MEDIA MATTERS
Interactive interplay
BY SEVANTI NINAN
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The function of the media is changing from being about informing and entertaining to being more about channelising feedback.
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Other media technologies are also giving a broad swathe of Indians a voice.
Finding their voice: Internet usage in India is broad based.
NEWSPAPERS and TV channels have decided that interactivity is the way to woo readers and viewers and beat the competition. But in doing so they seem to have uncorked something in Indian media consumers.
SMS interactivity on TV is now so ubiquitous that it is already old hat. The scrolling feedback comes on everything from PM Manmohan Singh's woes to the exclusive story a channel may have been running that day. But newspapers have taken to soliciting sms feedback fairly recently. Last year the Dainik Jagran in Delhi began running a mobile number on its front page, offering headline news and inviting feedback on its reporting. Now it is the turn of its rival in Bihar to follow suit.
Citizen reporting
Patna's leading Hindi newspaper Hindustan used the monsoon rains last month to launch its latest experiment: sms feedback that would help deepen its city reporting. It called the initiative "HP Reporter" (HP for Hindustan Patna). Not surprisingly people responded with alacrity: such and such lane in such and such locality was water logged, there was a heap of cow dung and garbage near house number such and such in such and such colony, a cow killed by a speeding bus was lying somewhere, an electrocuted human being somewhere else. Citizen reporting with a vengeance. There was the rural feedback: a demand from a gram panchayat for a repoll so that the panchayat samiti members there could be chosen afresh, a complaint from another development block that the counting there after a poll had not taking place transparently and no recount was being done either.
Then the paper took to running stories based on this feedback, after photographers had been duly despatched, with the sort of racy headlines that Hindi newspapers have begun to specialise in. "Ghar me bhara paani, chat pe ban raha khana" (House full of water, food is being cooked on the terrace.) With a photograph of a woman cooking on her terrace, gas stove and cylinder rigged up, umbrella held up with one hand, as she cooked with the other. With every story it ran names and mobile numbers of those who had sent in the information.
Whether or not governance can improve as easily as an sms can be sent out, the pressure on the local administration builds up when newspapers take to such interactivity. Having taken to this form of interactivity the paper now has 10 separate categories of sms feedback that it solicits. Its underlying question is, "Kaise badlega Bihar?" (How can Bihar be transformed?) In case all this is making Nitish Kumar feel quite harassed, it runs the results of sms polls which think that his administration is pretty much on course. Sixty six per cent think he is doing okay so far.
There is also a hint if you look for it that unreciprocated interactivity is frustrating some citizens: "I sent some news to Aa
j Tak, they did not broadcast it, though the news was correct. Please respond to my message," says one plaintive sms.
At a panel discussion organised after the storm of coverage on backward class reservations and the doctors' strikes, Rajdeep Sardesai declared that what satellite television was doing was giving the middle class a voice. The question at that stage was if the responses to reservations that CNN-IBN and others had telecast had been truly representative. He thought that middle class outrage at being taken for granted was being given an outlet by television.
Online surprise
Other media technologies are also giving a broad swathe of Indians a voice. The findings of a survey on Internet in India are quite remarkable for what they tell you about the broad basing of Internet usage in India. "Online India 2006" done by an agency called Juxt Consult would have us believe that 51 per cent Indian users come from low-middle class with a monthly income of less than Rs. 10,000, 24 per cent come from the Rs.10,000-20,000 a month income group, 74 per cent users have no credit cards, and only 49 per cent have their own computer. Forty two per cent prefer accessing the Net in an Indian language.
And what do they do online? Here is the surprise: 88 per cent access the Net daily, and 88 per cent of all users regularly surf or check out blogs. Visiting blogs is the second most popular online activity after e-mail. The sample was 5,000 hh in 21 cities plus an online sampling of another 20,000.
A largely middle and lower middle class section of Indians, without necessarily having even their own access to computers, are blogging away or accessing blogs. Since blogs are essentially an outlet for both creativity and frustration, this tells us something. It tells that the function of media is changing. From being primarily about informing and entertaining, to being more and more about channelising feedback. Its value as a two-way street is growing. It is beginning to embody assertiveness in our democracy.
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