Pradip Thomas

The Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) Campaign Applying Social Movement Theories to an Analysis of Global Media Reform

Social movement theories offer useful conceptual and analytical tools to the study and research of global media reform movements. This article is a critical analysis of the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign. It explores its successes and blind-spots in the light of social movement theory, in particular resource mobilization theory (RMT), and offers practical directions for the movement to move on from where it is to where it ought to be.

Selling God/saving souls Religious commodities, spiritual markets and the media

The relationship between the religious commodity market, popular culture and political economy remains under-theorized. The globalization of religion has led to a massive global trade in on-line and off-line religious commodities. This article explores the mobile Christian commodity form and its specific politics of use. Using examples from India and the US, it explores the ways in which Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal groups use multi-media products and platforms for evangelization. The profit potential in religious fare has not gone unnoticed in corporate circles, and synergistic relationships have developed between media corporations and Christian production houses involved in creating commodities for segmented audiences. The article argues that in the context of the global expansion and export of Christian fundamentalism, the increasingly close relationship between mediated Christianity and the commodity form facilitates the extension of specific, conservative, forms of values-based capitalism.

Digital India: Understanding information, communication and social change

Foreword Dan Schiller Preface An introduction to the Digital Moment in India Part I: Information Technology In A Liberalised Economy The Software Industry in India Mobile Phones in India: Issues related to Access and Use Part II: Government 1.0 and Information Technology Telecommunications and Universal Service Obligations in India A Critique of ICTs in Development Part III: Government 2.0 and Information Technology E-Government, E-Governance and Governmentality Intellectual Property Conundrums and the State in the Era of the Digital Public Sector Software in India Part IV: Contested Information Technology Piracy in the Contested City: Access, Distribution and Equity Index

Negotiating communication rights: Case studies from India

Communication rights are a barometer of the degree of transparency and fairness in a democracy. India, the worlds largest democracy, has found itself at the center of this debate. This book, through five case studies in India, explores communication rights movements here. It encompasses pivotal areas of movements, such as, Right to Information, Free and Open Source Software, Women and Media, and Community Radio and Citizen Journalism. The complexity of specific agendas in India, such as, rights of women, citizen activism and role of media is analyzed while placing the subject in a broader theoretical context. The author makes a strong case of the right of people to be able to access information. He also explores processes through which ordinary citizens are able to develop spaces for self-expression; a concept synonymous with media democratization in this century. The author highlights the need to ‘localize’ communication rights struggles in those places facing real communication deficits daily.

The ‘Red Surge’: Media framing of Maoist struggles in India

Maoist struggles in Eastern and Central India against the Indian State have been under-reported in International Media. These struggles by mainly indigenous communities against the corporate-state mining nexus have become a national crisis and literally hundreds of Indian paramilitary forces, Maoists and indigenous people have died as a result of these conflicts. Local media have typically reported Maoism in terms of a law and order and security issue. This article highlights some of the ‘frames’ used by the media within a critical political economy inspired reading of the conflict that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as Indias number one security issue. It deals with uneven globalisation, the under-reporting of lives lived by India’s most deprived communities and the other side of India’s tryst of globalisation that has led to many indigenous communities living lives on the edge.

Global and local televangelism

Foreword N.Echchaibi Global & Local Televangelism: An Introduction P.N.Thomas & P.Lee PART I: ISLAMIC TELEVANGELISM: ON PRIESTS & PROPHETS Storytelling, Sincerity and Islamic Televangelism in Egypt Y.Moll Islamic Televangelism in Changing Indonesia: Transmission, Authority, and The Politics of Ideas A.Muzakki Islamic Televangelism: The Salafi Window to their Paradise I.Saleh PART II: CHRISTIAN TELEVANGELISM: BRANDING THE GLOBAL & THE LOCAL Preaching the Good News Glad: Joel Osteens Tel-e-vangelism P.L.Sinitiere The global in the local: the ambivalence and ambition of Christian televangelism in India J.D.James Hearing, Viewing and being Touched by the Spirit: Televangelism in Contemporary African Christianity J.K.Asamoah-Gyadu PART III: HINDU TELEVANGELISM: AN EMERGING PHENOMENON The Avatars of Baba Ramdev: The Politics, Economics, and Contradictions of an Indian Televangelist S.Chakravarti PART IV: TELEVANGELISM, POLITICS & POPULAR CULTURE From Televisuality to social activism: Nigerian televangelists and their Socio-Political Agenda W.C.Ihejirika Gods Politicians: Pentecostals, Media and Politics in Guatemala and Brazil D.A.Smith & L.S.Campos Religiosity as Mediated Space: Mass Meditation in Contemporary Thailand A.Feungfusakul Whither Televangelism: Opportunities, Trends, Challenges P.N.Thomas Index

Telecom musings: public service issues in India

Purpose – In assessing the contribution made by telecommunications in India by the state and civil society to public service, this article aims to identify the states initial reluctance to recognise telecommunications provision as a basic need as against the robust tradition of public service aligned to the postal services and finds hope in the renewal of public service telecommunications via the Right to Information movement.Design/methodology/approach – This article follows a history of telecommunications approach that is conversant with the political economy tradition. It uses archival sources, personal correspondence, and published information as its primary material.Findings – The findings suggest that public service telecommunication is a relatively “new” concept in the annals of Indian telecommunications and that a de‐regulated environment along with the Right to Information movement holds significant hope for making public service telecommunications a real alternative.Originality/value – This art...

Intellectual property rights and the political economy of culture

The domain of intellectual property rights, along with the regulations that govern them, has a steadily, almost visibly incremental bearing these days upon the ordinary lives of people across the globe, in the rich world and the poor and in the North and the South. Its influence has escalated to the point where for some it may mean the difference between life and death; on it are now founded industries in the first rank of corporate power and thrust. As a modus for wealth creation it is being transferred onto other previously unthought-of sectors outside the familiar orbit of the market: indigenous cultural forms, music, fabric and other designs, symbols, artefacts, knowledge of natural resources, dance steps, motifs, advertising catch phrases, logos and brand names …

Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change

List of Figures List of Tables Preface 1. Revisiting CSC Theory 2. Revisiting CSC Practice 3. Participation in Theory and Practice 4. Communication, Power and Social Change 5. Agencies, Structures and Social Change 6. The IT Fix 7. The Making and Unmaking of CSC Policy 8. Complexity, Transdisciplinarity and CSC Strategy 9. Communication Rights and Social Change

Public sector software and the revolution: digital literacy in communist Kerala

In the context of cost-cutting and austerity measures, public sector software based on the principles and technologies of free and open source software is increasingly being used by governments in both the developed and developing worlds. The move to adopt non-proprietorial software has been precipitated by a number of factors apart from cost, including the recognition of the effects of vendor lock-in, the consequences of efficiency deficits linked to the lack of inter-operability of software across sectors and departments, the recognition of the failure of existing software policy and its consequences, particularly a heightened comprehension of risk, and the realisation of the need for informational independence. This article explores public sector software as a ‘public good’, with specific reference to the IT@School project in Kerala state, India, that has enabled access and, in that process, empowered local, state-funded secondary school teachers and students to define, shape and create their own informational futures.