companies in India to manufacture and sell essential drugs at affordable prices to patients and governments in developing countries including in India is at risk due to the amendments in the Indian Patent Act. The impact of the legal amendments to the India Patent Act introduced in 2005 under the TRIPS agreement are going to be felt increasingly across the developing world. In the coming decade as product patents on essential drugs are granted in India to multinational pharmaceutical companies, many of these drugs will become either unavailable or very expensive.

The article highlights the importance of generic drug manufacturing in India in the context of AIDS treatment. Legal options before the government of India to limit the impact of patents on generic manufacturing of affordable medicines are discussed with an emphasis on the political nature of the decisions involved.

Sex as Work A Changing Discourse

Sathyamala, C., Priya, R. — 2006-08-31

Nalini Jameela's autobiography, Oru Lyngikathozhilaliyude Athmakatha (The Autobiography of a Sex Worker), dictated and written in Malayalam, an instant bestseller in 2005, touches upon a number of issues that should have raised a stormy debate, but has not. This article attempts to understand Jameela's experience of initiation into this ‘occupation’ and her purpose for relating it to a wider audience, particularly in the context sex as legitimate work in the context of the HIV and AIDS epidemics. The book's societal meaning is explored by placing it along with various other perspectives on the institution of prostitution/sex work and prostituted women. The range of approaches articulated by the women involved in this, from one of total rejection to its very glorification as an occupation ‘like any other’, are exemplified through historical and contemporary testaments of individual women and the organizational manifestoes of sex workers.

Book Reviews

2006-08-31

Entertainment Education and Social Change The Communicative Dynamics of Social Capital

2006-03-01

This study explored processes of social change initiated by an entertainment education radio programme in India, Taru, which led to certain socially desirable effects in four villages in Bihar state. Data was collected primarily in the form of in-depth individual and focus group interviews, participant observation, and the design and implementation of a participatory theatre production by the respondents. We discovered that a media programme facilitates social change by stimulating the development of social capital in communities. Social capital was displayed through the development of: (a) relationships based on trust; (b) norms of reciprocity; and (c) communication networks. The existence of social capital contributed to educational programmes for lower-caste children, the improvement of community health, the stopping of a number of child marriages, and the promotion of gender equality. We also discovered, however, that social capital can initiate forces of both support and resistance towards social change. Furthermore, negative social capital may contribute to excluding certain people from participation in pro-social action, restricting individual freedom, placing excessive demands on group members, and downward levelling norms.

Electronic Networks, Enhanced State Surveillance and the Ironies of Control

Shields, P. — 2006-03-01

The article begins by mapping the worldwide surge of state network surveillance initiatives that has occurred over the last decade or so. Invariably, the rationale for these initiatives include the claim that they will curb crime and/or terrorism. Focusing on the US context, it is argued that the proliferation of state network surveillance initiatives has resulted in a substantial increase in state surveillance power. Dated legal concepts have been applied without discrimination to contemporary electronic networks. The upshot is that increasingly sensitive ‘traffic data’ can be accessed easily by law enforcement. This enhanced network surveillance capacity has failed to deter drug trafficking and money laundering – intertwined crimes that have been of high priority to US state officials. In fact, not only have these initiatives failed to curb these crimes, they have contributed to their escalation. It is argued that a similar dynamic may be at work in the US state's ‘war on terrorism’. Policy implications of the analysis are briefly discussed.

Public Relations in India Review of a Programme of Research

Bardhan, N., Sri Ramesh, K. — 2006-03-01

Public relations in India has witnessed a significant growth since the early 1990s. Based on the combined research of both authors over a period of 13 years, this article provides a meta-analysis and tracks recent changes within the profession keeping in mind the reconfiguring economic, societal, political and global/ local climate, we focus in-depth on the impact of societal culture and media environment on public relations in India.

E-Learning Who, What and How?

Khan, B. H., Joshi, V. — 2006-03-01

Developing high-quality e-learning courses is a complex process. It requires a variety of competencies at every stage of the development process. The literature on the subject so far emphasizes on development of e-learning content. The P3 model of people–process–product continuum explained in this article provides a holistic approach for not only creating good-quality e-learning content, but also deploying the course on the server and maintaining it.

Online Technologies Kill Distance in Learning Managing Participation in Online Journalism Courses

Sharma, D. C. — 2006-03-01

Online learning is a new form of distance learning, and technological inputs are constantly improving it. Various forms of distance education like correspondence, radio and television have existed for many decades now. But they all faced one major hurdle –lack of interaction between instructors and students because of the inherent nature of media. The advent of the Internet has solved this problem to a great extent. Interactivity is the hallmark of the online medium. It is possible for students to communicate with instructors and also with fellow students as well as resource persons, through the use of web technologies. For the first time in distance learning, the student is no more a passive receiver. Learners have a real chance to use different tools to make their learning experience as close to a face-to-face situation.

Design Assumptions by 'Adult' Designers versus 'Child' User Behaviour

Ramachandran, S. — 2006-03-01

Instructional theories postulate that learning is most effective when the learning environment is friendly, non-threatening and attractive to the child. However, designing fun-based interactivity to deliver serious educational content is quite a challenge. Sudiksha has designed and developed a series of multilingual CD-ROMs in collaboration with not-for-profit organizations. The objectives of these are to make learning fun in government schools in India. The titles are custom designed to suit the school curricula; the courses are socio-culturally relevant to an Indian audience.

The crux of designing courses for schools is that we are ‘adults’ designing content for children. Our panel of design advisers usually consists of pedagogy experts, psychologists and teachers. But the child-user is as dynamic as the medium and more. The user who learns on the run makes our solutions obsolete at a rapid pace. We often take pulse checks to figure out if we are on track with our solutions and our findings are often surprising. The findings of one such study are elaborated here.

Heuristic Evaluation of E-Learning Products Extended Garrett's Model of User Experience

Joshi, A., Medh, P. — 2006-03-01

The Azim Premji Foundation has created a repository of educational CDs based on various state curricula for bringing technology-based learning to schools, specifically schools in rural areas. This initiative is expected to meet several objectives, primarily: (a) to attract children to schools; (b) once attracted to school, sustain their interest in attending school; and (c) ensure effective learning by providing relevant and compelling content. Evaluating the first two objectives is an ongoing process, made possible through direct measures— tracking enrolments and dropouts. However, to ascertain learning effectiveness of the CDs, an objective analysis and evaluation of the product was needed. In this article we share our experience of using the heuristic evaluation technique to evaluate the CDs and the extended Garrett's model of user experience for organizing the findings of each CD into clear action lists for redesigning existing CDs and designing others in the future.

The Univbrands Story

Roy, S. — 2006-03-01

Sumit Roy of Univbrands moved back to his hometown in Kolkata, after spending 14 years in Mumbai, once he discovered a way to ‘e-coach people to grow brands’. This is the story of how he moved from building brands, for Ogilvy & Mather (1973–87), to building people who build brands, for Lintas (1987–91). In 1991 he started a ‘learn by earning university’, Univads, which rapidly evolved into Univbrands by 1996 as clients now wanted to use more than just advertising to build their brands. The year 1996 was also when the Internet revolution swept the world. Thanks to a chance meeting with Diane Garrod, Univbrands became the world's smallest learn-by-earning university, based out of India.

Everett M. Rogers and His Contributions to the Field of Communication and Social Change in Developing Countries

Melkote, S. R. — 2006-03-01

The death of Professor Everett M. Rogers in 2004 was a profound loss to the scholarly communications fraternety in general and the development communications community in particular. From the early 1960s up to his last days, Professor Rogers’ scholarly writings and research influenced the fields of development communication, diffusion of innovations, communication technology, research and theory, as well as five generations of scholars in these fields. In this article I summarize the literature and development in developing countries, highlighting Professor Rogers’ seminal contributions to the body of this work.

Improving the Health of the Discipline through Mentoring A Celebration of Everett M. Rogers' Legacy

Shukla, P. — 2006-03-01

Professor Everett M. Rogers, the person, the teacher, the researcher and the mentor is presented in this personal narrative through stories of the author's personal encounters. Over the course of a career that lasted four decades, he influenced the discipline in myriad ways. As a scholar of communication, one can learn about his academic contributions through his research articles and books, so in this article the author tries to acquaint us with him as a person who improved the health of the discipline in every little way.

Book Reviews

2006-03-01