Mass Media, Propaganda & Ethics: An Overview of a New Upsurge of Fascism in India

Abstract

Mass Media, especially print media since its inception, if we look back, during Industrial Revolution and its concomitant Mass Production, has always been dwindled in between two binary epithets: Political Allegiance and Media Democracy. The duality lies in the fact that when the media has to work at the behest of political parties, ruling parties at the helm of body politique of the state, for its survival and sustenance, of course the other epithet which is ‘Media democracy’ or democratic rights of the media is questionable. However, the compulsion to show political allegiance to the ruling party at the governance is never accepted by the media without resistance and therefore any attempt of imposing censorship on media has been vehemently protested. Examples can be multiplied by drawing instances from history. Political censorship in Indian Media has never been such a recurrent phenomenon as it has become in the recent past. Also, ‘political allegiance’ when turned to propaganda tactics is more vulnerable than that of securing unflinching faith in the government. The number of defamation cases clamped against media houses, reporters and photo journalists have gone up from 13 to 167 as per a recent survey made by an independent journalist. This research study explores the fact that digital propaganda and political allegiance has been used by the ruling government to ensure a mass consensus over a number of socio-political issues, starting from Farmers’ Bill to Abrogation of Article 370 of Indian Constitution or for that matter Warfare Propaganda. The methodology that is used for this study is content analysis of media representation of information and speech analysis of PM Narendra Modi using a unique coding method. The samples are chosen on the basis of how media has represented announcement of different developmental schemes by the Modi Government and what they represent in reality. Most of the news reports that are analysed in this study between 2016-2022 are sourced from different newspapers and internet sources.