Session I: Electronic Media
Post-modernism and the mass media
by Syed Abdul Siraj Ahmed, Pakistan
Post-modernist media rejects “Meta-narration” and puts emphasis on the plurality of truth. Today’s society has become a visual society and our social reality is dominated by media reality. We are living in a three-minute culture because reality is littered with video footage, computer games, advertising, film, television images and photographs. Post-modernism is a set of literary and cultural movements. It emerged after the collapse of the division between the elite culture and mass/common culture.
The speed of communications has brought about the concept of “here and now”. There is no time to just “smell the roses”. The TV remote control has given more control to the audience in the communication process. Now audience choices are given top priority. This use and gratification approach has not only put the audience in the driving seat in communication processing, but has also brought about fragmentation and segmentation in the society. This cauterization of audience has changed the very definition of mass communication.
Everything that was lived is moved into a representation, where the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images and which simultaneously has imposed itself as a tangible. Jean Baudrillard stated that the real does not disappear to the benefit of the imaginary, it disappears to the benefit of the more real than the real: the hyper-real—truer than the true, such is simulation.
Post-modernist media believes in the adoption and juxtaposing of old and new text, images, ideas to produce a new meaning. Now more emphasis is put on style rather than the substance and content. Advertising techniques can make or break a company, irrespective of the quality of the product. A poor product can be successful due to great advertising while an excellent product can fail. People get influenced by branding when they buy things. Labels become more important than the product. Packaging is more important than the contents. People buy inferior products over superior ones because they like the color of the package. All this is bizarre but true.
Gaps between Governance and the Masses: The Case of Devolution Plan
by Jananzeb Aziz, UAE
The National Reconstruction Bureau, an initiative of the Government of Pakistan, prepared and presented a devolution plan based on local government systems. As a result of this plan, direct elections were held in five phases for members of Union Councils and Union Nazims and Naib Union Nazims during 2000-2001. On the basis of these direct elections, indirect elections were held in July/August 2001 for Zila Nazims and Naib Zila Nazims and also for Tehsil/Town Nazims and Naib Nazims. The new Local Government System was finally installed on 14th August 2001.
The NRB has equipped itself with many diversified tasks and the organization is a part of the Prime Minister's Secretariat. A Media and Governance Cell has also been established whose guiding principles will be discussed in the paper. According to NRB, the Media and Governance Cell’s broad strategy is devised to bridge the gap in governance issues among the masses, keep people abreast of different activities going on at Tehsil and District level and dispel the false impressions created by certain vested interests against the devolution process.
There is no denying the fact that the overall perception about local governments and the devolution plan are not something that NRB longed for. This paper is aimed at analyzing NRB's media strategy and its impacts. An independent, fair and objective study is required to know how much progress has actually taken place. The study will also present suggestions and outlines for reaching large, scattered, heterogeneous Pakistani audiences and may be used as framework for application in any.
District Governance & the Role of FM Radio
by Matiullah Jan, Pakistan
District governments and FM radio are both a new phenomenon at the grass-root level. If information is power, then FM radio will be the ultimate tool of empowering people. Aggressive news reporting, interviews, debates and discussions by an FM radio station will put life into an otherwise dull system of local governments. A local FM radio can be a powerful instrument to bring people back to participatory democracy and draw them out of their houses on polling day. This paper will look at the way an FM radio can energize newly established district governments by providing entertainment, information, education and investigative journalism to its audience. The paper also makes an attempt to identify various departments/ sections of the district government set up that need to be paid attention to by FM radio reporters to keep the community well informed so that they make the right choices during elections. It will also examine how access to information law at the district government level can strengthen the devolution of power systems?
Session II: Print Media
Media's political stand bars good governance
by Munima Sultana, Bangladesh
A preliminary impression, gathered from informal talks with people, gives the hint that the Bangladesh media faces image problems in the case of credibility. Different published media reports often come under attack for biasness and exaggeration of incidents, which is directly related to institutional policy. Media institutions come from two categories of people -- businessmen and political leaders, who, in many cases, also capture the post of editor for availing personal and social benefits. Now, all media related associations or forums are polarized into two main political thoughts and the practice of judging any objective report from a political perspective is normal to affiliate the concerned reporter with a political party. Due to a lack of corporate media, problems like job insecurity, low salary, lack of monetary facilities and manpower and gender imbalance also exist in the media. Women are under-represented in the media for their low participation in politics. Therefore, their interests remain unattained by the highly politicized, male-dominated media. Amidst the situation, good governance is still a far cry and it is necessary to study political influence in media to get an overview of the situation.
The main objective of my report is to uncover how national politics influences the newspaper industry and ways to improve media’s credibility for good governance. For this purpose, information will be collected by: Analyzing biographies of media owners, reviewing newspaper treatments of incidents that hold the interest of both the ruling and main opposition political parties, analyzing media’s working environment and gender evaluation of the media situation.
To collect this information, interviews of different groups of people such as media owners and editors and general readers will be carried out. Content analysis of ten highly acceptable Bengali and English newspapers regarding specific incidents (for example, the August-21 grenade attack on the main opposition rally) for a month and editorial analysis of the same incident will be helpful. In addition, related documents and a study of concerned organizations and the Internet will be used.
The study is likely to establish the hypothesis that political influence bars good governance and leads to a lack of credibility. In addition, a non-participatory society, the non-existence of a rule of law, non-corporate working environments and gender disparity at all levels of media institutions exist in Bangladeshi media. It will give recommendations for further study on the theme and ways to reduce political influence where media is concerned.
Media and Governance: Bridging the Rural-Urban Divide
by Ammara Durrani, Pakistan
Rapid urbanization of Pakistan has become a statistical fact with the figure standing at more than 40% of the country’s population living in urban areas. This calls into question the long-standing notion of Pakistan chiefly being an agrarian economy, having a largely rural population. The changing rural-urban ratios have given rise to issues of population, livelihood, human and environmental security etc.
Population growth and intra-city and inter-provincial migrations have also altered Pakistan’s ethnographic makeup, thus impacting its ethno-nationalist and sectarian politics, and regional cultures. It is, however, issues of governance, which have become pressing. Consequently, some attention has gone into development planning and policy-making that takes into account the new realities. Massive infiltration and pumping of international aid and much needed state intervention is currently leading the drive for ‘good governance’ required to address and overcome these problems.
How successful this drive has been is a debatable question, not least because of the absence of tangible results on the ground. In stark contrast, however, it is most visibly touted and debated in the national media. By virtue of policy news, statements, analyses, criticism and outreach, Pakistani media currently occupies a prominent position in the ambit of the governance debate.
How has the media reacted to issues of governance, and what is its current role in influencing policymaking? As a predominantly urban phenomenon, media in Pakistan has always been faced with the challenge of failure to penetrate the great rural mass, shackled by illiteracy and poverty. Its past inability to reach out to rural Pakistan has marginalized a majority of the population from the policymaking debate. But with urbanization on the rise, and with the development brigade having significantly covered the rural-urban disconnect, the national media is now responding to these realities in its own peculiar ways.
This paper is an attempt to study how Pakistani media has responded to the development challenge. By focusing on governance as its main concern, it looks at how this idea is being played out, grasped and debated in the big cities, and how it is being taken to the rural areas in the name of development. The paper looks at media as an active agency of this process; it critically analyses how journalists and media organizations are partaking in the process and consciously or unconsciously bridging the great old rural-urban divide. It tentatively identifies the impact these processes have not only on the general public and the intervening governmental and non-governmental agencies, but also on the media itself. It looks at the various problems and prospects, and speculates on how these are changing the face and character of the Pakistani media.
View Abstracts
