Navin Kumar: 2013

“GROWING UNDER THE SHADOW OF MASS-MEDIA: EXPLORATIONS INTO FAMILY LIVES & PSYCHO-SOCIAL WELL-BEING”

Innovative Research Project Submitted to

University of Delhi

Project Code : BRAC-101

Dr. Navin Kumar Dr. Indiwar Mishra Bishnu Mohan Dass

Investigator 1; Investigator 2 Investigaotor 3

Principal Investigator

Dr. G.K. Arora Prof. N.K. Chadha

Principal Mentor

Bhim Rao Ambedkar College

Yamuna Vihar, Delhi – 94

(University of Delhi)

Academic Session: 2012-2013

TEACHER RESEARCHER’S:

1. Dr. Navin Kumar

(Co-ordinator), Associate Prof., Deptt. Of Psychology

B.R. Ambedkar College

2. Dr. Indiwar Mishra

Associate Prof., Deptt. Of Psychology

B.R. Ambedkar College

3. Bishnu Mohan Dass Dr. Navin Kumar

Associate Prof., Deptt. Of Social Work

B.R. Ambedkar College

INNOVATIVE STUDENT RESEARCHER’S

1. Durgesh Ojha

(Student Co-ordinaator)

2. Sonali Ranjan tt. Of Social Work

(Student Convener)

3. Ajay Kumar

4. Charvi Sharma

5. Prashansha Sharma

6. Nikita Jain

7. Sanchita Johri

8. Megha Taragi

9. Mayank Dubey

10. Kanchan Bhardwaj

CONTENTS

Ø ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Ø CHAPETR 1: Introduction and Review Of Literature

Ø CHAPTER 2: Methodology and Objectives

Ø CHAPTER 3: Results

Ø CHAPTER 4: Discussion And Conclusion

Ø CHAPTER 5: References

Ø APPENDICES

1. Personal Information

2. Social Well Being Scale

3. Media – Map Questionnaire (Hindi/English)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I wish to express my gratitude to a number of persons who contributed to realization of this innovative research journey entitled “Growing Under the Shadow of Mass-Media: Explorations into Family Lives & Psycho-Social Well-being” first and foremost to the Vice Chancellor Prof. Dinesh Singh who opened the platform for meaningful research to the college teachers. I extend my sincere thanks to Dr. G.K. Arora principal for his motivating and supportive role throughout this journey of this project. I also record my personal thanks to the Mentor Prof. N.K. Chadha who helped me at every step of this endeavor. I would like to thank Prof. Girishwar Mishra for his valuable academic advice at every stage of this research. I would like to thank Prof. Anand Prakash who always encouraged me to do this work meaningfully. Dr. Ritesh Singh, Dr. Sangeet Ragi and Dr. Neeraj Tyagi always helped me and my students in the academic congress and their encouragement truly a truly memorable experience. Both my college teacher Researchers’ Dr. Indiwar Mishra and Bishnu Mohan Dass stood like a pillar and working as a team with them was unique experience.

I would like to thank my son Kanishka Singh, daughter Kriti Singh and wife Swati for their emotional and academic support whenever I required it. I would like to record my thanks to Amrendra Kumar, Sunil Gupta, Ajay Maurya and Swati Gaur who always helped me in variety of ways at different stages of this work. All my innovative students that include Durgesh, Sonali, Charvi, Prashansha, Ajay, Mayank, Nikita, Megha, Sanchita and kanchan performed like gems and I would minimize their magnanimity if I quantify it through words and any amount of accolade will be less as compared to their commitment, devotion, trust and hardwork. I thank on behalf of my team of researchers and wish them all a colourful future. I also wish to thank Pankaj Ahlawat, Bhawani Ji, Joginder Solanki, Ramkumar and Rabindra Ji. All the great minds who visited our college for the seminar on this subject also acted as a sourec of inspiration. Dr. Rekha Rani, Nisha Choudhary and members of organizing committee of seminar need special mention that made this work diverse and meaningful. I thank Mr. Lokesh who always reached on time at research centre of the college whenever I required him.

Several media experts like Uday Sahay, Sanjay Nandan, and Mr. Amrendra Kumar of U.G.C. also contributed positively to this initiative. I also thank all my colleagues in the college and other people who may have contributed toward the realization of this objective.

CHAPTER – 1

INTRODUCTION

AND

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Our everyday lives are so immersed with the shadow of mass media that modern society is dominated and widely permeated by the mass media produced realities. Mass media produced images and activities enter into our lives in profound ways and it also influences our understanding of ourselves and the social world. Mass media is not a singular entity and it constitutes a whole range of technology, television, mobile phones, internet, digital technology, and computers and so on. The stages of media technology did not evolve spontaneously rather its development was closely tied with the parallel developments in social and economic realms. Various scholars and critics of media studies highlighted the realities at different point of time understood in their perspective time-frame. Foucault pointed out, discourse is not fixed for all the time and new discursive practices emerge with the passage of new time. The emergence of media landscape has been attributed to various factors at different point of time and few potent factors listed include industrialization, urbanization, demarcation of work and leisure, spread of consumer culture and loss of traditional community living, loss of joint-family system.

Marshall Mcluhan’s understanding media (1964) described medium as either “hot” or “cool”. Power dynamics of cinema as s cultural apparatus was highlighted by Marxism, feminism and psychoanalysis. Social Construction theory of media technologies (Hall 1980/1991), cultural theory developed by (Erossberg, 1982), cultural historian (Lipsitz), television scholar (Fiske and Hartley, 1989) and feminist scholar (Radway, 1984) highlighted the role of mass media through their viewpoints. The quest for profit maximization led to a search for new markets that included untapped populations, mass audience, marginalized groups and emergent social identities. In the 1990’s the global circulation of “Image centered and narrative strips of reality” called media scapes (1990) became a focal point of media analysis. The convergent of traditional media like films and televisions and contemporary media like computers and cell-phones provided a platform for speed interactivity among its users. For Henry Jenkins this new prosumer experience broaden the terms of our access to media, and serve as a springboard for more explicitly political activities. The emergence of 500 channels online blogs, social networking sites and reality T.V. shows sets the stage for new kind of interaction among its users. The events of Egypt soon became a talking point in New Delhi and incidents of New Delhi soon became global news.

This evolution of mass media can be organized into prominent domains of culture, technology representation, market, identity and citizenship. Other concepts of gender, large middle class population, children and underprivileged sections also need to be understood to gain a critical perspective of mass media and well-being. Mass media can themselves as representative of truth-telling but the reality tells us a different story. All mass cultures try to monopolize the few production centers, try to produce identical products ignoring the particular and highlighting the false identity of universal.

The society in order to dominate and legitimize always speaks of technical rationality ignoring the social rationality. The talent which conforms to the technical domination is only allowed to be expressed which limits itself to standardization and the rest expressing logic of work and individual consciousness is easily ignored. Mass Media research organization classifies people in statistical terms of red, green, blue according to the income they generate. The similar version of mass produced items such as vehicles, television sets are more illusionary in nature, the synchronization between word, images and music is so created that it blurs the boundary between projected difference and actual difference. No wonder people feel very happy to buy watches worn by models and that satisfies a sense of psychological investment. According to Kantian schematism the sensuous multiplicity denies access to fundamental concepts or pure reason. Every cultural production and formation is a reservoir of humanity’s illusions as well as the expression of their expectations, Psycho-social reality, hopes, dreams and being represented through the lens of mass-media. The role of scientific enquiry should aim to decipher the semantic contents scattered through the discourse of the mass. The growth of mass-media has also led to hyper-consumerism in the world of abundant commodities with the invention of industrialized mass-production. It is difficult to find an antology of origin and authenticity in terms of ideas and products. These techniques if instant and mass production detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. Public sphere as a space of reasoned communicative exchanges has become more publicity oriented than being more public-oriented. The emergence of critical thinking and development of a public space of reason indicates a paradigm shift with the advent of mass-media driven publicity i.e. pre-dominantly mechanical. Mass-media also play an important in the shaping of world view and constitutes our communicative grammar that also serves to construct our private views and interests. The distinction between myth and reality gets blurred due to continuous flow of information established through institutional channels of linguistic communication.

How the growth of our autonomy is being constructed depends on how we are raised in the culture that frames our choices and the institutional guarantees that facilitate choosing and leading an autonomous life. Are we able to create a rational life world that enables childhood socialization to navigate the learning diversity and what they are accomplishes with?

Autonomy of a person can be affected by condition of individual development (education, upbringing, material resources) and demands of social institutions largely guided by mass media that burden capacitates for self-steering that encourages or discourages critical reflection. The development of authentic identity and autonomous self-hood or making sense of one’s actions, feelings, thoughts, desires and experiences requires less ambiguity in term who one is and who one wants to be. Authenticity in a society can be accessed on the basis of how the life in general fit or misfit into overall life activity. Validity claims in order to be recognized by others created by media the gap between this is what I am and this is what I ought to be has increased considerably in the recent past. From being a distant participant, people become co-participants to certain activities programmed by mass media and ultimately turning out to be active participants. We can always notice a radical departure in the habits of people’s engagements, whether it is case of mobile phones, internet or watching of cricket matches. Creative art forms which can produce autonomous and critical spirit is on the gradual process of demise and popular art forms manipulating and colonizing the leisure time of the mass is being consciously promoted. Suffering and disturbed home life is presented in a manner that majority of family members are unhappy. For the consumer there is hardly anything left apply and dreamy idealism of art is repeatedly presented to the consumers. Through totality the culture industry of mass media the works of art, music and texts have blurred the awareness of details in public psyche. The concept of holistic recreation is filtered and processes of commodification of art has occupied a central character.

Popular culture is also an important extension of mass-media dominated life-style. According to historian Raman Gutierrez observes, the term “popular culture” is a description crafted exclusively from the outside. Particular image, icons try to establish dominance among the audience through electronically transmitted communication. Deliberate use of sub-cultural slang reduces the authority of meaningful words and replaces it with an appreciation of the inevitable metaphrocity of language. Melodrama, empathy, immediacy and emotion forms the core components of narratives mostly produced by the mass media replacing conventional narratives and reasoned discourse with broad physical gesture and more such discourages are expressed through binary oppositions of good and evil and plots surrounded more by fate and sudden reserves than by human action.

Literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin identifies sensibilities as the essence of carnival-ritualized celebrations oriented around the passions of plentitude, inversions of the social order and making laughter designed to “uncrown power”. Some of the prominent form of expression highlighted through popular culture and like constituting the body as a site for decoration and style, valorizing the street as a locus of creativity and sociality and inverting dominant icons to affirm a prestige from below. Italian Marxit Antonio Gramsci maintains that elites rule not merely by force but by “managed consent” as well, that they form “historical blocks” with other groups that make existing power relations appear natural and just. Culture acts as a rehearsal for politics and internalizing the dominant culture norms are seen as necessary and inevitable with the help of mass media.

The coded indirect and allegorical aspects of popular and commercial culture refuse to discuss things in critical fashion refuse to isolate art from lived experience.

It is not very easy to discard any popular medium as well? The number of people who condemn television or other electronic mediums have exceeded on far more numbers. Television and other electronic mediums have also been able to present the illusion of intimacy, intervening into family relations, interpersonal relations that characterize our day to day life. It has occupied a primary discursive medium of our culture, entertainment, news, sports, and education occupying major space in our public and private life. Society is functioning: whether it is functioning at its optimum or is it functioning as a escape debasing successful functioning of the society needs to be unraveled.

Electronic mediums of communication guided by emotions and empathy working through ritual, repetition and its core vocabulary reflects its role as a therapeutic voice ministering to the anxieties and fear of public-mass. These mediums also highlight and focus more on private existence domains rather than public existence domains.

Interesting conversations takes place on social media sites through images or video that becomes tokens to initiate or maintain a conversation.

Recent use of digital media and march of technological progress has led to a stage of technological determinism.

Significant percent of our population navigate their everyday life activities with the help of mass media. Most of the products of our daily life are also determined by mass produced goods chosen with the help of mass media. Most of the products of daily use as well as of critical importance make their digital appearances in the form of Myspace, You-tube, Orkut, Flicker and occupy a major space in our opinion. Shaping and decision-making our inter-personal activities are mostly done with the help of mass-media gadgets. To divert the attention of people for recreational activities television spectatorship increased to get relaxed at home for the people at home. Even women folk at home could relate to the text of television despite distractions of cleaning, cooking and child-rearing.

The programme of television are so scheduled that any person who wants to view may watch programmes at different timing and even such programmes can be stored for later viewing. Not having a television set at home is almost unimaginable these days and integration of television in our daily life seems to have reached the stage of near totality. Each person of different age group adapted to television viewing according to their interest and relating to their projected dreams in real life. In the initial few years of television entering our houses a kind of value debate came into existence but very soon they disappeared being minority within a very short span of time middle class opted as a most sought after commodity at their homes. T became an appliance of consumer luxury to consumer necessity becoming a predominant gadget of projecting everyday concerns of our social and family life.

Television is also a heuristic instrument in the philosophical exploration of place, materiality and technology which is not recognized in our day to day life. Television has become fully integrated into our social and private life and components of attitude and behavior modification are widely influenced by this. Television viewing also presents an ambivalent position where a viewer is confused about the transfer of attraction in term if its advantage and disadvantages.

The place of the screen:

The antological conception of place is, simply the idea of place as dwelling or in Heideggers word’s place as “the house of being”. Heidegger develops this idea not only in the canonical essay “Building Dwelling Thinking” in which human and environment harmonize at a Black Forest Farmhouse, but also in a less frequently cited piece entitled “An antological consideration of place”. Heidegger approaches place as an essential concept for thinking through “the relationship between the antological dimension of being and the political structure of human existence”.

However Weber presents a different theoretical application of notion of place to the relationship between the T.V. set and its environment. Weber described that television ultimately “takes place” a term that deftly links medium’s present-tense temporality to its spatial problematic. Invoking the live transmission construction of a place for the viewer and its representation of space binding as a process, he proposes that television upsets the antology of place because it place it takes place in at least three places “at once” 1) In the place (or places) where those images and sounds are recorded 2) In the place (or places) where those images and sounds are received and 3) In the place (or places) in between the unity of television as a medium of presentation thus involves a simultaneity that is highly ambivalent. It overcomes spatial distance but only by splitting the unity of place and with it the unity of everything that defines its identity with respect to place: events, bodies, subjects. Television does not simply render the distant present: rather it intervenes in the experiences of space and time via three distinct, relatively autonomous warping operations. T.V.’s technological specificity is its ability to alter the fixity of place, to map a different kind of topography. A T.V. aerial protrudes from the roof the Black Forest Farmhouse and fabric of space and time are ripped asunder.

Mobile Phone:

With the growing number of mobiles the behavioral aspects has had sweeping effects on the lives of individual. The phenomenology of individuals in social and personal spheres has also changed a lot. The individual present and equipped with a mobile is split into two, they are present in body but their attention, mind and senses are drawn elsewhere with a ring by their communication network. People are not very sure of their own accessibility at a place at a given point of time as a ring from virtual communication may require his/her presence to a different location that too within no time. What actually happens that people decide is to prefer their own life-styles are navigated to depend on a sense of belonging determined by others.

What is affect in actuality is that our sense of loyalty to places, persons, sense of identification, familiarity, stability, and security so on is compromised to a large extent. People spend less and less time with engaging intrapersonal and interpersonal activities and this same nostalgia feeling has also become considerably drawn with advent of mobile phones. The less close relation that people have today with their homes actually lacerates affective equilibrium not only at generic psychological level, but also at the deep structure of imagination. The home infact brings up images of the sacred space and paradise like centre inside the constellation of intimacy. This separation pain of being away from your home is easily replaced by the phones occupying a space of mobile home which it can’t be substitute for the same sense of belonging.

Uncontrolled Appropriation of Public Space:

With the increased use of mobile phones, illegal appropriation of public space has begun. For example, if you are travelling in a train, fellow passengers occupy the whole public space and discuss all sorts of things as if it belonged to their private domain. People inhabiting those public spaces hesitate to show their reactions to the strangers and taking advantage of this situation mobile speaking continue to occupy such places in an undemocratic manner. No set of laws or norms are prescribed to describe permissible limits and this inference continues in sacred religious place, educational institutions and more important in the hospitals where patients recovery process is affected. There are no restrictions in place to protect public good over the individual and not speaking too loud during night hours, limiting noise level on duration of talk is also largely ungoverned. This new set of problem created by the use of communicative instruments called mobile is not only a question of aesthetics of good behavior but also an ethical, legal and health problems. It is also true that mobile phone also compensates a temporary loss of autonomy and insecurity with possibility of regaining of one’s own stability.

Cell Democracy:

The modification of one’s relation with space through the widespread use of the mobile has become the premise which will also illuminate the role of this instrument in the evolution of democratic society (Duttan, 1999). Fixed phones entered the people’s home without any difference of race, language, economic status. In the absence of a mobile phone-book it enables people to find and be found by those closest to them, in other words by a very limited social network. Whereas the fixed phone telephone directory describes name, surname, profession, locality enabling the new-corner to city to know people of their interest. The situation has become particularly deplorable that a whole lot of cynicism has grown around our inter-personal social relations where people frequently tell lies to other persons whom they try to avoid. It is not very surprising to mention that a person sitting at home in Delhi may respond to other person that I have been to Shimla or Mumbai. Similarly parents who want to inquire the well-being of their children may fake their situation by responding in a manipulative fashion. A large part of our population who was otherwise accessible to social exchange have become invisible by removing their fixed phone and frequently changing their personal and public mobile numbers. Democratic development of communication traffic is facing difficulties and more undesired calls from advertisers of various products have become very common. In case of fixed phones generally the privileged head of family is the subscribed and possibility of receiving calls by any other member of a family increases the possibility of more social interaction. However even in case of mobile phones the teacher who wants to communicate some observations about the students to their parents, it is difficult to easily get connected to them. This single processor tendency to engage in made to measure individual communication has been a strong impulse behind the success of mobile phones. Its use has also led to a tendency of individualism and young age and teenagers also take pride into possession of a branded mobile. At one hand, mobile phones have extended its territory to the movement space and in the same situations exchange of emergency situations can be executed through this. It has allowed some amount of independence to other family members to communicate freely to the persons of their choice. Before the advent of mobile, fixed residential persons were forced to lose contact with persons in the movement. Thus mobile phone has certainly extended the right to communication but how far it adds to the well-being of its citizen’s needs to be critically evaluated.

Media Representation and Well-being:

There are two processes of representation, first is the system by which we relate objects and people on the basis of mental representations that we carry in our heads, the second system of representation is through access to a shared language so that we can correlate our concepts with sign. The meaning is constructed by the system of representation. It is constructed and fixed by the code, which sets up the correlation between our conceptual system and our language system in such a way that every time we thinks of a tree, the code tells us to use the English word TREE or French word ARBRE. One way of thinking about ‘culture’ than is in terms of theses shared conceptual maps, shared language systems and the codes which govern the relationship of translation between them. These codes of culture and language tell us to convey our ideas and concepts.

Ideas are represented through a mimetic or visual signs and images. According intentional approach to ideas, words mean what the author or speaker imposes unique meaning on the world through language. According to constructionist approach, it is social actors who use the conceptual system of their culture and the linguistic and other representational systems to construct meaning. According to the Father of Modern Linguistics Saussure, the production of meaning depends on language which is a system of signs, sounds, writing and images. Saussure also divided sign into two elements the form (the actual word image or photo) which he called signifier and the corresponding concept that is triggered off in your head. The signified both are requested to produce meaning but it is the relation between them, fixed by our cultural and linguistic codes, which sustains representation. Sign do not possesses a fixed or essential meaning what signifies according to Saussure is not RED or essence of redness but the difference between RED and GREEN signs. For example, it is hard to define the meaning of father except in relation to in terms of its difference from other kinship terms like mother, daughter, and son and so on. This marking of difference within language is fundamental to the production of meaning according to Saussure. The rules are the principles which we learn when we learn a language and evaluate us to use well formed sentences called the language (the language system). The particular acts of speaking, writing or drawing which are produced by the speaker are called parole. Saussure model of language is called structuralist.

Barthes (1967) described the concept of denotation which is the simple, basic, descriptive level, where conscious is wide and most people would agree on the meaning (dress jeans) and connotation these signifiers which we are able to decode at a simple level by using our conventional classification.

Interpretations are always followed by other interpretations in an endless chain. As French philosopher Jacqures Derrida put it, writing always leads to more writing. Difference, he argues can never be wholly captured within any binary (Derrida, 1981). So any notation of a final meaning is always endlessly put off, deferred. Cultural studies of this interpretive kind, like other qualitative forms of sociological enquiry are inevitably caught up in this circle of meaning

Foucault’s used the word “representation” in a novel and different way. What concerned him was the production of knowledge (rather that just meaning) through what he called discourse (rather than language). He emphasized the historicity and described how human beings understand themselves in our culture and has shared meanings differ in different periods of time. Foucault focused his attention from language to discourse. Normally, the term discourse means the passages of connected writing but for Foucault discourse meant a group of statements and regulated discourse in different historical periods. Things meant something and where ‘true’ he argued, only within a specific historical context. Subjects like madness, punishment and sexuality only exist meaningfully within the discourse about them. Things meant something and were true he argued only within a specific historical context. Foucault did not believe that the same phenomena would be found across different historical periods. He thought, in each period, discourse produced forms of knowledge, objects, subjects and practices of knowledge, which differed radically from period to period, with no necessary continuity between them.

Thus, for Foucault, for example, mental illness was not an objective fact, which remained the same in all historical periods, and meant the same thing in all cultures. It was only within a definite discursive formation that the object, madness, could appear at all as a meaningful or intelligible construct.

Recent years have witnessed plethora of research in the area of self and its impact on various mental and behavioural processes. The way people conceptualize self and represent it often influences the behaviour and quality of life. Following research questions are important in the context of mass-media and well-being

1) How people use technology as a mean of self-regulation in the everyday life.

2) How use of a particular medium of communication like T.V., internet has empowering or misery impact on individuals and society.

3) Are users new mode of communication has led to enhancement in the well-being.

The mass-media in everyday life is a landscape for thought and actions that has evolved in past few decades and a developing country like India it has taken strong roots of inter-connectedness with the people. People nowadays are organizing their everyday life activities with the use of mass-media. People of different socio-economic, demographic and cultural categories are organizing their everyday life activities such as shopping, banking, travelling, studying and socializing to name a few. Everyday life has both kind of potential boredom and stress at one end and authenticity, vitality and growth at the other. According to Henri Lefebvre “Everyday life is profoundly to all activities and encompasses them with all their differences and their conflicts, it is their meeting place, their land, their common ground. And it is in the everyday life that the sum total relations which make the human and every human being a whole takes its shape and its form.’’ (1991-p97). The dynamics of our everyday activities also result into long term indicators of self-efficacy, happiness or complexity. The larger social, political and cultural context also influences the micro-sociology of our living of everyday life. It is the rhythm of everyday life expectations and its fulfilment that it helps us build psych-efficacy or suppress it by huge gap in expectations and its fulfilment because instrumental rationalization, commoditisation and bureaucratic power can’t fully suppress the impulses of human desire, sociality, hope and creativity everyday life will always harbour “the buds and shoots of new potentialities.”(Bakhtin, 1984,p73, quoted Gardiner, p20). How this use of mass-media blend and shape with our daily life and its impact on self efficacy and empowerment of individuals requires a critical understanding. Critical reflexivity is required to understand the complexity of contradiction of emancipator as well as misery aspects of impact generated by mass-media interaction. Mass-media has became a predominant mode of communication including doing valuable school and college assignments, movies and music, romantic activity, learning, performing household chores. Emails, internet, chat sessions, social networking sites have occupied a major share of the communication process adopted by the users of various demographic backgrounds. How mass-media use affects the lives, well-being, self efficacy, interpersonal communication, linguistic competence, social identity and relationships of its users have occupied the mainstream space in the Indian context. The American psychologist declared the mass-media to be a “social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being”. [Kraut et.al. (1998)]. How the actual social involvement in community activities have gone down resulting into feelings of loneliness and alienation and in same situation mass-media use has also resulted in increased social participation and positive social activity. Thus a kind of paradoxical generalization goes on from the vantage point of internet users and a strong opposition and negative generalization by those who do not advocate its use. It is imperative to understand its functional features depending on different ways of using would bring about widely divergent consequences. Has new medium replaced the old medium of television can’t be answered so easily. One can find differential use patterns among users to meet their needs and people are interested in old and new mediums to get satisfaction for a particular type of content. It is also presenting a generational gap among its users. Teenagers and youth seem to have become specific user category, more frequent chatting with representatives of the opposite gender giving them a sense of belonging to a group in crafting their own social networks. It has also been found in recent time that mass-media application also provides a platform to those who used the mass-media for civic purposes tended to become more actively involved in their community activity and while those who used the mass-media heavily but for other purposes remained relatively disconnected from community activities. In recent past online users organized several protests at unprecedented speed which also brought important legislations for the prevention of crime against women. In similar such protests electronic communications established strong ties with the people from far-flung areas of the country for putting pressure on the government to bring effective bill to curb corruption. Hampton and Wellman (2003) concluded that the presence of high speed internet in the community did not weaken or radically transform ties. Few important research question that deserves the attention of researchers in this area include exploring new technology role as enabler to perform our activities. People trying to explore this new technology try to accomplish the goals that were not possible in the preceding state of technology. How these new technologies impact the self efficacy of an individual terms of achieving life opportunities. How these technologies go beyond the level of individuals and lead an impact on social and organizational realms.

A major turn in the enquiry of such subjects is required to uncover how individuals of different generations are making sense of and integrating its applications into their lives. Actor’s choice of choosing a particular medium also deserves greater attention to approach this as a process reality. This way of viewing the process aligns interpretative research on internet in everyday life with the social construction of technology perspective [pinch and biker, 1984, biker 1995 and law, 1992, biker, 2001] which traces the origins and evolution of technical devices to the choices made by various group of social actors. Many authors also talk about co-construction between users and technologies [oudshoorn and pinch 2003]. Thus experiences of everyday life and long term changes in larger social worlds do not remain unchanged with the arrival of new technologies. The users of new technology have different impacts due to its entry to a different temporal stage in the life of a person. For example teenagers and youth of this generation organize their life worlds as when they wake up in the morning which was not so to the previous generation of people. The advocates of media domestication technology organized their projects conceptually and methodologically (Haddon 2004, Berker etal 2005). How messages in the public world produced through mass-media blend with the private life of a person and with the moral economy of the household should be basis of investigation.

Analyzing the impact areas of mass-media communication on language-

Electronically mediated communications encompass increasing use of abbreviations, acronyms and emotions. Internet messaging youth and teenagers communicate large volumes of abbreviations (e.g. ya-see you) acronyms (lol-laughing out loud) emotions (e.g. Smiley face)

Are children and young adults who use abbreviations and texts also employing the same language that requires more formal style?

Language change is often a valuable mirror on social transformation. The use of prepositions while ending sentences, using who instead of whom is not taken as serious deviation in grammatical sense. The distinction between affect and effect or between its and it is being obliterated review of literature.

This has led to a trend of using whatever attitude an indifference to the need for consistency in linguistic usage also known as linguistic whatever’s [Baron, 2008, chapter8] human language premise of rule of governed behaviour is being challenged. To be a native speaker of language is to know the rules [e.g. how to form new words, how to combine words into sentences, how to pronounce things]. Noam Chomsky’s theory of transformational grammar refers to knowledge of such rules as “linguistic competence” [Chomsky 1965) an important research question to ponder is that of growing sense of uncertainly what the rules are along with attitude the decision are least important.

Another important research question relates to the challenges of written culture with the increasing shift to digital linguistic informality. Specific conventions of vocabulary, grammar and notation of an author’s ownership over his or her text are also at stake. Alphabetic writing did not develop Greece until the eight and the seventh century BC, and it has been suggested that the alphabet enabled Greeks to lay out their thoughts Unambi Guansly [Havelock 1963]. The motivation to save money and time has become a prominent feature of modern life clock. Two prominent drivers of this theory of doing everything faster are Frederic W. Taylor and Henry Ford.

Increase in text production and encouraging motivation connect to broader audiences and a variety of texts available to us as readers.

But proliferation of writing often done in haste and vast quantity of written works at our fingertips has also led to “flooding the scriptorium”.

Does the abundance of good thing relate to our proficiency building?

If e-mail more or less entirely replaced the old fashioned letter, the culture as a whole will end up with a deficit, it will have lost in quality whatever it has gained in quantity (Eriksen, 2001 p59)

Educational establishments and educationists are at a loss with the altitudinal shift in the current generation of students who want to learn everything online from visual imagery, collaboratively rather than individually limited to chapters rather than entire book. Any assignment for which online references are not available on google search it is difficult to organize debate on such topics. Students are missing the context by which meanings to the online texts have been provided. Writers of all ilk from students teachers often simply revise the same document file as they work on a manuscript leaving no trace of earlier drafts. The early drafts of manuscripts by novelists poets or short story to trace their literary journey is often irretrievable.

Mass-media also help members of developing countries accelerate the pace of development and an opportunity to improve growth prospects. Some of key issues upon which the mass-media supported social movements are based include “democracy, popular sovereignty, control over natural resources, human rights and the environment (Johnson & Laxer 2003 p62). The mass-media has been seen as a tool that “facilitates civil society activities by offering new possibilities for citizen participation” (yang, 2003, p406).

Narratives on mass-media and economic development are divided into two categories of optimists and pessimists.

Online health information has brought revolutionary changes in positive health care. It is not only information about health care but it also becomes a tool for patients and recovery processes.

In understanding what Gidden’s (1991) called the “project of self” children and young people are experiencing internet as a valued new place for social exploration and self expressions (Hollway and Valentine 2003). Young people innovate, interact, integrate and engage with each other through mediated communication.

It is an undeniable fact of recent age that in one way or another everyone is affected by the ubiquity of new online technologies and it has resulted into the blurring of distinctive social practices of information, entertainment, work and leisure, public and private, even childhood and adulthood. There are issues related to safety and security of childhood especially peers networking that has drawn academics and policy attention.

It is utopian to talk of present age without use of mass-media.

It would be pertinent to examine legitimate and resourceful use of mass-media for communicating, learning, participating, playing, connecting and so on.

Based on review of literature present study is planned to examine following research questions:

Present research would aim to explore use pattern of three generations of people of the mass-media.

It will also examine the differences in terms of generation by use of mass-media interaction schedule to be prepared by the researcher.

It will also attempt to examine regional variations of people living in cities and villages.

This study will also examine gender difference in the use of mass-media.

Present study would aim to explore the relationship of internet and psycho-social capital.

CHAPTER – 2

OBJECTIVES

AND

METHODOLOGY

OBJECTIVES:

Following were the objectives of this project:

1. Empowering the student participant learn skills of appreciating social reality with a research and critical orientation.

2. Understanding the way media is created and modalities of its functioning.

3. Exploring the patterns of use and exposures to mass-media in urban families from different social backgrounds and examining its relationship with psychosocial well-being.

4. Understanding the media map impact on our psycho-social well-being.

5. How people use technology as a mean of self-regulation in the everyday life.

6. How use of a particular medium of communication like T.V., internet has empowering or misery impact on individuals and society.

7. Are users new mode of communication has led to enhancement in the well-being.

8. Language being an important component of self expression has empowering or limiting impact on the individual.

9. Is mass-media becoming an empowering mechanism, moving the lives of ordinary people better or is it leading to a divide across generations, gender and background.

METHODOLOGY:

To address the above mentioned objectives, the study will involve multi-pranged strategy. The goal of this study is to see the pattern of self-regulation through mass-media mediated life routine (N=240) of different generations of people. The study consists of four phases i.e. (1) preparation, (2) pilot study, (3) main study, and (4) report writing. In the course of study the participating faculty and students acted as co-researchers and learners. They jointly co-constructed the understanding of media influences. In order to supplement the quantitative aspects of data the students have tried to develop a map of subjective domains of feelings, perceptions and imaginations of the participating families so that a comprehensive picture of reality may emerge. The study also involved qualitative as well as quantitative methodological approaches to tap the processes and outcomes, which are mentioned below in this chapter.

The students got firsthand experience of planning and undertaking research process and appreciating reality as a critical investigator and inculcate in them necessary social sensitivity, research skills and problem solving orientation. The students were encouraged to master interviewing, observation, data analysis and report writing. They were also encouraged to develop interest in academic and applied problem solving and to get a feel of accomplishment. The students through this research, tried to understand how media is produced as well as consumed. To understand the production of media the students were exposed to media centres and interact with media people. The consumption of media was examined by interacting with families representing high, middle and low social class backgrounds would be drawn from Delhi metro area with 40 families from each setting with a total of 120. Within each category nuclear and joint/extended families will be included. The relevant data would be collected with the help of observation, interview, and self report measures of life goals, aspirations, value orientation, subjective well-being, social well-being, academic orientation, and health status.

As mentioned above, for this purpose, suitable quantitative and qualitative analysis approaches were employed by the investigating team which are as follows:-

Case study –

The plan is to have in depth case studies of 240 participants to get an account of lived reality of mass-media interaction.

Coverage –

· The study will be conducted on adolescents, Young adults and senior adults. We also plan to have 50% of the participants of the opposite gender.

· Mass-Media interaction questionnaire to be developed by researcher.

· This questionnaire will be applied to all the participants to capture the impact of mass-media.

Exhaustive analysis was done to achieve the objectives in following steps:

a) Preparation

b) Pilot Study

c) Main Study

d) Report Writing

a) Preparation

i. Interaction with media experts

ii. Interaction with the mentor

iii. Literature Review

iv. Visits to media organization

v. Visits to families

vi. Development of Interview Schedule

b) Pilot Study

Student Researchers visited families in groups and on the basis of 20 samples out of total 240 samples of the final study items were revised, discussed and finalised.

c) Main Study

· Sample size – 240 (persons Male & Female), viz. per student – 24,

· Strategy used – quantitative and qualitative method.

· Data collection using social well-being questionnaire was completed of 120 families 240 persons.

· Media – map questionnaire was used among them.

· Qualitative observation report of each family was gathered from students own experience report of their understanding of the topic.

d) Report Writing

The findings analysed indicated the following:-

i. It appears that the media is an indispensable part of our lives.

ii. It is becoming a site for protecting and consuming desires as well as dreaming a world which at times becomes an illusion that interferes with the real world.

iii. There is need for creating awareness in families to understand the advantages and disadvantages of media.

iv. The younger generation is now getting habituated to organize their life through the inputs from media.

v. The family and community life is getting disorganized due to time pressure generated by media experience.

vi. Media also emerged to be a powerful source of information, knowledge, skill building and cultural sensitivity.

vii. The study also tends to suggest as the fourth pillar of democracy media is capable of generating pressure for social and public-policy decisions.

viii. Media market tactics also need to be understood.

CHAPTER – 3

RESULTS

After analysing the above data of the research study, the researcher arrived at the following findings:-

i. It appears that the media is an indispensable part of our lives.

ii. It is becoming a site for protecting and consuming desires as well as dreaming a world which at times becomes an illusion that interferes with the real world.

iii. There is need for creating awareness in families to understand the advantages and disadvantages of media.

iv. The younger generation is now getting habituated to organize their life through the inputs from media.

v. The family and community life is getting disorganized due to time pressure generated by media experience.

vi. Media also emerged to be a powerful source of information, knowledge, skill building and cultural sensitivity.

vii. The study also tends to suggest as the fourth pillar of democracy that media is capable of generating pressure for social and public-policy decisions.

viii. Media market tactics also need to be understood.

RESULTS