Kavita Karan

Unraveling the relationships between smartphone use, exposure to heterogeneity, political efficacy, and political participation: a mediation model approach

This paper assesses how use of smartphones relates to exposure to heterogeneity, political efficacy, and political engagement and suggests a new mediation model that can be applied to mobile communication. Drawing on online survey data collected during the 2012 presidential election in South Korea, this study finds that exposure to heterogeneity and political efficacy jointly mediate the impact of informational uses of smartphones on political participation. The current study also shows that informational uses of smartphones are significantly related to encounters with heterogeneity, political efficacy, and participatory behaviors. Additionally, recreational uses of smartphones were found to have a positive association with exposure to heterogeneity. However, relational uses of smartphones were not associated with democratic outcomes. The findings suggest that smartphones, by increasing the possibility of encountering diversity and subsequently enhancing political efficacy, create an additional pathway to citizen engagement in democratic processes.

Bollywood Cinema at the Crossroads: Tracking the Dimensions of Globalization in Postcolonial Popular Hindi Cinema

Hindi film scholars have been slow to adopt content analysis methodologies. Given the potentially changing social-political-economic context of Hindi cinema, this study utilized content analysis to investigate the prevalence of five globalization dimensions—geographical, cultural, nationalistic, infrastructural, and artistic—in the highest grossing Hindi films of the postcolonial era between 1947 and 2007. The films were coded to address multiple hypotheses theorizing that changing transnational contexts would be related to significant increases in global aspects of content. The findings suggest that the oft-repeated conclusions of scholars regarding the widespread influence of global forces on Hindi film production—particularly in the current era of “Bollywoodization”—are more complex than suggested in prior research.

Problematizing Chindia Hybridity and Bollywoodization of popular Indian cinema in global film flows

In the new millennium, scholars are increasingly predicting that Asian film industries, particularly those of India and China, will wrestle control of global film flows from Western dominance. Fueled by the internet, satellite networks, cable television, and DVD distribution, it is argued that Asian production centers will increasingly exploit cinematic contraflows that draw upon structures of hybridity to meet increasing demand for glocalized content within globalized distribution networks (e.g. Bose, 2006; Curtain, 2007; Kumar, 2008; Lagerkvist, 2009; Mitra, 2008). As noted by Ritzer (2007), cultural hybridity is central to glocalization, where human agents self-consciously and creatively combine local with global cultural formations in a bid to subvert potentially homogenizing forces associated with cultural imperialism (Schiller, 1991). Within cinematic public spheres, filmmakers act as bricoleurs (Newcomb and Hirsch, 2000), mixing both global and local elements to appeal to audience tastes and trends (Bhabha, 1995; Burke, 2006; Volkmer, 2003). For Appadurai (1996: 35), global mediascapes provide the backdrop of ‘large and complex repertoires of images, narratives, and ethnocscapes’ used in cultural mixing. As hybridized content spreads, ‘contra-flows’ (Thussu, 2006: 175) emerge, shifting the direction of cultural influence to the Global South and blurring ‘the boundaries between the modern and the traditional, the high and low culture, and the national and the global culture’ (2006: 175). ARTICLE