The media is a pervasive presence in contemporary everyday life. No aspect of our personal or public experiences is untouched. At the personal level, our dependence is acute. Whoever has lost a smartphone would know that sinking feeling of helplessness. For this is not the loss of a phone any longer. It is the loss of one’s anchor- the rudder to life: access to work and leisure; friends and family; banking and ticketing; monitoring health and wealth. Everything comes to a grinding halt. The world shuts off.

This is a slice of our urban middle-class everyday experience. The only way out of this deep pit of personal trouble is to make that desperate call to block the phone before the rush to fix it. Once too often, we find that it is not possible. It cannot be repaired. Newer models in the market have ensured its redundancy. We are compelled to find a replacement to log back into our ‘world’. This little instrument’s loss incapacitates our everyday functioning. This is a story that would resonate with many who share this world. For others, access could be a struggle of an order that the more privileged would find difficult to comprehend.[i]

The distant and complex workings of the market, the state and social inequalities impinge upon these personal stories. There are larger and often invisible structures that compel us to buy a new gadget rather than repair it.[ii]  The personal trouble is clearly a public issue. This constraint is, however, rarely felt like a compulsion. The advertisement industry ensures that we feel that our decisions are informed, rational and a matter of individual choice.

As users, we know how to download new apps and create a world that suits our tastes and consumption patterns. Friendly suggestions that crop up on our phone screens guide us to sites that we may find of interest and liking. The gentle prompting comes in personalised messages.

The personal touch matters. The industry knows this. There is the art, and there is the business of messaging which makes up the communication industry.

It’s time to get personal with your marketing strategy. Today’s digital marketing tactics are focused on customising the client experience to make each interaction meaningful and valuable. There are simple, cost-effective and non-spammy ways to make your customer feel like one in a million, one of the easiest being personalised text messages.[iii]

The market is not a stand-alone actor in this story. The state spends a phenomenal amount of money on media, communication and publicity. This has only grown with the recent rise of populist and authoritarian regimes. We know very little about the many links that bind the state and market. We also do not know enough how populism works so well and what role the media has.

There is yet another dimension to our mediatised world. States, their rulers and citizens need to look and sound good. Political engagements are carefully managed (Thompson 1995).[iv] Brands have to be made and sold. At the same time, recalcitrant citizens have to be shown in a bad light. Reputation and images of such individuals and institutions alike have to be besmirched. And when they are jailed, many people are not just convinced but relieved that the bad people have been rightly punished. The relentless media messaging, however, does not stop here. The 24×7 excitement of breaking news ensures that those who have been banished behind the prison walls are also evicted from our mind and consciousness. In our world of over communicative abundance, there is always the next big story that will grip our attention. There are organisations and professional expertise to manage bad press and plant new stories that make old ones vanish. 

Media technology helps in this constant image building and industrial-scale representation.  This needs big money, market research and creative work. Brands have to be made. Advertising and marketing agencies are part of this large, complex and professional apparatus that is in the business of making brands and selling dreams.

We all use media but know little about its structure and functioning. We experience environmental degradation but do not quite comprehend what pressures are exercised by the state and market on the ways in which environmental issues are covered in the media. Nor do we know about attacks on environmental activists.[v] Recent instances in social media giants like Facebook, or the scandal about TRP, or the quick withdrawal of an advertisement by a leading jewellery house that captured headlines for a day or two offer glimpses of a media backstage we know little about.

We see, hear and consume media’s constantly changing and converging forms. Most print newspapers have their online versions, as do television channels. Distinctions blur, as do boundaries between entertainment and information. The quick pace and thrill of contemporary news are exciting. Not like the staid format that marked news channels not too many years ago. The older amongst us may recall the content and texture of news of another era. The new format, some scholars have argued, have a visceral connection to the content conveyed.

It may not be an exaggeration to say that we increasingly see through the eyes of media. Events that they focus on are the only events that exist and therefore matter. This skewed information gets further complicated because, in a world of multiple choices and algorithms, we have ‘news’ ‘phone delivered’ as per our preferences. We consume ‘news’ that we can connect to and those that we are predisposed to believe in.

The omnipresence of media-driven buzzwords is in stark contrast to our ignorance of how media works. A billion-plus people now consume news, watch soaps and music videos.  But we know next to nothing about the media industry- its ownership and organisational structure, its revenue model, or its relationship with other industries, with the state and the market.

This ignorance is one-sided. For the now digitally equipped industry knows a great deal about us as consumers.  They know that many urban English knowing Indians consume news on smartphones.[vi] That a bit of feminism may help target new age women (Chaudhuri 2017).[vii] That sunny side journalism, a term in the currency in Indian media in the 1990s, is profitable and, therefore, the viable way forward (ibid). Media coverage on caste atrocities, agrarian crises, and urban squalor is not; unless sensationalised as yet another product to be consumed. The media business also knows that personalised messages are good business. The many marketing research apparatus knows how it works and what messages work with whom. So does the state in various ways. All this is big business.[viii]

Linked is the question of data mining, ‘our’ data which we cheerfully share as we use the various apps on our gadgets. Its scope and scale we barely fathom. Reviewing Shoshana Zuboff’s seminal book Surveillance Capitalism, The Guardian writes that initially “intent on organising all human knowledge; Google ended up controlling all access to it; we do the searching and are searched in turn”. [ix]

This unequal knowledge between consumers and the media ‘messengers’ has made understanding media an imperative need. Some argue that every message is created with a reason, and understanding that reason is the basis of media literacy.[x] That is possibly one entry point to understand media. There may be others.

[i]Aishwarya Reddy, 19, had asked for a laptop, even a second-hand one, to continue her college classes during the coronavirus lockdown. But her family struggled with the request. Last week, the student of Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram college (LSR) died by suicide at her home in Telangana, calling herself a “burden to her family” in a note — a wrenching example of the tragedy of thousands of families and students left financially desperate by the virus shutdown.https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/lsr-student-suicide-in-telangana-unable-to-afford-laptop-lsr-student-dies-by-suicide-at-telangana-home-2322674, accessed on 9^th November 2020.

[ii]http://www.electronicstakeback.com/designed-for-the-dump/quickly-obsolete/, accessed on 9^th November 2020.

[iii]https://www.slicktext.com/blog/2019/01/personalized-text-messages-complete-guide/, accessed on 5^th November 2020.

[iv]Thompson, John B. 1995. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Stanford University Press.

[v]https://monitor.civicus.org/updates/2019/09/10/environmental-activists-and-journalists-among-human-rights-defenders-risk-india/, accessed on 9^th November 2020.

[vi]https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/68-of-indian-users-consume-news-on-smartphones-report/articleshow/68565146.cms, accessed on 7^th November 2020.

^[vii]Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. 2017. Refashioning India: Gender, Media and a Transformed Public Discourse. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan.

[viii]https://www.logicserve.com/blog/survey-social-media-apps-are-an-integral-part-of-the-indian-marketers-everyday-life/, accessed on 5^th November 2020.

[ix]https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/02/age-of-surveillance-capitalism-shoshana-zuboff-review, accessed on 10^th November 2020.

[x]https://www.commonsensemedia.org/news-and-media-literacy/what-is-media-literacy-and-why-is-it-important, accessed on 10^th November 2020.