School of Mass Communication (Jun – Jul 2022)
Journal Papers
1. Gautam, N., Kumar, H., & Panda, R. K. (2022). Evolution of community radio in India and its application with respect to information and communication technology in education. International Journal of Health Sciences, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.53730/ijhs.v6nS1.7871
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has revolutionized the way we work, communicate, and impart knowledge. Due to the need to maintain physical distancing, education in India has been greatly hindered in the last two years. The education of around 250 million children in India was gravely impacted due to school closures which were caused by strict lockdown. To counter this crisis, governments all over the world collaborated with industry stakeholders and managed to create an education ecosystem which relied on Information & Communication Technology. But due to uneven broadband connectivity in rural areas and prohibitive costs associated with high-speed internet, most students are not able to fully exploit this new online education ecosystem. This research paper seeks to outline an alternative method of remote learning which employs community radio as the medium. Community Radio is one of the most cost-efficient modes of communication and has a distinctive edge when it comes to accessibility in villages and other far-flung regions of the country. Hence the integration of community radio in the overall Information & Communication Technology ecosystem will go a long way in solving the present education crisis.
Books / Book Chapters
1. Pavarala, V., Malik, K. K., & Jena, A. (2022). Community radio as development radio: A critical analysis of third-sector radio in South Asia. In J. Loviglio, & M. Lindgren (Eds.), Routledge companion to radio studies (pp. 287-297). Routledge.
Abstract
This chapter offers a critical examination of the so-called third-sector radio (public and private radios being the other two) in South Asia. The evolution and growth of radio in the region, from about the 1920s during the colonial period, has been quite firmly embedded in a development paradigm. Community radio, whose history is about 20 years old in the subcontinent, has been predicated upon the development and social change imperative. This framework has not only defined community radio in this part of the world but also inhibited its evolution into a truly alternative medium based on communication rights. Using examples, primarily, from India and Bangladesh, and, secondarily, from Sri Lanka and Bhutan, we argue that both the state and civil society have been complicitous in framing community radio within a post-World War II discourse of development communication. While grassroots media initiatives such as community radio emerged globally as a challenge to the dominant paradigm of linear, top-down communication from the elites to the marginalized, in South Asia, even as the rhetoric is grafted on to a participatory communication perspective, community radio has been co-opted into an anodyne model of ‘development radio’.