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Native Media in English
 9789332553965, 9789332567856, 9332567859

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Copyright......Page 3
Contents......Page 4
Syllabus......Page 6
Foreword......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Acknowledgements......Page 12
Module 1: Extracts from Print Media......Page 14
Text One: Convergence of Media......Page 15
Exercises......Page 24
Project......Page 25
Text Two: Young Indians Have Become More Superstitious......Page 26
How has the Indian attitude towards science changed in the past few decades?......Page 27
Apart from your mentor Fred Hoyle, who else has inspired you?......Page 29
You said the comet Swift-Tuttle may strike the earth in 2126. Is it going to be the end of the world?......Page 30
Exercises......Page 31
Project......Page 32
Text Three: India Did Not Get Anything Wrong......Page 33
Does this suggest to you that corporates and business houses have a rose-tinted view of India?......Page 35
So, do you find yourself more loved and less threatening than before?......Page 36
Do you see your Foundation work as some kind of penance for your Microsoft work?......Page 37
Could this philanthrocapitalism become a little too big for comfort? Might people fear the Foundation like they did Microsoft, because it is so big?......Page 38
But are there nights when you feel governments like India’s, are receding from public life, public health, public education, and outsourcing the things that the state ought to be doing to private partners?......Page 39
So, you are saying that a technocratic kind of approach towards public health is for the public good......Page 40
Of all the countries you now personally visit, where do you place India in terms of ranking?......Page 41
As someone who set up this giant corporation and made it so successful, when you see India grappling with problems like this, what do you think India got wrong?......Page 42
But there’s much resistance from India’s rich to pay more taxes, something you advocated in Australia......Page 43
If, at the end of all these efforts, would you be disappointed if a Nobel Prize does not come your way?......Page 44
Exercises......Page 45
Project......Page 46
Module 2: Extracts from Visual Media......Page 48
Text One: Television Reality Shows (Satyamev Jayate Episodes)......Page 49
TV Shows Based on Reality… Real-life Situations......Page 51
Break the Silence......Page 54
It appears that medical practice is no more a calling or avocation. It has become just another form of commerce......Page 56
Meaning of Dignity......Page 59
Now, What Does This Dignity for All Encompass? What Are the Issues?......Page 60
Facts......Page 61
To tackle with the issue......Page 62
How do we tackle this issue?......Page 63
A Sustainable Future with Dignity for All Even in Death......Page 64
For Further Reference......Page 65
Women’s Empowerment......Page 66
Human Rights and Gender Issues......Page 67
Gender-based Discrimination......Page 68
Violence against Women......Page 70
Mulling Gender Sensitization in Curriculum: HRD Minister......Page 71
Reality Check......Page 72
Exercises......Page 74
Project......Page 75
Text Two: Television Commercials......Page 76
Exercises......Page 82
Project......Page 83
Text Three: Only an Axe Away—A Documentary Film by P. Baburaj and C. Saratchandran......Page 84
A Note by P. Baburaj......Page 85
Exercises......Page 86
Project......Page 87
Module 3: Extracts from Internet......Page 88
Text One: The Internet and Youth Culture......Page 89
Technological Determinism......Page 90
The Social Construction of Technologies......Page 94
The Internet as Culture and as Cultural Artefact......Page 95
Exercises......Page 109
Project......Page 110
Text Two: Writing Online: Websites, Blogs and Social Networking......Page 111
1. Choose keywords first......Page 113
6. Use bullets and numbers......Page 114
Writing for blogs......Page 115
5. Keep it ‘social’......Page 116
10. Make a commitment......Page 117
Writing for social networking sites......Page 118
.. Be genunine......Page 119
2. Include details......Page 120
5. Write to one person, not many......Page 121
10. Do not boast......Page 122
A word of warning about abbreviations......Page 123
Checklist......Page 124
Exercises......Page 125
Project......Page 126
Text Three: How Google Has Changed Our Language......Page 127
Exercises......Page 129
Project......Page 130
Text Four: Quality of Videos Uploaded in the Social Networks and Its Impact on the Age Group of 18–25 Years' Student Community......Page 131
Graphic Commentary is Opening the Doors of Opportunity......Page 132
‘The Emerging Adulthood’: typically defined as 18–25 years of age......Page 133
Empowerment and Team Work Spells Success......Page 134
A Boon for Education, Researchers, and Students......Page 135
Constant Connectivity—at What Cost?......Page 136
Conclusion......Page 137
Project......Page 138
A05 Native Media in English Model Question Paper......Page 140

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Copyright © 2016 Pearson India Education Services Pvt. Ltd Published by Pearson India Education Services Pvt. Ltd, CIN: U72200TN2005PTC057128, formerly known as TutorVista Global Pvt. Ltd, licensee of Pearson Education in South Asia. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the publisher’s prior written consent. This eBook may or may not include all assets that were part of the print version. The publisher reserves the right to remove any material in this eBook at any time. ISBN 978-93-325-5396-5 eISBN 978-93-325-6785-6 Head Office: A-8 (A), 7th Floor, Knowledge Boulevard, Sector 62, Noida 201 309, Uttar Pradesh, India. Registered Office: Module G4, Ground Floor, Elnet Software City, TS140, Block 2 & 9, Rajiv Gandhi Salai, Taramani, Chennai 600 113, Tamil Nadu, India. Fax: 080-30461003, Phone: 080-30461060 www.pearson.co.in, Email: [email protected]

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C o n t en t s

Syllabus v Foreword vii Preface ix Acknowledgements xi

MODULE 1  Extracts from Print Media

01

Convergence of Media   Text One 

02

   Text Two  Y  oung Indians Have Become More Superstitious

13

 Text Three  India Did Not Get Anything Wrong20

MODULE 2  Extracts from Visual Media

35

   Text One  Television Reality Shows

(Satyamev Jayate)36

•  Break the Silence41 •  Every Life is Precious43 •  Dignity for All46 •  On Gender Issues53

  Text Two  Television Commercials63 Text Three  O  nly an Axe Away—A Documentary Film by P. Baburaj and C. Saratchandran71

MODULE 3  Extracts from Internet

75

   Text One  The Internet and Youth Culture76   Text Two  W  riting Online: Websites, Blogs and Social Networking98

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iv

Contents

Text Three  H  ow Google Has Changed Our Language114  Text Four  Q  uality of Videos Uploaded in the Social Networks and Its Impact on the Age Group of 18–25 Years' Student Community118 Model Question Paper

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Sy lla bus

University of Calicut Common Course Course Code: A05UG Semester Iii No. of Credits: 4

No. of Hours: 90 (5 Hrs. per week)

Native Media in English Objectives: •  To inculcate native feelings among the learners. • To provide contemporary cultural and social awareness of Kerala through English. •  To enable the learners to appreciate the print, visual media and online resources with social and cultural importance. •  To facilitate the learners to respond in English language to the various issues in and around their country.

Module 1 – Extracts from Print Media

(20 Hrs.)

1. Achadi, drishyam, samoohya madhyamangalude samakaliga samanvayam – a speech by Sashi Kumar, Director, College of Journalism

[Appeared in Malayalam weekly on 17 January, 2014]

2. Young Indians Have Become More Superstitious – a speech by Shalini Singh

[Appeared in The Week on 1 February, 2014 – an interview by Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, Astrophysicist]

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Syllabus

vi

3. India Did Not Get Anything Wrong – a speech by Krishna Prasad

[Appeared in Outlook on 10 June, 2013 – an interview with Bill Gates]

Module 2 – Extracts from Visual Media

(35 Hrs.)

1. Television Reality Shows [Satyamev Jayate episodes]    (i) Break the Silence  (ii) Every Life is Precious (iii) Dignity for All 2. Analyzing Television Commercials 3. Documentary film: Only An Axe Away by P. Baburaj and C. Saratchandran

[Malayalam/40min/2004/DV]

Module 3 – Extracts from Internet

(15 Hrs.)

1. The Internet and Youth Culture – by Gustavo S. Mesch

[http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/archives/Youth Culture/Mesch.pdf]

2. Writing Online: Websites, Blogs and Social Networking

[Model business letters, emails, etc. – By Shirley Taylor]

3. How Google Has Changed Our Language

[Integrated Advertising, Promotion and Marketing Communications – By Kenneth E. Clow et al.]

4. Short Films on Internet (i) Facebook Short Film – By Abhinav Sunder Nayak (ii) Applied? – By Nitin Menon

Assignment, Seminar and Examination

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(20 Hrs.)

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Fo re word The syllabus and teaching modules of Common Course on Native Media in English represent a shift in the focus of learning–teaching strategies in all facets ranging from content to delivery. There is, in them, a radical makeover in line with the changing requirements of the times. This shift from simple skill-development to intelligent participation and interaction, from rote use of writing–reading material to live situations and debates, from a static approach to a dynamic one, could prove to be a game-changer in the hands of imaginative teachers. Language learning turns on three hinges: motivation, content and delivery. This book offers a bouquet of communication material that is student-centred, socially relevant and amenable to a variety of linguistic applications. This is among the first attempts in India to tap the vast potential of a “mediated” society in language learning. Just as we are unaware of the air we breathe because it is all around us, the omnipresent media too encompass us so completely that we take them for granted. When individuals and societies express themselves through several channels – print, broadcast, cinematographic, electronic and cybernetic – these avenues could provide the right learning environment in which one gets exposed to a foreign language in sufficient depth and extent. Communication, as a social function, conveys experiences and aspirations of individuals, groups and societies. Language acquisition used to mean learning how to communicate in a few given situations. But today, with the proliferation and democratization of media technology, communication is also driven by different kinds of media. This is why media become an indispensable ingredient in language studies. In a democracy, the media have the additional responsibility of initiating and moulding social and political debates. The media literacy needed by any modern society includes the capacity to interact with and through the media—acquisition of “media language skills”. And in a multi-lingual country like ours, English becomes the obvious link language to be learnt. Some people call India a continent masquerading as a single country—an acknowledgement of its rich linguistic, cultural variety. Any course on native Indian media has to address this diversity. This book includes not merely texts – print and video texts – in English; it also opens out to Malayalam and Hindi texts, which help to give a sense of immediacy and proximity to the topics and accentuate student participation in the learning of English.

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viii

Foreword

The book provides for skill development—listening, speaking, reading and writing, but sees skills as organic activities stemming from live situations, placing intellection above mechanical repetition, and interaction above one-way teaching. Needless to say, it is only a raw material to be used creatively by imaginative teachers. The texts leave ample space for acquisition of skills, debating and extension activities. Emerging as they do from real-life situations, they stimulate thinking, provoke without offending, and inspire the students to take social values seriously, to deliberate about building a better nation, and to take constructive roles in the conversations that are part of the mass media and the social media. The formal introduction of television material into the language learning process has taken a bit too long to happen, although video clippings have long been integral to the fare provided by language labs and communication training centres. The television episodes given here, accompanied by a theoretical discussion of reality shows vis-à-vis social realities, also give an insight into the media landscape evolving in India. The episodes are so real that their current relevance and appeal make up for the fact that they speak a different Indian language. They relate easily to the everyday experiences and issues that become national debates. A text is what the text does. The efficacy of this book depends on the way it is used by the students and faculty to stimulate thinking and encourage linguistic activities. The desirability of media as a tool in language learning has been a subject of debate, but so was the issue of using literature as a tool. Just as literature provided organic depth to linguistic learning, media can provide vibrancy and immediacy to it. The efforts put in by Professor K. Rizwana Sultana as the person in charge of developing this book have been immense and deserve commendation. From selecting and collecting the contents including Satyamev Jayate, a talk show that gained national attention, getting the necessary consent and editing it, to looking after the publication end must have been no light task. Such painstaking perseverance will be amply repaid if this book results in improving the English learning–teaching environment at the undergraduate degree level. Hopefully, in the hands of capable faculty, it can deliver. Dr Yaseen Ashraf Professor of English (Retired) Director Media One TV Channel

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P reface Native Media in English is an attempt to model a new pattern of text for the common course in English for undergraduate programmes. It includes texts from print and visual media and the internet. As the changing times signify the need of an issue-based interdisciplinary course, the book has been designed as lead to Common Course A05, for the third semester undergraduate programme of the University of Calicut. Articles and texts from the visual media and the internet have been selected with focus on contemporary issues that affect the lives of people in India from all walks of life. The book emphasises on aspects that the media – print, visual or social networking sites – propel for socio-political intervention by the youth. The chief objective is to enable the learners to think critically about contemporary issues and aspects that touch their own society and are represented in different media, perceive them differently and use English language as a medium of expression of their thoughts and understanding of the socio-cultural, environmental and technological aspects. The course consists of three modules drawing extracts on and from media – print, visual and the internet. Module 1, Extracts from Print Media, contains three articles from selected periodicals prominent in Kerala. “Convergence of Media”, a speech by Mr Sashi Kumar, Director, College of Journalism, highlights the impact of media on our lives. To quote him, “…this idea of convergence took hold of our lives, particularly in the media for media practitioners, for receivers of media, for beneficiaries of media, for victims of media.” Dr Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, an astrophysicist, speaks of the educated and budding youth in India in “Young Indians have become more superstitious.” Mr Bill Gates of Microsoft fame, in an interview where he speaks of his foundation work in India, says “India did not get anything wrong”. The intent of this module is to draw students’ attention towards journalistic language. Module 2, Extracts from Visual Media, encompasses the following visual media excerpts: 1. Television reality shows, Satyamev Jayate episodes 2, 4 and 10 titled “Break the Silence”, “Every Life is Precious” and “Dignity for All”, respectively, that deal with diverse issues that affect Indian life in all spheres, are incorporated in a DVD format. Articles on the issues discussed in the videos are also included. They do not directly address the specific cases reported in the episodes concerned.

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Preface

x

2. Analysing Television Commercials deals with the role of advertisements in the routine life of an average Indian consumer. It also registers a note on the art of advertisement. 3. The documentary film, Only an Axe Away (Malayalam/40 min/2004/DV), by P. Baburaj and C. Saratchandran draws attention towards the importance of a discussion over the Silent Valley issue and the urgency of preservation of nature. Module 3, Extracts from Internet, presents the following: 1. The views of Gustavo S. Mesch, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Haifa, Israel. In his work “The Internet and Youth Culture”, where he elaborates on the influence of internet on the youth. 2. An article on “Writing online: websites, blogs and social networking”, which discusses the techniques of writing online. 3. “How Google has changed our Language”, a brief note on Google adds a pinch of salt to the experience of surfing on Google. 4. A brief write-up on the quality of videos uploaded on social networks and their impact on student community in the 18–25 years age group comments on videos on the cyber space. Two short films are mentioned as examples. Each chapter begins with pre-reading tasks that have been put in with a view to sensitise students towards the issues discussed therein. This enables the learners to respond to the topic positively. The exercises at the end of each text enable learners to respond creatively and critically, apart from testing their comprehension skills. The topics selected for projects are well-chosen to help deepen the learner’s understanding of contemporary issues and to enhance their writing skills. The creative tasks focus on speech and interaction. The post-reading tasks help them make creative and critical moves towards betterment of the society. The questions for examination are pegged at six levels – knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. In its entirety, the tasks laid out in the text focus on communicative competence, creative analysis, individual and group efforts and social consciousness raising activities. I hope that students will be benefitted by this book and, at end of the course, be able to use their enhanced skills in the English language effectively. K. Rizwana Sultana

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Acknow led g ement s I thank Malayalam weekly, The Week, Outlook and Prof. Gustavo S. Mesch respectively, for granting permission to print: 1. Achadi, drishyam, samoohya madhyamangalude samakaliga samanvayam – a speech by Sashi Kumar, Director, College of Journalism

[Appeared in Malayalam weekly on 17 January, 2014]

2. Young Indians Have Become More Superstitious – a speech by Shalini Singh

[Appeared in The Week on 1 February, 2014 – an interview by Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, Astrophysicist]

3. India Did Not Get Anything Wrong – a speech by Krishna Prasad

[Appeared in Outlook on 10 June, 2013 – an interview with Bill Gates]

I acknowledge the permission granted by Pearson Education to use extracts from the following titles: 1. Writing Online: Websites, Blogs and Social Networking, Shirley Taylor 2. “How Google has changed our Language” from Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications, Kenneth E. Clow, 2010 3. Advertising: Principles and Practices, 3e, Moriarty, Mitchell et al., 2014 I am grateful to Aamir Khan Film Productions for readily granting permission to include three episodes of Satyamev Jayate in this book. I am obliged to the directors and producers of Satyamev Jayate for their support. I appreciate the instant response and communication received from Mr Shrinivas Rao (executive producer) and Ms Chandini Parekh regarding the permissions for Satyamev Jayate. Thanks are due to Mr P. Baburaj for allowing us to include his documentary Only an Axe Away. I am indebted to Dr K. Yaseen Ashraf, Professor of English (Retired), Director, Media One TV Channel, for his valuable suggestions and contribution to the book. I am obliged to Prof. Mahmood (Chairman), Dr Josh Sreedharan and the members of the Board of Studies for their support and cooperation in preparing this book. I am thankful to the wonderful editorial team of Pearson Education for invaluable inputs and bringing this book out. Special thanks to Dr Anuradha Ajith and Mr Pradeep Kumar Battacharjee. K. Rizwana Sultana

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MODULE

1

Extracts from Print Media

Text ONE

Convergence of Media

Text TWO

Young Indians Have Become More Superstitious

Text THREE

India Did Not Get Anything Wrong

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TEXT ONE Convergence of Media —By Sashi Kumar

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Text one  /  Convergence of Media

3

Sashi Kumar is a well-known media personality from Kerala. He is the founder of India’s first regional satellite TV channel Asianet. He is also the founder of Media Development Foundation. He was the first West Asia correspondent of The Hindu in the mid-eighties. He directed the film Kaya Taran in Hindi based on the short story ‘When Big Trees Fall’ by writer N. S. Madhavan. The film won him the G. Aravindan award as the best debut filmmaker of 2004. He acted in Malayalam movies, Iniyum Marichittillatha Nammal, Balyakalasakhi, and Loudspeaker. He is currently the chairman of Asian College of Journalism. I have the added responsibility of speaking on the theme of convergence of print, visual, and social media in the contemporary milieu, which I would convey as crisp as possible. The media is no longer compartmentalized or segmented as we knew it before. Indeed, one of the changes that has taken place when we moved from the industrial revolution model to the information revolution model is that we moved from an age of analog (analogue) media to an age of digital media. As the shift took place, the concept, process, and idea of convergence of media took hold of our lives, particularly for media practitioners, media receivers, media beneficiaries, and for victims of media. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is at the cutting edge in terms of culture and technology, defined convergence as, if you imagine three separate circles, if you imagine print and publishing as one circle, broadcasting and cinema as the second circle, and internet and cyber media as the third circle, then these three

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Module ONE  / Extracts from Print Media

circles are coalistic, overlapping, and coming together — the technical definition of convergence. Therefore, ideally such a convergence should make for a big difference in the way media affects our lives, in the way we deal with media and in the way media makes a difference in our lives. We can see that happening … I run a college of journalism and one of the first questions I ask students when they come for the new batch every year is how many of you read the newspapers. In a class of say 200 students, hardly four or five hands will go up. Initially when I saw this, I was very shocked. I was very concerned and thought how these people, who are going to be journalists, don’t even read newspapers. Then of course you know, that not reading newspapers is not indicative of their not knowing the news. They are online; they go online; and in fact, their breadth of news is far greater than of those who read newspapers, because they know the context, the extra commentary and they know that all the internet editions of newspapers have far more news than the printed edition because there is a paucity of newsprint. There is limitation of newsprint and limitation of space, but as the internet editions often give you longer versions, they provide hyperlinks and take you to other-related topics. So, there is a whole infinitesimal area of breadth and depth on which these students are able to understand news, learn news, evaluate news, and contextualize news, which we, who are used to the newspaper along with the morning cup of tea or coffee, may not have sheerly out of habit—that’s the new generation. The generation of media recipients are the consumers. Their knowledge is broader than ours in many ways.

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Therefore, they probably develop a healthy disrespect for politics or a healthy respect for politics; they are able to assess people in very different ways. There is a paradigm shift, the kind of model shift—that is taking place in terms of how they relate to the media and how they experience the media. So, what we find today is that the single tablet, a screen, is becoming convergent in the sense that your newspaper, your radio, your television, and your internet all are delivered to you perhaps on the single screen. This does not mean that the society at large is able to receive it yet. We in India, have the distinct problem, which we can’t run away from that of a digital divide. The masses of our population cannot afford some of these gadgets and cannot afford access to the broadband as required, or access to even Wi-Fi.  However, at the same time, we have seen how the revolution of mobile telephone, for instance, has changed access to information and empowered the most ordinary persons in the country, whether it is a vegetable seller, you know, or the man who is sweeping the streets in the morning; all sections of society have been empowered by the power of mobile phones. And as you know, the mobile phone itself is a gadget of convergence, you have the capacity to receive information not just share, can sometimes see pictures, able to read and get things. Therefore, convergence is happening in our lives in so many ways, and we are becoming more and more informed, in that sense, we are becoming more and more subjects of convergence. It is not just in the media that it is taking place.  In the formal media space, convergence has created a huge difference to the way we react to or interact in social

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Module ONE  / Extracts from Print Media

media. Social media is such a changing media; it means that what is social media of today will be changing tomorrow. There are Facebook, Twitter, and various categories of social media that are evolving. So, the entire buzz and communication and interaction are taking place in virtual space so much so that it is probably becoming more and more difficult, especially in the younger generation, to find the physicality of social gathering, because their conversations their interactions, and their social discourse are taking place in the social media. They are online; SMS texting has become almost an art, some of them do it so fast, you know it is like the old days where the typist could type 500 words per minute and that kind of Guinness Book record has been set in SMS texting. They are constantly informing or being informed constantly; it is a live wire kind of situation. Therefore, I think this has tremendous implications, in my view, for all sections of the society including political parties. As we know, all political parties when they have big rallies need to bring a big presence of people for those rallies and some of them come with a passion.  However, I wouldn’t be surprised especially if a section of the audience, section of the people or society slowly move into the realm of social media and therefore become necessary for political parties to have presence, the cyber presence, the social media presence. Social media by definition is, I think, a check and balance area for formal news media whether it is television or newspaper or radio. I find, for instance, that many of you, who are active on internet and so on, will find that social media provides far greater

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commentary, far greater contextual addition, and far more valuable information these days than you get from the formal media space. We are able to see very often how the agenda of formal media are diluted by the social media. So, it is an alternative space, a space where the ordinary citizens, the people of this country, can express their views and opinions. I think a good example, an illustration, of this, is the Arab Spring and we have seen the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the United States, and in our own country, in the capital of India, in Delhi, we have seen the Aam Aadmi Party emerging as a ruling party today with just a couple of years of activism; it is largely due to the power of the social media. How do they organize? They did not have the funds to organize. They did not have the funds to truck in people to Ram Lila grounds or wherever they had their meetings. They would announce the meeting on social media. It would spread viral; it would go viral as they say on the social media or Twitter or SMS mode and 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 people would turn up for the rally or a meeting. So, the mode of political mobilization, the mode of political expression, the mode of demonstrations or rallies are now being organized not by the formal news media, but by the social media. And largely because of the advantages of convergence, the information is spread very fast. We know that when Hosni Mubarak was ruling the state with iron fist, the Arab Spring developed primarily because of social media. That is how they were announced and suddenly millions of people would gather. So, these are not developed societies, these are not societies like in the west.

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Module ONE  / Extracts from Print Media

So, I think there is a tendency on the part of some of us to say these are technologies that will take time to seep down the people. We said that mobile phone became such a common place that in every village in U.P. or Bihar, the smallest denominator uses the mobile phone and people adapt to technologies faster than we imagine. Literacy need not be a problem. One of the advantages of this convergence, is precisely that, I think, we are very distinct in Kerala because we have had 100 per cent literacy, we have had a campaign of movement; in many ways, the quality of life is better. However today because of convergence, the advantage of literacy is actually been diluted a bit, because we are going back in many ways to the older traditions. I don’t want to be misunderstood, but we should not assume that literacy is always better than the oral tradition. I am not saying this because I am from a television stream where you don’t need literacy, just see and hear; in fact, you know too much, it is a liability on television because you are not supposed be very intellectual. It’s a kind of dumbing down least common denominator operation to meet large sections of people. But what I mean is that in social media today, you have video streaming, you have visual, you have broadcasting, you have the sound, and you have the text. So, these three forms of information or communication are combining again in social media. India is traditionally considered a global society. Much of our literary heritage, religious heritage, that is even Buddhism, they were all orally communicated generation after generation and recorded at some point of time by your memory. It’s an exercise. It’s a

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dazzling exercise of memory. There is a wonderful story of Egyptian God Thoth. When the inventor of writing whose name is Hermes came and told Thoth: 'I have discovered writing, and what a great change it will make, and what a great benefit it will make to our people'. The Egyptian ruler, Thoth thought about it and said: 'I am not so sure, it’s such a good thing because it is true that by writing you can record, everything can be recorded and then be referred. It is also true that with writing, man will become less and less reliant on his memory. You don’t need your memory because it is recorded and you can refer that'. Today, of course, this is not to underrate the importance of writing. Writing was very important for moving on to modernism, for the renaissance, Gutenberg press, the printing revolution, all of these have been very huge civilizational difference to us. And yet, I think, today we are in a unique position of re-discovering the value of oral traditions, the value of orality, of the spoken word, of the seen image or the heard image or the heard word along with the read word. Writing implies absence. Roland Barthes famously said, 'You need not write to somebody who is sitting in front of you. You write to somebody who is absent, who is away from you, whereas speech implies presence. The visual implies presence. The hearing implies presence. There is a sense of presence'. So, these are the oral traditions that are recast, redeployed, and re-invented in many ways and became a part of convergent technology that we are speaking about today. The formal media is yet to discover and yet to use much of

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these. It is true that most newspapers have an internet site, but that’s just a version, shall we say—an internet version of the print edition of the newspaper. Whereas the true idiom, true cultural or shall we say the uniqueness of internet, of cyber media or of cyber space is yet to be realized. It is a work in progress; its going on. I don’t think any of us can say that we have arrived there. So, we are living in a very fascinating time of convergence. Convergence is actually the biggest work in progress of our century and that is going to make a big difference to the way we understand the world, the way we see the world, and the way we react to the world, and the way we are empowered in terms of these interactions. One of the most powerful aspects of the social media is that it empowers democracy and it has little patience for our doctrines. China is fighting a losing battle against the social media, we can see that. Chinese, though they have accomplished great strides in terms of their economy, in terms of sophistication, literature, and so on, has, like many socialist countries, tended to be absolutist in terms of information. However, we can see that the people of China are more and more restless, more and more impatient; they state their views and the government is finding it increasingly difficult to control the spread of social media. So, convergence is such a mutating concept that it is difficult to control it, and there are user generation of information or people themselves use, that is, generate information and use it. So, it is not something that some people can give to others. It is something that the civil society, the social sphere, is giving unto itself. Constitution

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of India says we the people of India give unto ourselves. Social media is something where large section of people in this country or across the world are giving unto themselves the power to communicate, the power to be informed, the power to express their views, the power to dissent, the power to assent, and the power to carry their lives forward as they see fit. So, these are, I think, the unique propositions of the social media, and I am sure many of us, or some of us, are allergic to social media, and we may not yet have entered this fascinating world. We may not have been formally aware of convergence, but I suggest, that all of us are in some ways caught up by this whole business of convergence whether we like it or not; unintended or unknown to ourselves we are, I think, the players in this grand working progress called convergence, which includes in a good measure the social media.

Glossary Coalition: An alliance, a combination into one body a union. Infinitesimal: Immeasurably small, indefinite. Mutating: Changing.

Exercises

  I Answer the following questions in two or three sentences. 1. What is the change that has taken place when we moved from the industrial revolution model to the information revolution model? 2.  What is a digital divide? 3. Why is convergence of the media a mutating concept?

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II answer the following questions in not more than 100 words. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

III

The definition of convergence as defined by the MIT. Write your views on reading newspaper on internet. Write a short note on digital divide in India. Write a note on mobile phone as a gadget of convergence. ‘Social media as the power to communicate’. Comment.

answer the following questions in about 300 words.

1. How does the convergence of media affect our lives? 2. Write your views on the new generation of media recipients.

sUPPlEMENTary ExErCIsEs

Creative Task Write a dialogue between people engaged in an argument over media and modern technology.

Project Write an article for a magazine of your choice about your perception of convergence of media.

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TEXT TWO young indians Have Become More superstitious —By Shalini Singh

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Jayant Vishnu Narlikar is known all over the world for his work in cosmology. He shares with his mentor, Sir Fred Hoyle, the honour of developing the conformal g­ ravity theory. Narlikar, 75, has been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan and Padma Bhushan and UNESCO’s Kalinga award for popularization of science. In an exclusive interview with THE WEEK, he said his generation was less superstitious than the present one. He said even people from cities were not immune to ­superstitions, although they had exposure to the latest technologies. He also talked about his ­friendship with the famous writer E.M. Forster. Excerpts from the interview: Last December marked 50 years of you seeing the sun rise in the west for the first time. How does it feel? I did not realize it had been that long ago [smiles]. It was an unexpected observation back then. Quite rare, too, given that all the conditions needed for that were not easily contrived. You had to have the sun near the horizon, your speed [of the plane] had to be greater than the speed of the rotation of the earth in the opposite direction, and the time of the day had to match. I was travelling with David, my astronomer companion, and we both enjoyed the experience. How has the Indian attitude towards science changed in the past few decades? It is important to make a distinction when we talk of science. One, research in science and two, growth of scientific temper. Jawaharlal Nehru said in his Discovery of India,

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which was written before Independence, that he expected the people of India to learn to be more rational, rather than getting ­carried away by tradition and superstitions. He hoped this would happen after Independence. But, it has not happened, even after 66 years. Rather, the superstitious element has grown. My generation was less superstitious than the present one. This applies to people from cities who have the advantage of technology. They proudly display their mobile phones with various contraptions, but their belief in astrology and holy men has increased. I feel they could have been made to think more rationally by the way they are taught in schools. Learning by note takes away the power of desire to find a solution that is rational. Our generation had to memorize less. We had time to play games and read books. The habit of reading has gone now. There is no time to play, given the overburdened syllabus, TV shows, and computer games. The way science and maths are taught, too, is different. My teachers spoke about things that were not part of the syllabus. We had access to the physics lab to do our ­experiments. Given the sheer number of students today, teachers barely have time. C.N.R. Rao [chairman of the science advisory council to the Prime Minister] said government support for R&D in science is just 0.8 per cent of the total GDP of the country. When I was a member of the science a­ dvisory council, I was promised that it would be raised to 2 per cent from the ­prevailing 1 per cent. Instead, it has slipped to 0.8 per cent over the years. I have also started hearing this dangerous

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phrase among scientists that ‘money’ is not a problem. If there is an impression that the ­government will give money for research, money should be a problem. No one is ­enquiring how it is being spent. If the amount is limited, the claimants will be ­conscious of how they choose to spend it. Coming to the media, take the example of a solar eclipse. A TV channel will call a scientist to the studio as well as an astrologer and give more time to the astrologer. Most channels have their in-house astrologers. In the 1980s, there was a survey done on the print media in which they looked at how much space is being given to science and technology news. It came up to 5 per cent. The English newspapers had a worse record than the Hindi ones, which means that people at the grassroots are more interested in science than the ones who read English papers, who are only a few and are more superstitious lot. After elections, politicians approach astrologers to fix the timing of their swearing-in ceremony. However, no one predicted Rajiv Gandhi’s death, how he would die or when. It is the lack of self-confidence and the lure of the easy way that make people believe in superstitions. India has ‘space-age’ superstitions. Even now, children ask me about the Bermuda Triangle and flying saucers, which have long been debunked. Apart from your mentor Fred Hoyle, who else has inspired you? My father was a big influence in my early days. Fred was my Ph.D. s­upervisor, from whom I learnt a lot. I was

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lucky enough to spend time with E.M. Forster [author of the famous book A Passage to India]. He was my neighbour when I was at King’s College, Cambridge. I was 28 and he was in his 80s. He was an easy person to talk to. His interests were modern. He used to have attacks of fits for which there was a bell in his room that rang in mine. So, if anything were to happen to him, I could get help. Once when he had an attack and was admitted [to a hospital], I went to see him. He said, ‘Oh, it was nothing as grand as a stroke, it was just a fit’. Old people complain about ill-health all the time. He never did and I admired him for that. He taught us how to become old in a happy way. You said the comet Swift-Tuttle may strike the earth in 2126. Is it going to be the end of the world? [The matter of] comets hitting the earth has been addressed by astronomers who study meteors to see if they can predict collisions up to 500 years, issue warnings, and look at things we can do. I wrote a science fiction about a comet on its way to the earth and looked at how superstitious people looked at it and how science looked at it. Science suggested a solution where you explode a nuclear device near the approaching comet to deflect it so that it would miss the earth. But, it was done in a confidential manner so as not to cause panic among people.

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Glossary Contraptions: As a machine, devised for a particular function. R&D:  Research and development. GDP:  Gross Domestic Product. Debunked:  Proven false. Collision:  The meeting of particles or of bodies in which each exerts a force upon the other. Science fiction by Narlikar:  The Return of Vaman.

Exercises

 I Answer the following questions in two or three sentences. 1.  How is science different from scientific temper? 2. What did Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru expect from Indian people? 3.  What is meant by ‘space-age’ superstitions?

II Answer the following questions in not more than 100 words. 1. Write a short note on Indian attitude towards science. 2. According to Narlikar, what were differences between the past and present generations? 3. What was Narlikar trying to convey through the story of his experience with E.M. Foster? 4.  Write a short note on comet swift-Tuttle in 2126. 5.  Write a note on the science fiction novel referred to by Narlikar.

III Answer the following questions in about 300 words. 1. Do you agree with Narlikar’s views on the present day’s youth being more superstitious? Discuss. 2. Write an essay on your idea of science and superstition.

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sUPPlEMENTary ExErCisEs

Creative Task Write a short story on the theme of superstition.

Project Prepare an interview schedule with a person of reputation for your college magazine on ‘Indian Youth, Science, and Superstition’.

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TEXT THREE india Did Not Get anything Wrong —By Krishna Prasad

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If philanthropy sounds like a nice, leisurely post-retirement activity to be squeezed in between morning golf and afternoon siesta, the sight of the world’s richest man zipping into and out of cities, countries, and continents disabuses you of the notion. With a war chest in excess of $36 billion (approximately `20,200 crores) and a statutory requirement that he must donate 5 per cent of it each year to remain a charity, William Henry Gates III doles out his millions with the same maniacal zeal that he sold software. His calling card reads ‘Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’; his mindset is still of ‘Chairman, Microsoft’. So, he schmoozes with the Australian Prime Minister on Tuesday, tucks into chicken tikka masala and paneer matar with the Indian Health Minister in Delhi on Wednesday, and drops in on Hyderabad and Mumbai along the way before flying back to Seattle for the week end. In between, the 58-year-old squeezes in visits to locations where his foundation operates and happily does interviews and photoshoots because he sees them as a ‘break’.

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‘The dumbest question I am asked is, “What does it mean to be rich?” ’ he tells Krishna Prasad. Excerpts from the interview: How different are the Foundation trips to India from the time you ran Microsoft? When you come on business, you don’t spend time in the slums running things; you don’t go up to Bihar all that much. So, I’m seeing more of India, the real India, in this job than I ever did in the other job. I remember once saying that all these cities have big slums, and the Microsoft guy sitting next to me in the plane said, ‘No, no, no, Bangalore doesn’t have slums.’ When we flew over, there was this huge slum. I said, ‘OK, what’s that?’ He said, ‘Oh, maybe it does’. So, it is easy to be a bit naive, which is fine. But, what we are doing now is very real. Does this suggest to you that corporates and business houses have a rose-tinted view of India? The people who are well off, even if you live in the same place, you have a way of not rubbing your nose in it all the time. When people first come to India, they are amazed that all these levels of income are so intermixed with each other. But you [Indians] are used to it; you are not going, ‘This is unusual’. Definitely, because better-off people are clustered together, whether in the US or better parts of India, there’s never the depth of awareness of what people are going through. Activating them, making them aware

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of it, is key to getting people engaged in reducing these inequities. You once courted countries to sell your products. Now countries court you for your money. You almost seem like a head of state who can fly in and meet the biggest, most powerful people at a whim. If you are CEO of Microsoft, you can fly into a country and meet with all those same people, but yes the nature of the trip, the meaning, is very different now. Back then, I was trying to explain to them how the magical software could be useful to run government better. My interest and theirs was aligned. I was potentially a tool to help achieve their goals. Now when I come in as a Foundation and say ‘Hey, let’s have fewer children die in India’, my goals and theirs overlap very strongly. They have a broader set of goals but some of the key goals are the one the Foundation has adopted. So, they can think of it as more of a partnership discussion and in a sense we are partners. That’s a word that gets overused, but in this case, it is true. So, do you find yourself more loved and less threatening than before? At Microsoft, people always wanted to come and chat up. There was lots of positive energy towards the magic of software, the American dream. I am not going to downsize that! Even in that role, the interest levels were very high, but now it’s different, with different people. I spend most of the time with the Ministry of Health. I was with the IT

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guy discussing IT stuff. Now, I do bring the desired measure of things that governments always want to bring. I do bring a strong sense of the money and want to be used for the best purpose, which comes from the private sector background that I have. When you look at government with private sector training, you can see things that should be done better. That’s kind of common sense. And fact that it is my own money I am putting against these things means, I am not joking around. I am not asking anyone to give me money at all, so it makes the conversation a little simpler. Do you see your Foundation work as some kind of penance for your Microsoft work? Not at all. I loved my Microsoft job. I feel it was fun for me. I think it was great for the world. In my 20s, 30s, and 40s, that was the perfect job for me. Now in my 50s and 60s, partnered with my wife Melinda, this is the perfect job for me. Both the jobs let me learn a lot, let me feel like I could have an impact, and let me take on things. Like Polio eradication, I have been raising money, telling people, but now we have violence in Pakistan. It’s not guaranteed work. We have to get clever, get smart about all these things. We are going through the whole statistics of U.P. and Bihar, there are a lot of shortcomings, how do we help? How do we make these things sustainable? So, there are similarities in terms of finding innovators, hiring good people, and taking on ambitious goals. What I did at Microsoft, once I moved past writing code myself, I was the manager, orchestrating things. My own powers have surprising amount of similarities.

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Could this philanthrocapitalism become a little too big for comfort? Might people fear the Foundation like they did Microsoft, because it is so big? I don’t understand the fear of Microsoft. What were they afraid of? That Google wouldn’t come along? That Apple wouldn’t come along? I don’t know what they mean by fear. Microsoft built products and they built great products in a hyper-competitive market. How big were they? They employed 100th of the world’s biggest companies. The turnover was a 50th of the biggest companies. In the size of companies that wasn’t very big. The Foundation is about reducing childhood deaths. If people are afraid we will move fast, so quickly and that we are so ambitious in reducing childhood death, they should be in great fear.

Safe keeping—a vaccination programme What’s the key mistake countries and governments made vis-a-vis what you are doing in public health?

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Governments are never perfect. Their ability to measure things, their ability to find innovations, and their need to use innovations isn’t as strong as the private sector. So, their idea was to draw the scientists in and saying, ‘Let’s make a Malaria vaccine’. Nobody was funding the Malaria vaccine. Was that a mistake? Yes. While there were many projects the world was working on which were not as important as funding the Malaria vaccine. And which government in the world was supposed to do that? Companies won’t to do it because there was no market, because it’s poor people who have the malaria. They are not going to get paid back for the work. So yes, there was an opportunity to make things better. But are there nights when you feel governments like India’s, are receding from public life, public health, public education, and outsourcing the things that the state ought to be doing to private partners? I don’t know what you are talking about. Have you looked at the health budget recently? The number of public health employees in India is going up every year. NRHM (National Rural Health Mission), all those people, all those salaries. I don’t think it is shrinking. The question is, are they trained properly, are they measured properly? The size of government is not going down. All the countries we were working in, it’s about growing government in the best way possible. There is no shrinking of government in any country we are working. We need more primary healthcare, and we need more people to deliver facilities.

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You met Rahul Gandhi in Delhi. His father said of every rupee spent in India, only 15 paise reaches people. That’s the kind of pilferage you seen in government funding in this country. Are you seeing better results with your money? I am not that cynical. I guess I am more of an idealist than whoever that person was. When we buy a vaccine we contract the vaccine. When we buy, say, 10 vaccines, it’s not the case that only one vaccine gets to the child. It may not be 10, we are getting about 9. It’s important that the people not be cynical about the government. Government, yes, it needs to be tuned up; yes, it’s imperfect, but for certain of these functions, it’s absolutely necessary. That’s why we are here to help, to measure, and to deliver. So, you are saying that a technocratic kind of approach towards public health is for the public good. Yeah, we are technocrats trying to help the technocrats do a better job. We are trying to help support units at the end of mainstream. Look at immunisation coverage. Avahan is a great example because it’s a system that involved a lot of measurement and thinking, but it also involved one of the more social constructs of all time, which is community of people who trust each other together and work together. Avahan is an overwhelming success at convincing people to insist on safe practice and therefore reduce the HIV epidemic. It also improved community credit savings, but its primary aim was HIV prevention, it is a runway success. So, that’s a good example of combination of things—and

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not just technocratic. But to come up with it, to execute it, and to keep it on track, it required a technocratic strength, which actually the government has picked up and done a quite a good job maintaining. Was there a reason why you chose HIV and Polio as your priority areas when it’s actually tuberculosis that kills more people in this country? Well, we are very involved in TB. We have had a worldwide TB programme for over a decade. Our top TB person two years ago chose to step down from his top and to come and live in India and work on TB. Yes, TB in India is not a great situation. There is no Avahan of TB at this point, and because it is diffused in the community, the tactics of combating it have to be a bit different. In HIV, there was a group of commercial sex workers of various types, there was a risk of the disease, and if there was going to be a general epidemic, it was going to be coming through them. India was potentially on the verge of an AIDS epidemic. In places like Mumbai, it had gone up by 70 or 80 per cent. You were about to see exactly the same thing that had happened in some African countries where commercial sex workers were the key factor. You will have to get in early to these areas from where it spreads. Of all the countries you now personally visit, where do you place India in terms of ranking? Well the majority of unvaccinated children in the world are in India. The most kids who die of measles are in India.

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The majority of vaccines are manufactured in India. India is so unique. If you take Africa as a continent, we do a little bit more than we do in India. But, we do way more in India than in any single country. But in India, we have unique partnerships like we have for Bihar and the work we are trying to do in U.P. Then we have our programmes in sanitation and agriculture. As someone who set up this giant corporation and made it so successful, when you see India grappling with problems like this, what do you think India got wrong? India didn’t get anything wrong. India every year gets better. Understand the childhood death rate. In this country, three million children were dying, now it’s 1.7 million. So, every year is a year of progress and so we don’t step back and think about what if the British had never come or something like that. We look at the practical situation. The government has made this huge investment in NRHM, which is a great thing, but is the country getting as much out of that as it should? Our grants and our ground people help people to make it work and make it sustainable. All good news, so we don’t say why is government so imperfect? We wake up and try to help that stuff work to be perfect. It’s never going to be perfect, but within India, you have places like Kerala that do a very good job on this stuff. So, our job is pretty simple, we were trying to make UP as good as Kerala. If we get to that point, all of us will feel like, wow, all of us will feel super-good, but it is complex: hiring, monitoring, training, and checklists.

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Do you get the feeling that people like you in this country, the billionaires and trillionaires, are doing enough in terms of charity? Should they be doing more? No, no. There is no ‘should’ in philanthropy. The question is, can we expose them to how much fun it is to do this work, and how much impact it can have. We cannot shame people into being more philanthropic. It will be up to them to find something they are passionate about. I am part of a dialogue with successful Indians: we talk about where we made mistakes, where we found success. I do think philanthropy is growing in India. It will become positive and fast forward. Now compare the business in the private sector, philanthropy is a tiny little piece. When we get someone like Azim Premji saying I am going to show how education could be done better, not only are you affecting the kids who are directly in his programme but it wholly takes on government. Government learns and sees that. I think it is a fantastic thing. Groups like Pratham go around helping schools get better. Actually it’s the lot of Indians in the US who founded that. So, there are some great shining lights in the philanthropic activity independent of us. But there’s much resistance from India’s rich to pay more taxes, something you advocated in Australia. I am not an expert on the tax laws in India. I have no statements to make on Indian tax laws because I don’t know them very well. In the US, there is a budget deficit and I advocated that the rich should pay more taxes. But that is all about changing the law, that’s politics and I have no

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statements to make about taxes in India. Maybe there is something to be done with taxes to encourage people to be more philanthropic. That may be good thing, to make people more philanthropic. The US does that very well. The rich must follow the laws, if not they should pay the price for it. At the end of the day, when you look at your CV will Microsoft seem bigger for you or the Foundation? That is really hard to answer. I worked 20 hours a day, I was not married, and I was fanatical. It was about the magic of software from age 17 and into my 40s and I got a lot done. I hired some great people, added to personal computing, I travelled the world, and I learnt how to do business worldwide. That was amazing and you look at people using these tools, having been part of that, it means something to me. That digital revolution continues. I needed all that training and the resources I got from Microsoft enable me to do the Foundation work. The Foundation work is helping the poorest in the world, and in that sense, it is kind-of got this most romantic justice to it. In that, you have somebody who has a huge amount of wealth who is taking and making all that wealth have the most impact as possible for the poorest. If, at the end of all these efforts, would you be disappointed if a Nobel Prize does not come your way? No, my goal is poverty eradication. My goal is bringing Indian childhood deaths below a million. There is no prize

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in the world as exciting as getting Indian childhood deaths down from 1.7 million to 1 million. And if we get these new vaccines rolled out, if we get the coverage, there is a path to achieve that. Going to the event where we celebrate the eradication of polio will be more fun than any other Prize. Because that’s a prize we can imagine.

Glossary A war chest: A colloquial term for the reserves of cash set aside or built up by a company to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity. Schmoozes: A long and intimate conversation. Downsize: To make it smaller. Cynical: Distrustful or pessimistic. Avahan: An initiative sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce the spread of HIV in India. It began in 2003. As of 2009, the Gates Foundation had pledged US$338 million to the programme. Eradication: To remove or destroy utterly.

Exercises

 I Answer the following questions in two or three sentences. 1.  What is the ‘perfect job now’ referred to? 2. What is the foundation work done by Bill Gates in India? 3.  What is Avahan?

II Answer the following questions in not more than 100 words. 1.  Write your observation on health care in India. 2. Write a brief note on Bill Gates ‘Foundation work in India’. 3. Why does he choose HIV and polio as his priority in the country?

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4. ‘India did not get anything wrong’. Comment. 5. What is meant by the ‘Fear of the Microsoft’?

iii answer the following questions in about 300 words. 1. Write an essay on health care in India and the intervention of the government. 2. Write your observation on Bill Gates ‘Foundation work in India’.

sUPPlEMENTary ExErCisEs

Creative Task Prepare a role play between two or more persons engaged in an argument over health care programmes in India.

Project Write an article on the health problems in your locality.

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MODULE

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Television Reality Shows (Satyamev Jayate Episodes) • Break the Silence • Every Life is Precious • Dignity for All • On Gender Issues

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Television Commercials

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Only an Axe Away - A Documentary Film by P.Baburaj and C.Saratchandran

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TEXT ONE Television Reality Shows (Satyamev Jayate Episodes)

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Watching Television is indeed a global pastime! Rain or shine... every viewer, regardless of age and sex, has their own favourite TV programmes, which they do not fail to watch. It is a kind of addiction and one ‘creates’ time to watch the show unfailingly. (Do I notice a Smile of assent from my Readers??) Reality-based television is a genre of television programming of those documents unscripted real-life situations, and often features an otherwise unknown cast. Reality TV programmes also often bring participants into situations and environments that they would otherwise never be a part of. It provides a window of opportunity to exhibit one’s talent. Enlisting the popular television reality shows is not an easy task as there is innumerable of them in different channels. Raging from kitchen to stage, there are lot many programmes of popular choice. There are shows of competition on dance, singing, acting, cooking, and so on. Reality shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati/Ningalkum Aagaam Kodeeshwaran in different vernaculars such as Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, etc. or Quiz Contests and the like ignite the spark to improve one's general knowledge whether one is a school student, a homemaker, a mason, or an IAS Aspirant! The film Slum dog Millionaire beautifully depicts the winning of a tea boy 'chai vala' the game interwoven with his life story including his brother and the society where they lived. These programmes have showcased the talent of participants within the length and breadth of India, across all segments of society.

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Reality television has the potential to turn its participants into national celebrities, at least for a short period. Being appreciated, many of them are able to capitalize on their talent and carve a niche for themselves. Apart from shows with entertainment values, there are talk shows bringing in discussion on contemporary issues too. Most news channels telecast live talk shows on the hot issues and events. Criticism Reality televisions, though a global success, has faced significant flak since its rise in popularity. Critics have argued that reality television shows do not accurately reflect reality, in ways both implicit (participants being placed in artificial situations) and deceptive or even fraudulent, such as misleading editing, participants being coached in what to say or how to behave, storylines generated ahead of time, and scenes being staged or re-staged for the cameras. Other criticisms of reality television shows include that they are intended to humiliate or exploit participants (particularly on competition shows); that is, at times, they make stars out of either untalented people or unworthy of fame. TV Shows Based on Reality… Real-life Situations We all know that, whether it is print media or visual media, fiction is also based on facts... social facts, which are woven into the fabric of narration. Most of the teleserials, otherwise called family drama, are of that kind.

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Needless to say that these TV programmes based on reality do create an awareness among the viewers, but in order to make it more entertaining, to increase the TRP, or make it more commercially viable, they tend to make it stereotyped. A devilish mother-in-law, a bad step-mother, daughtersin-law who are eternally harassed or it is a complete role reversal! There are socially responsible television channels that do merely not eye the monetary benefits but are interested in bringing to light, to the masses in general, about the happenings in the society. Satyamev Jayate is a talk show considering social issues affecting people from different walks of life in India. The show focuses on sensitive social issues prevalent in India such as female foeticide, child sexual abuse, rape, honour killings, domestic violence, untouchability, alcoholism, and the criminalization of politics. It also aims to empower citizens with information about their country and urge them to take action. Although the primary language of the show is Hindi, it is simulcast in eight languages such as Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu, and subtitled in English. The present text includes three episodes from Satyamev Jayate entitled Break the Silence, Every Life Is Precious, and Dignity for All. Break the Silence deals with child sexual abuse; Every Life Is Precious is on the issue of medical malpractice; and Dignity for All is on social ills of caste system and untouchability.

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• Here again, the plight of the girl child or the Indian woman is depicted very realistically… By and large, the typical Indian woman is governed by the men folk in the family. In each phase of her life, she is controlled by father, brother, husband, or son. She is reduced to playing the role of a meek, submissive homemaker and child bearer, definitely with no opportunity to voice her opinion. This is still observed in a patriarchal society.

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Break the Silence Children are the most innocent defenceless creation of God. They are often put to perils and silenced in different societies. A bright tomorrow is shunt to fear and distress. Child abuse is not a shocking phenomenon for the world of today or yesterday. Therefore, it is not a recent phenomenon. Yi-Fu Tuan says, ‘Throughout history and in widely different parts of the world, infants and young children have often been treated as of small account and with extraordinary cruelty’.  (The Landscapes of Fear) Children are put to torture, both physically and mentally. Sometimes they fall victim to the cruelty of the people at home too and very often by others who are not strangers. One such an offence is called child sexual abuse. It is a shame that India happens to be among those countries infamous for maximum child abuse incidents. The Indian Penal Code provides provisions (such as Sections 376, 354, etc.) to deal with various types of sexual offences committed against women and Section 377 for unnatural sexual acts against both men and women. There was no specific legislation to counter sexual offences committed against children of both the sexes until the recent years. In the year 2012 only, the Parliament enacted Protection of Children from Sexual Offences act. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act, 2012 has been drafted to toughen the legal provisions for the protection of children from sexual abuse. The Act defines a child as any person below the age

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of 18 years and provides protection from the offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and pornography. The Act also directs the central and state governments to spread awareness programmes through the media. It aims to make the public, children, and their parents aware of the provisions of this Act. Are our children safe at their homes, schools, and society? The world is yet to wake for children who are considered ‘subhumans’. Of course, the industries understand their tastes and makes things go with their choice and interest. But does the society past or present ever have set the world for them? Are they given due care by their parents or guardians? It is the moral consciousness of the humans that they should awake against the cruelties. We cannot any more use the phrase ‘inhuman’ for all the human evils done. Because non-humans, i.e., animals never do the kind of wrongs that humans do. Human should at least ask their conscience before they do grave offence against others.

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Every Life is Precious It appears that medical practice is no more a calling or a vocation. It has become just another form of commerce. Indian health care practices have made tremendous progress in the 21st century, and India is now being advertised as a medical tourism hub. This is very obvious with significant improvements in the health care amenities and an exponential increase in hospitals and other facilities throughout India. Beating other nations, India has become a destination for those seeking cheaper and more readily available healing to their medical ailments. However, in spite of these euphoric developments, significant shortcomings of Indian medical practices linger too. There are great variations in the care that patients receive based on their economic backgrounds. Apart from this, there are many issues that negatively impact the delivery of proper health care, ranging from hospitals to laboratories, pharmaceuticals, quackery, and so on. There is a noteworthy increase in quacks and quackery under different titles of health care practices in India. People from different walks of life, even sometimes foreigners, fall prey to the ‘jugglery’. Quacks can be divided among the three basic categories as below: 1.  Quacks with no qualification whatsoever. 2. Practitioners of Indian Medicine (Ayurvedic, Sidha, Tibb, and Unani), homeopathy, naturopathy, commonly called Ayush, who are not qualified to practice

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modern medicine (Allopathy) but are practicing Modern Medicine. 3. Practitioners of so-called integrated medicine, alternative system of medicine, electro-homeopathy, indo-­ allopath, etc. terms which do not exist in any Act. The question is if there is any entity in the real sense to keep a check on these aspects. Indian Medical Association is the only voluntary organization of doctors of modern scientific system of medicine, which looks after the interest of doctors as well as ‘the well being of the community at large’. The association was instituted in 1928 on the occasion of the 5th All India Medical Conference at Kolkata. The objectives of the association are as follows: 1. Promotion and advancement of medical and allied sciences in all their different branches. 2. The improvement of public health and medical education in India. 3. The maintenance of honour and dignity of medical profession. The Medical Council of India (MCI) is the statutory body for establishing uniform and high standards of medical education in the country. It grants recognition to medical qualifications, gives accreditation to medical colleges, grants registration to medical practitioners, and monitors medical practices in India. However, the malpractices and scams raise question against the moral ethics of the medical practice in the country. Many multispecialty hospitals to smaller ones are

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found guilty of negligence, fraud surgeries, illegal pact with pharmaceuticals and laboratories, and so on. Among this crowd of frauds, definitely there are thousands of doctors who keep up their pledge to serve the ailing. There should be no scope for mediocrity in a field as important as medicine, because being a doctor is not a mere job or career, it is a Calling!

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Dignity for All Tell me, what do you understand by the term dignity? This was the question I posed to my colleagues, as we were sipping the afternoon tea. They came up with various answers, but more or less meaning the same. I have listed their responses below: Meaning of Dignity • Dignity means the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect. •  Dignity is self-respect, self-worth, and self-esteem. • Dignity is the state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect. • Everyone recognizes that we all have a deep, human desire to be treated as something of value. • Dignity is, when our identity is accepted and we feel included, our decisions are accepted. •  Dignity is when you act as if you matter. • Dignity means that you act as if you care about yourself and about your character. I noticed that most of them equated dignity with respect. However, there is a subtle difference. Dignity is not the same as respect. Dignity is our inherent value and worth as human beings; everyone is born with it. Respect, on the other hand, is ‘earned’ through one’s actions; it is another story that most ‘expect’ it! Dignity is a person’s right to be treated like a human being. When we talk about human dignity, we mean

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human rights. If people are treated with dignity, they usually have the right to make choices for themselves. Dignity also means people are treated with respect. Dignity also means that you make the right choices regardless of the difficulty, and your actions then reflect a positive attitude with regard to whatever outcome to which those choices bring you. To treat someone with dignity is to treat him/her well, as being of worth, in a way that is respectful of them, as valued individuals. When dignity is absent, people feel devalued, lacking control and comfort. Dignity is not just a quality or virtue; dignity is innate in a man’s nature. Then, What Is Dignity for All? Well, what is applicable to an individual is applicable to all the people, to the Society at large! Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar made a profound statement decades ago, but very relevant even in today’s time: ‘Ours is a battle; not for wealth, nor for power. Ours is battle for freedom, for the reclamation of human personality’. We also have a declaration of dignity, which proudly displays your commitment to treat yourself and others as worthy human beings. (Dr Donna Hicks is the founder of Declare Dignity) Now, What Does This Dignity for All Encompass? What Are the Issues? Here the reference is on the issues that are significant as, some of which are global and some very relevant to the

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Indian context. Issues that concern all age groups are as follows: • Caste system issues • Homeless plight • Death with dignity issues Let us now examine what they are in detail. Caste System, Untouchability, Position of the Widows, and the Entire Indian Diaspora Let us just rewind a bit… precisely a little over six decades. • In 1947, Dr Ambedkar was appointed Chairman of the drafting committee for the new constitution. • In 1948, the constituent assembly adopted the constitution, including article 17, which formally abolished untouchability. Fast Forward to the 21st Century It is a matter of ignominy that we have not yet shaken off the oppressiveness of caste-based discrimination.  It is indeed very unfortunate that Indian society has been divided into fragments on the basis of caste system by some powerful people with vested interest. Facts In India, every religion has caste system except Buddhism. However, outside India, no religion has caste system except Hinduism and Sikhism.

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Untouchability Although India has made great strides in all fields, it is a matter of utter shame that manual scavenging and cleaning of night soil is still carried out very widely. It is a shame that even today in our country: one human is pollution for another! Times have changed but not the ‘polluted’ mindset of the people has seen a change, even in an age of science, information, and technology. Abolish Casteism Indian Government should take firm action to abolish casteism, beginning with the removal of the column for caste in any official forms, from certificates, surnames, caste groups, caste-based organizations. Pity is, even hospital forms have a column for this does it make any difference, as to what caste the patient is? Plight of the Widows in India In rural India, their plight is indeed dreadful! Widows in India face rejection, isolation, and even destitution. This comes as an evil consequence of caste system long with gender bias. If one were to read about the appalling conditions in which they survive, in one word we can sum it up as Inhuman! To tackle with the issue: • Awareness should be created. • Education should be provided. • Legal action should be taken against those who are encouraging this practice of ostracizing the widows from their community and society.

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• Empower the widows, rehabilitate them, and help them achieve economic freedom. Plight of the Homeless The ‘invisible citizens’ of India—is homeless—deserve a life of dignity too, and after over six decades of Independence, the homeless need to be given their due by the Government and society, said participants at a day-long consultation on ‘Making Delhi a Caring City: Review and Way Forward’ organized by the Indo-Global Social Service Society (IGSSS) here on Tuesday. The participants spoke about different aspects affecting the homeless in the capital—from identification issues to loopholes in existing policies. The homeless in the city include rickshaw and cart pullers, head loaders, labourers, rag pickers, sweepers, domestic helps, street vendors, the destitute including elderly people, abandoned women, handicapped people and youth and children of the street. There are an estimated 1,50,000 homeless people in Delhi as per 2008 IGSSS study. The statistics mentioned above is only about our Capital Delhi. What about the ‘homeless’ multitudes all over over the country? How do we tackle this issue? ‘Shelters for the homeless are a necessity in the current scenario and that, it is not the sole responsibility of the government... we, as the responsible citizens of the country,

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have to provide our mite, so that “they” also live with dignity’. A Sustainable Future with Dignity for All Even in Death Recently, there was a news clip which said that Aruna Shanbaug, an Indian Nurse, who was at the centre of attention in a court case on euthanasia, after spending 42 years in a coma (as a result of sexual assault) finally passed away from pneumonia on 18 May 2015 after being in a persistent vegetative state. There are scores of people of all ages who are in an identical situation, ‘a vegetative state’. The Question is, for whose sake is ‘their’ Life being prolonged? Just to assuage the guilt of the family member? Because they feel ‘it is not right’ or ‘what will others say’ syndrome. A legal, sympathetic approach put forward by some says, towards ‘euthanasia’ should be adopted for, let there be ‘dignity even in death’. No individual, regardless of age or gender deserve to pass away into oblivion. An individual, who has led a fulfilling life, should not have to face a self-defeating stage. He/she needs the loving understanding of their near and dear ones. For this, they have to also be assisted by the judiciary, so that their souls can take a flight to freedom. But in a world where deception over rules righteousness can this be possible in the true sense. Won’t people become devilish and misuse it in the shade of legal protection.

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For Further Reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM85zVt6xCU&list= PL3FA31C57A3F3BCE8 Stalin K.’s Documentary India Untouched.

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On Gender Issues The word gender describes the socially constructed roles and responsibilities that societies consider appropriate for men and women. Gender Equality When we speak of gender issues, needless to say, gender equality plays a pivotal role in today’s world. Gender equality means that men and women have equal power and equal opportunities for education, personal development, and financial independence. However, unfortunately, there is gender inequality with regards to access to opportunities and decision-making for women and men. As we know, globally women have fewer opportunities for economic participation than men, less access to basic and higher education, greater health and safety risks, and less political representation. Women’s Empowerment Women’s empowerment is a critical aspect of achieving gender equality. It includes increasing a woman’s sense of self-worth, her decision-making power, her access to opportunities and resources, and control over her own life inside and outside the home, and her ability to effect change. Yet gender issues are not focused on women alone, but on the relationship between men and women in society. The attitude of the society as a whole towards the female is what needs to be checked. When the agents of power themselves

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say that female is ‘fragile like a flower if it is sent out it will be crushed by strong hands’, ‘boys are boys they will show their might’, ‘woman has to keep herself “safe” at home’, etc. leaves one flabbergast if women empowerment will ever be realized in our country. How Do We Achieve This Gender Equality? Education is a key area of focus—Although the world is making progress in achieving gender parity in education, girls still make up a higher percentage of out-of-school children than boys. In the developing countries, approximately one quarter of girls do not attend school. Typically, families with limited means, who cannot afford costs such as school fees, uniforms, and supplies for all of their children, will prioritize education for their sons. Families may also rely on girls’ labour for household chores, taking care of the younger siblings, while their mother is away working as a domestic help, thus, leaving limited time for schooling. Human Rights and Gender Issues Recent years have seen notable progress on issues of gender and human rights in standard setting and to some extent, application of those standards through international and domestic legislation and jurisprudence, and in institutional programming and development. Some international and regional human rights bodies now go beyond just including ‘women’ in a list of ‘vulnerable’ groups and have begun to incorporate women’s experiences and perspectives into

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recommendations for structural changes needed to bring about full enjoyment of human rights by women and girls. In addition, recent years have seen the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people being taken up beyond the first human rights bodies that addressed them, and developments have taken place in standard-setting. Despite this progress, many challenges remain. Violence against women continues at a staggering rate. Gender-based Discrimination Gender-based discrimination persists practically in every sphere... in the workplace, housing, education, health care, and countless other areas. Access to justice continues to be hindered by a range of obstacles. Religion, tradition, and culture continue to be used as a shield for violating women’s rights. Bias, prejudice, and misconception regarding gender roles overlap the undertones of gender equality in humanitarian perspective too. When it comes to women from weaker sections of the society like racial, religious minority, lower caste, or physically or visually challenged, the discrimination is double. For the outlook of the patriarchal structure is happy get along with the long cherished prejudices. In this context, it is not women alone who suffer discrimination but men too. There are instances of men from the lower caste in India being highly discriminated for a placement in public sector, basically in north India. This issue may be discussed in the purview of caste system. Hira Bansode's poem Bosom Friend is a good example for discrimination on yards of the standards set by the caste system.

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However, there has been positive development of women in India: increased visibility of women in the public sphere, closing of gender gaps in primary and secondary school enrolments, the presence of women in the labour force across international borders, and lower fertility rates. In addition, women’s organizations have been able to raise issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights, violence against women, and inequality of power in gender relations, and make these the pivotal issues of debate in national and global arenas. Yet these achievements have not eliminated, nor decreased, gender discrimination or patriarchal oppression and dominance. In Kerala, ‘Nirbhaya’, a unique venture, is an initiative of the state government to ensure the safety of women and children. Nirbhaya mainly focuses on a three-point agenda: prevention, prosecution and protection. In prevention, the thought is sensitizing society, empowering vulnerable groups, and targeting contributing factors such as alcoholism, gender discrimination, and consumerism. The scheme also aims at providing proper rehabilitation facilities to help the victims to heal, recover, empower, and amalgamate back into the society. Prosecution is another area of intervention where strong laws have to be formulated to ensure rigorous punishment for the culprits. The policy also focuses on child abuse, commercial sexual exploitation, and sex trafficking, which constitute the worst forms of sexual violence in the state.

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Gender Issues: Rural Vs Urban In India, the common misconception is that gender-related problems only exist amongst the rural poor. This dichotomy exists in the urban minds: The Metropolis might be unsafe for women, but we, the so-called modern educated citizens, have nothing to do with it. This could not be further from the truth. The problem of gender inequality exists even in families who send their daughters to school, in workplaces that have women employees working alongside their male counterparts, and in college campuses that are teaching our progressive youth. These inequalities are subtle but equally damaging. Violence against Women Apart from domestic violence, women are victims of public violence more often and more humiliating like gang rape, etc. Rape is not just the act of individual man against a woman but also a show of patriarchal mindset. It has become an instrument and weapon to prevent women from raising their voice against atrocities. In personal or family feuds or wars, rape has always been a form of humiliating the adversary. The violence continues unabated but no social action has been forthcoming. Legislations are there and recently more teeth are added to them but people seem to have no fear of law. The series of gang rapes since last few months in the country have been shockingly disturbing to an average human being where one finds hardly protected by law and order or given justice.

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‘The Braveheart’ Incident It is more than 2 years when the five men and their juvenile accomplice had threatened to crush the 23-year-old physiotherapist, Nirbhaya, and her companion under the bus if she did not keep still as they ravaged her. Not only this, they even tried to run them over but failed. Following this, a few months back, girls under 17 were raped and hung on trees in Uttar Pradesh, which still remains a nightmare for females and their parents. Recently in Punjab, the acts were repeated, and the culprits were saved by the authorities concerned. So What Is the Solution? Gender sensitization—Reality show programmes like Satyamev Jayate project these social problems very effectively to create social awareness. Satyamev Jayate is indeed an endeavour to bring in various issues that touch Indian life irrespective of caste, creed, religion, or region into limelight as an effort to sensitize the issues and make social awareness. Mulling Gender Sensitization in Curriculum: HRD Minister PTI, Jan 6, 2013, 02.46 PM IST Kochi: In the backdrop of Delhi gang rape incident, Union HRD Minister, Pallam Raju today said he was contemplating to bring in aspects like gender sensitization and respect for women in the curriculum as part of value education.

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‘It has to be part of curriculum’, the minister told reporters here on the sidelines of a function here. The minister said he would discuss and share his thoughts with the NCERT, UGC Chairman, and National Curriculum framework on bringing it in the curriculum to sensitize the students. Kerala to Host Its First Global Conference on Gender Equality PTI, Mar 19, 2015, 05.03 PM IST Thiruvananthapuram: As gender discussions increasingly take centre stage in and outside the country, Kerala is gearing up to host a global conference on gender equality with the participation of thinkers, scholars, field experts, professionals, and policymakers from around the world. The Gender Park, an institution under the State Department of Social Justice, is organizing the three-day International Conference on Gender Equality (ICGE-I) here with the support of UN Women from November 12–14. Reality Check • We need to objectively evaluate our own mindsets that are contributing to the problem. Simply, a mindset is collection of thoughts and beliefs that we refer to in order to evaluate a situation. • Understand that men and women experience the same range of emotions—happiness, sadness, angriness, and frustration, have ambitions and dreams, and eventually seek the common goal of peaceful and happy existence.

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•  The Indian constitution gives women status equal to men. There have been attempts to reserve seats for women in political bodies. This is no doubt a step in the right direction. • Women have the ability to judge for themselves and take right decisions. However, merely allowing for reservation of women in Panchayat and legislative bodies without empowering women individually falls short of actual emancipation. The changing social system is a universal factor which also brings change in the status of its members. The changes and flexibility in gender roles that are being evident today have its roots in the changing social structure of society. Changing roles to accommodate the social or professional pressures have become a common phenomenon. However, it is in the urban centres that the flexibility is most evident. The rural society though in transition has a long way to go in this context. Thus, the flexibility in roles needs to be taken to the extent where finally the concept of respective roles is done away with. People of all genders deserve equal rights, privileges, and opportunities. It is not meaningful to say that only women can be catalysts for and agents of social change. Above all, restructuring gender relations requires the participation and support of all sectors of the society: women and men, young and old, various social institutions, etc. All people, regardless of their gender or status, are decision-makers—and therefore also change-makers.

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Point to Ponder and Discuss (Based on the above Article) India had women presidents but too, is it proper to say that it failed to protect its daughters, children, and the vulnerable section of the society?

Exercises

  I 

Answer the following questions in two or three sentences. 1.  What is child abuse? 2. What is the Act for the protection of children in India? 3.  What is ‘Untouchability’? 4. Name a few NGOs that work for the cause of human rights in India. 5. Name two pharmaceutical industries in the country.

II  A  nswer the following questions in not more than 100 words.

1. Write a note on your observation of medical practice in Kerala. 2.  Write a note on child abuse. 3. Write a note on the role of television reality shows in India. 4.  Write a note on the talk show ‘Satyamev Jayate’. 5.  Write a note on caste system in India.

III Answer the following questions in about 300 words.

1. Write an essay on the impact of television reality shows on the society. 2. Critically comment on any one of the issues dealt with in ‘Satyamev Jayate’ episodes.

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sUPPLEMENTArY ExErcIsEs

creative Task Prepare a script for a talk show on a social issue.

Project Prepare a report on the role of television reality shows and their commitment towards the society.

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TEXT TWO Television Commercials

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For many years, television had the reputation of being the most glamorous advertising medium. A company featuring a television advertising campaign enjoyed more prestige. To some, television advertising is still the best option. Today, television advertisement may or may not be the best option. Table given below lists the advantages and disadvantages of television advertising. As shown, television offers advertisers the most extensive coverage and the highest reach among any of the media. A single advertisement can reach millions of viewers simultaneously. Even though the total cost of running the advertisement is high, the cost per contact is relatively low. This low cost per contact justifies, for example, spending $3 million (£1.75 million) for a 30-seconds spot on the Super Bowl (the championship game of professional American football). Advantages 1.  High reach 2.  High frequency potential 3.  Low cost per contact 4. High intrusion value (motion and sound) 5. Quality creative opportunities 6. Segmentation possibilities through cable outlets

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Disadvantages 1.  Greater clutter 2.  Low recall due to clutter 3. Channel surfing during commercials 4.  Short amount of copy 5. High cost per advertisement

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Further, television has the advantage of intrusion value, which is the ability of a medium or advertisement to intrude upon a viewer without his or her voluntary attention. Television advertisement with a catchy musical tune, sexy content, or humour can quickly grab a viewer’s attention. Television provides many opportunities for creativity in advertising design. Visual images and sounds can be incorporated to capture the viewer’s attention and present persuasive messages. Products and services can be demonstrated on television in a manner not possible in print or using radio advertisements. Clutter is the primary problem with television advertising. Five years ago, US primetime averaged 16 minutes and 26 advertisement per hour of programming. That has slowly crept upward to about 19 minutes and 31 advertisement per hour. One particular television show had a total of 24 advertisement within the 30-minutes show, which meant 11 minutes out of the 30 minutes was devoted to advertising. Four- and five -minute commercial breaks are no longer unusual.13 As a result, many viewers switch channels during commercial breaks. Therefore, messages at the beginning or near the end of the break have the best recall. Those in the middle often have virtually no impact. Therefore, clutter makes it difficult for a single message to have much influence. Another method some viewers use to cope with clutter is a DVR, recording favourite programmes and watching them later. Currently, 20 per cent of American television viewers use a DVR. The fear advertisers have is that consumers will skip over the commercials. Some research

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indicates, however, that fewer than half of the viewers fast-forward through commercials. In addition, the majority watches the television show the same day it is recorded, and 75 per cent have watched it by the end of the next day. This means that time-sensitive advertisement are being seen close to when they first were shown. Although there has been an enormous increase in the use of personal communication by marketers in recent years due to rapid penetration of the Internet and other factors, the fact remains that mass media, if used correctly, is still an important component of a modern marketing communications programme. To generate consumer interest and sales, mass media must often be supplemented and carefully integrated with other communications. In the era of information sharing through the Internet and social media sites, creating discussion-worthy symbols and characters help in creating powerful mnemonic devices that generate higher consumer interest and brand recall. Zoozoos, the humanlike figures with egg-shaped heads and ballooned bodies, created for Vodafone is a successful illustration in this respect. Zoozoos were featured in Vodafone television commercials during the second season of the Indian Premiere League (IPL) cricket tournament in 2009. The campaign’s purpose was to refresh consumers’ memory during the IPL season with one commercial a day. Each day, the same characters—the Zoozoos—appeared in different situations, depicting a specific service need of people with the message that the Vodafone provided those services. This stoked viewers’ inquisitiveness about what the Zoozoos would

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be doing the next day in the advertisement. These characters were perceived as cute, lovable, and a bit funny on account of their physical appearance, rounded off by their jerky movements, and the name’ ‘Zoozoos.’ Zoozoos helped Vodafone effectively communicate the different services offered by the brand. Apart from television and follow-up print advertisements, Zoozoos became a big hit on social networking sites where, in addition to sharing Zoozoo advertisement, different forms of competitions and games such as ‘Which type of Zoozoo are you?’ were organized. These helped to increase the involvement of the online community. The success of the Zoozoos helped Vodafone connect with consumers and achieve significant brand recall. Although Vodafone found great success with its advertisement campaign, other marketers are trying to come to grips with how to best use mass media in the new—and still changing—communication environment. In this section, we examine the nature and use of four mass communication tools—advertising, sales promotion, events and experiences, and public relations and publicity. Television is generally acknowledged as the most powerful advertising medium and reaches a broad spectrum of consumers at low cost per exposure. TV advertising has two particularly important strengths. First, it can vividly

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demonstrate product attributes and persuasively explain their corresponding consumer benefits. Second, it can dramatically portray user and usage imagery, brand personality, and other intangibles. Due to the fleeting nature of the advertisement, however, and the distracting creative elements often found in it, product-related messages and the brand itself can be overlooked. Moreover, the high volume of nonprogramming material on television creates clutter that makes it easy for consumers to ignore or forget advertisement. Nevertheless, properly designed and executed TV advertisement can still be a powerful marketing tool and improve brand equity and affect sales and profits. Television is a powerful medium that reaches a large number of audiences in India. According to one estimate, over 134 million households have a television set, out of which 103 million have access to cable or satellite television. The number of television channels exceeds 500, offering programmes in a large variety of languages with different content and genre. Due to the high penetration of television as a medium, marketers use this extensively for advertising. The total money spent in television advertising in 2011 is estimated to be `101.5 billion, with an average category growth rate of over 11 per cent. While the reach and flexibility of television provides significant advantages to marketers, the clutter of advertisements in different programmes and the cost of exposure are the limitations of this medium. Television commercials have short lifespans. Occa­ sionally an advertiser purchases a 15-, 45-, or 60-seconds

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advertisement, but those are rare. Another disadvantage of TV is the high cost per advertisement not only for the media time but also in terms of production costs. Outstanding commercials often are expensive to produce.

Glossary Intrusion value: Intrusion value is the ability of media or an advertisements to intrude upon a viewer without his or her voluntary attention. Clutter: The excessive number of messages delivered to the audience. Brand recall: A qualitative measure of how well a brand name is connected with a product type or class of products by consumers.

Exercises

  I   Answer the following questions in two or three sentences.

1. What is an ‘intrusion value’? 2. What is meant by clutter? 3. What are the advantages of advertising on TV? 4. What are the disadvantages of advertising on TV? 5. Why television is considered a powerful medium for advertisement?

II   Answer the following question in not more than 100 words.

1. Write a short paragraph on any TV advertisement on food products. 2. Write a short note on television as a powerful medium for advertisement. 3. Write a short on the impact of TV commercials on people of different age groups. 4. Write a short on advertisements as trend setters. 5. Write a short note on an advertisement of your choice.

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III Answer the following questions in about 300 words. 1. Write an essay on the impact of television commercials on the youth in India. 2. Write an essay on advertisements on internet networks on television.

sUPPlEMENTAry ExErCIsEs

Creative Task Enact an advertisement prepared by you in group work in your class.

Project Write an article on television commercials.

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TEXT THREE Only an Axe Away A Documentary Film by P. Baburaj and c. saratchandran

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A Note by P. Baburaj Silent Valley is a patch of pristine evergreen rain forest located on the south western slopes of the Nilgiri hills in Palghat District in Kerala. The valley is one of the last undisturbed tracts of moist evergreen forest left in India. The state electricity board had identified silent valley as a location for a hydroelectric project way back in 1958. The protest against the proposed dam gathered momentum in the 1970s. The campaign to save Silent Valley was led by a motley crowd of scientists, activists, and students. The campaign attracted national and international attention and the project was abandoned in 1983. It was the first successful anti-dam struggle in India. The area was declared a national park in 1985. The film, Only an Axe Away pays homage to the struggle and the people behind it. Twenty years later, the state electricity board proposed another project, this time just 500 metres outside the legal boundary of the Silent Valley National Park. The proposed project known as the Pathrakadavu Project was only 3.5 kilometres downstream of the old dam site. The film, Only an Axe Away, conceived as a campaign film discusses the ­disastrous consequences of the new project. The film includes statements from scientists and the people downstream, M. T. Vasudevan Nair and the Late Kottakkal Sivaraman.

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For Further Reference (Must read) 1. http://www.thehindu.com ‘Not silent anymore’ June 2, 2006. 2.  http://www.thehindu.com ‘Debate on Pathrakadavu Project hots up’ April 29, 2007.

Exercises

 I 

Answer the following questions in two or three sentences. 1.  What is Pathrakadavu Project? 2.  Where is Silent Valley National Park located? 3.  Which is the first anti-dam struggle in India? 4.  Name other anti-dam struggles in India. 5. What is the name of the river mentioned in the film?

II  A  nswer the following questions in not more than 100 words.

1. Write a note on your observation of environmental activities in Kerala. 2.  Write a note on nature as a web of life. 3.  Discuss the present environmental hazards. 4.  Write a critique of Only an Axe Away. 5.  Justify the title Only an Axe Away.

III Answer the following questions in about 300 words.

1. Write an essay on the need and importance to protect nature. 2. ‘Live in a clean and beautiful environment’. Comment.

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sUPPLEMENTARY ExERcisEs

creative Task Prepare a script for a 20-minute documentary.

Project Prepare a review of a documentary with an environmental focus in Kerala.

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MODULE

3

Extracts from Internet

Text ONE

The Internet and Youth Culture

Text TWO

Writing Online: Websites, Blogs and Social Networking

Text THREE

How Google Has Changed Our Language

Text FOUR

Quality of Videos Uploaded in the Social Networks and Its Impact on the Age Group of 18–25 Years’ Student Community

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TEXT ONE The Internet and youth Culture —By Gustavo S. Mesch

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Since the Internet and other media have been adopted and integrated into the daily lives of an increasing number of young adolescents in Western countries, scholars and commentators are debating the impact of these new media on the activities, social relationships, and worldviews of the younger generations. Controversies about whether technology shapes values, attitudes, and patterns of social behaviour are not new. In the recent past, the rapid expansion of television stimulated similar discussions of its cultural and social effects. In this essay, I will briefly describe the sources of the debate and its specific arguments regarding the role of the Internet in youth life. Then, I will describe some important trends in youth activities, attitudes, and behaviours. The literature on the Internet and youth culture presents different views regarding the role of technology in society. Two major perspectives are technological determinism and the social construction of technologies. Technological Determinism The technological deterministic view presents the Internet as an innovative force that has profound influence on children and youth; technology generates new patterns of expression, communication, and motivation. In this view, various terms have been used to describe this generation of youth, including ‘Net-generation’, the ‘millennium generation’, and ‘digital natives’.1 These labels attempt to identify a large group of young adolescents who grew up during the expansion of the Internet and from early childhood

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have1 been immersed in a media-rich environment, using computers, playing online games, and constantly communicating and connecting with their friends by electronic devices. These youth create and use digital spaces for social interaction, identity expression, and media production and consumption. Supporting this perspective, scholars of media consumption have described adolescents’ lives as being characterized by media privatization in a multimedia environment.2 In Western societies, young people’s cultural ­consumption includes a large number of media artefacts such as television sets, VCRs, landline and cell phones, video games, compact disc players, MP3 players, and computers. Over time, households tend to acquire more than one media item. Gustavo S. Mesch is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Haifa, Israel. His research is directed to understanding the effects of information and communication technologies on youth social behaviour, parent and youth intergenerational conflict, and communication channel choice. He is currently the Chair person of the Communication and Information Technologies section of the American Sociological Association. 1

 Marc Prensky, ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1’, On the Horizon 9.5 (October 2001): 1–6; Don Tapscott, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation (New York: McGraw Hill, 1998). 2   Sonia Livingstone, Leen d’Haenens, and Uwe Hasebrink, ‘Childhood in Europe: Contexts for Comparison’, Children and Their Changing Media Environment: A European Comparative Study, ed. Sonia Livingstone and Moira Bovill (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001) 3–31.

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Adolescents appropriate the media, and more and more media tools move from the public spaces of the household to private places, from the living room to the bedrooms, accumulating in the teenager’s room. Youth are described as having created a bedroom culture that facilitates their media consumption without parental supervision or limitation. Acting in a media-rich environment and a bedroom culture, the Net Generation or digital natives express different values, attitudes, and behaviours than previous generations. These digital natives are described as optimistic, team-oriented achievers who are talented with technology. Immersion in this technology-rich culture influences the skills and interests of teens in importantways. According to this view, they think and process information differently from their predecessors, are active in experimentation, Acting in a are dependent on information media-rich technologies for searching for ­environment information and communicatand a bedroom ing with others, and are eager to culture, the Net acquire skills needed to develop Generation or creative multimedia presentadigital natives tions and to become multimeexpress different dia producers and not merely values, attitudes, consumers.3 Simply put, the and behaviours argument is that the Internet than previous has created a new generation generations. of young people who possess 3

  See Tapscottand Prensky.

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sophisticated knowledge and skills with information technologies, express values that support learning by experience and the creation of a culture in a digital space, and have particular learning and social preferences. The notion of a Net Generation is consistent with a deterministic view of the effect of technology on society.

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Technological determinism views technology as an independent force that drives social change.4 Technology itself exercises causal influence on social practices, and technological change induces changes in social organization and culture regardless of the social desirability of the change. The Social Construction of Technologies This view has created controversy, as others remind us that information and communication technologies are not forces that homogenize young people into a single entity with unique characteristics. Technology is an inherent part of society; it is created by social actors. According to a social construction of technology approach, it is important to note that social groups differ in the extent of their access to technology, their skills, and the meanings they associate with technology. The same technology can have different meanings for different social groups of users. Technologies can and do have a social impact, but they are simultaneously social products that embody power relationships and social goals and structures.5 Thus, technological changes are a process and do not have a single direction. Understanding the place of the Internet in the lives of young individuals requires avoiding a purely deterministic interpretation and recognizing the social embeddedness 4

  Bruce Bimber, ‘Three Faces of Technological Determinism’, Does Technology Drive History?: The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, ed. Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994) 79–100. 5   Merritt Roe Smith, Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).

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of technology and its variable outcomes.6 The Internet can be constitutive of new cultural features of young social life, but it can also reproduce older conditions. A purely deterministic approach ignores the material conditions and the social environment within which, and through which, these technologies operate. Digital spaces such as social networking sites, weblogs (blogs), and clip and photo sharing are owned by commercial companies that target youth and try to shape their consumption patterns. At the same time, when using these spaces, youth are becoming empowered in different social aspects. First, they are able to overcome the limitations of geography by reaching out to others according to specific interests and not only by virtue of residential similarity. Second, they take an important role in society as co-producers of Internet content and reach out with their innovative presentations to large and global audiences. Technologies can and do have a social impact, but they are simultaneously social products that embody power relationships and social goals and structures.

The Internet as Culture and as Cultural Artefact In part, the discrepancy between technological determinism and the view of technology as socially constructed is the result of a lack of clarity about the subject of study. 6

 Saskia Sassen, ‘Towards a Sociology of Information Technology’, Current Sociology 50:3 (2002): 365–88.

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In this respect, it is useful to distinguish between the Internet as culture and the Internet as a cultural artefact. To study the Internet as a culture means to regard it as a social space in its own right, exploring the forms of consumption and content production, and the patterns of online The Internet communication and social interis often used to action, expression, and identity express unexplored formation that are produced aspects of the self within this digital social space, and to create a as well as how they are sustained virtual persona. by the resources available within the online setting. In this sense, online activity is conceived as different and even separate from one’s offline activity, having a life of its own, usually separated from real life as a parallel reality of the participating individuals. When studied independently, the virtual space is a coherent social space that exists entirely within a computer space, and in which new rules and waysof being can emerge. Thus, youth operating within an online community may be geographically dispersed, experiencing different hours of the day in different locales, but they share an identical interest, virtual space and rules, share activities, and a common sense of belonging. Being online not only detaches individuals from the constraints imposed by location but also frees them from the constraints associated with their offline personalities and social roles. Youth have an opportunity to 7

7

  Christine Hine, ‘Internet Research and the Sociology of Cyber-Social-Scientific Knowledge’, The Information Society 21 (September 2005): 239–48.

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express online their ‘real’ or inner selves, using the relative anonymity of the Internet to be the person they want to be and experimenting with their identity and self.8 The Internet is often used to express unexplored aspects of the self and to create a virtual persona. Cyberspace becomes a place to ‘act out’ unresolved conflicts, to play and replay difficulties, and to work on significant personal issues. Sherry Turkle summarizes this position: ‘We can use the virtual to reflect constructively on the real. Cyberspace opens the possibility for identity play, but it is very serious play’9. This approach has methodological implications. Conceiving of the Internet as an object of study means studying only the virtual persona, online communication, and online social norms, rules, and etiquettes, without considering the other directions, namely how established social norms and values are being reflected in the online world. The Internet has been hailed for the possibilities it is perceived to offer its users of escaping the constraints of their material surroundings and bodies, enabling them to create and play with online identities.10 In these terms, the human body is regarded not only as invisible online, but also as temporarily suspended, so that it becomes partially or completely irrelevant. Similarly, in this perspective, Internet communication creates new forms of social relationships, in which participants are no longer bound by the need to 8

  John A. Bargh and Katelyn Y. A. McKenna, ‘The Internet and Social Life’, Annual Review of Psychology, 55 (2004): 573–90. 9   Sherry Turkle, ‘Cyberspace and Identity’, Contemporary Sociology 28:6 (1999): 643–8. 10   Sadie Plant, ‘On the Matrix: Cyberfeminist Simulations’, Cultures of the Internet: Virtual ­Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies, ed. Rob Shields (London: Sage, 1996) 170–83.

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meet others face to face but can expand their social arena by meeting others, located anywhere in the online universe, mind to mind. Thus, virtual relationships are seen as more intimate, richer, and more liberating than offline relationships because they are based on genuine mutual interest rather than the coincidence of physical proximity. It is a zone of freedom, fluidity, and experimentation insulated from the mundane realities of the material world.11 An alternative view is to see the Internet as a cultural artefact, an object immersed in a social context, considering how the technology is incorporated in the everyday life of individuals and how it is used as a means of communication, expression, and content production within an offline social world.12 This perspective rejects the dematerialization of social life that results from adopting a perspective that looks at the Internet as a culture in itself. Much of what happens in electronic space is deeply inflected by the offline culture—the material practices and imaginaries that take place outside the electronic space. Digital spaces are not exclusive conditions that stand outside the non-digital. Digital space is embedded in the larger societal, cultural, subjective, economic, and imaginary constructions of lived experience and the systems within which we exist and operate.13 11

  See Bargh and McKenna 573–90.  James E. Katz and Ronald E. Rice, ‘Syntopia: Access, Civic Involvement, and Social Interaction on the Net’, The Internet in Everyday Life, ed. Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) 114–38. 13   See Sassen 365–88; Susan C. Herring, ‘Questioning the Generational Divide: Technological Exoticism and Adult Constructions of Online Youth Identity’, Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. David Buckingham, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007) 71–92. 12

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Conceiving of the new digital space as socially embedded allows us to go beyond the duality between technological determinism and the social construction of technology. For example, this approach allows us to understand that adolescents use the Internet for the creation of unique social spaces in which they can use instant messaging and social networking sites to sustain their friendships, but they can also overcome the geographical limitations of association. They can access others who share their concerns and interests and do not belong to their immediate social group. In doing this, they are accessing new social networks and novel information resources and opportunities. Social disadvantage creates restrictions in access to networks and to the resources that the Internet might offer. At the same time, as studies have shown, most of the use of Instant Messenger (IM) and social networking sites is to maintain existing social ties with similar others. The view of the Internet as a cultural tool calls attention to the material sources of social life, as socioeconomic status limits access, skills, and participation in the virtual world. Thus, the Internet is seen not as generating a new online world but as mostly reflecting the existing conditions of society; individuals use the Internet to do old things in Conceiving of the new digital space as socially embedded allows us to go beyond the duality between technological determinism and the social construction of technology.

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new ways, expanding the possibilities of communication among individuals who know each other and are linked by friendship, kinship, or other types of relationship. The Internet is recognized as a new channel of communication, but its function is limited to supplementing the existing ones (face-to-face interaction and phone calls) and in some cases displacing them.14 Most fundamentally, existing characteristics of relationships are instrumental and central in determining which channels to use and when. Strong ties communicate using all the channels; weak ties use only some of them.15 The emphasis in this view is on the actor; the integration of the Internet into existing relationships reflects the actor’s rational choices in maintaining existing social ties. In the same vein, the conception of an Internet generation has been rejected as a mere expansion of an adult discourse that reflects the difficulties and fears of adults to achieve digital literacy. Youth have incorporated IM, blogs, information search, and commerce into their lives, using them as additional technological tools to conduct the same activities that youth have always carried on.16 The integration of the Internet in the everyday life of youth means that both views need to be integrated. Rather than expecting causation, we need to be tuned to 14

 Nancy K. Baym, Yan Bing Zhang, and Mei-Chen Lin, ‘Social Interactions across Media: Interpersonal Communication on the Internet, Telephone and Face-to-Face’, New Media & Society 6:3 (2004): 299– 318. 15  Caroline Haythornthwaite, ‘ Strong, Weak and Latent Ties and the Impact of New Media’, The Information Society 18:5 (2002): 385–401. 16   See Herring 71–92.

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the mutual influences. Adolescents use the Internet to accomplish important developmental tasks such as identity formation, social interaction, and the development of autonomy. The Internet is being used to conduct these developmental tasks, and at the same time, through its use, it is having an effect on their culture that in certain dimensions looks different than that of the previous generation. When looking at the Internet culture, one important development is a shift in the association between youth and media. Youth today are active participants in the creation of media content. The advent of Web 2.0 increases the ability of youth not only to be passive consumers of information and content online but also to become active creators and contributors. The lower costs of coordinating creative efforts and distributing materials allow individuals to generate their own content and to collaborate with others in social, economic, and political activities. Social media platforms facilitate various ad hoc and formal, small as well as large-scale online communities, where User-Generated Content (UGC) flourishes: bloggers post news and analysis, independent musicians distribute their music (MySpace), and amateur photographers post their photos (Flickr), or distribute their videos (YouTube). Thus, youth today are actively involved in web production and tend to appropriate portions of it and to convert them into youth zones. Teens also produce unique, stand-alone content for the web, such as blogs that allow for a more interactive dialog. Blogs represent

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a kind of diary that is shared with a larger audience that refers to the details of their everyday life (daily concerns, thoughts, and emotions), consumer talk, and television and movie critiques. As such, blogs are a popular way to build identity and socialize in an information-based society. Yet, as I have mentioned before, it would be a mistake to think that all youth are For the large majorengaged in content production ity ofadolescents, and share the same digital culthe Internet is being ture. For the large majority of used mostly for adolescents, the Internet is another important being used mostly for another developmental task: important developmental task: relationship forrelationship formation and mation and mainmaintenance with their existtenance with their ing friends. Adolescence is an existing friends. important developmental stage. During this period, social relationships outside the family expand, and their quality has been linked to various behavioural outcomes. Social interaction with peers provides a forum for learning and refining socioemotional skills needed for enduring relationships. Through inter-actions with peers, adolescents learn how to cooperate, to take different perspectives, and to satisfy growing needs for intimacy.17 In the last 10 years, the com17

 Kenneth H. Rubin, William M. Bukowski, and Jeffrey G. Parker, ‘Peer Interactions, Relationships, and Groups’, Handbook of Child Psychology: Social, Emotional, and Personality Development, ed. Nancy Eisenberg (New York: Wiley, 2006) 571–645.

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munication environment of youth has changed as more and more teens have access to computer-mediated communication and cellular phones. The most frequent youth use of the Internet remains for social purposes, as 93 per cent send and receive emails, 68 per cent send and receive instant messages, and 55 per cent have a profile in a social networking site. Only 28 per cent create or work in an online journal (blog), and 18 per cent visit chat rooms.18 Youth social life is conducted both online and offline, and their overlap is leading to perpetual communication with peers. When coming home from school, youth continue to be in contact with their school and remote friends through IM and social networking sites. This continuous contact provides a sense of copresence of being together with others in a mediated—either remote or virtual environment. Conversations that started at school continue after school through mediated connections of IM, emails, and social networking sites. The primary purposes of IM are informal talk and socializing. Since IM communicators usually know each other and often share experiences, the nature of their conversations is reported to be much like those they have in the face-to-face space: reflections on their day’s events, gossip about others, including what clothes were worn and who was seen with whom. IM is often used as an efficient channel to enable multiple social network members to 18

  Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden, ‘Teens, Privacy & Online Social Networks: Managing Online Identities and Personal Information in the Age of MySpace’, Pew Internet & American Life Project (18 April 2007): .

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coordinate face-to-face meetings. In this respect, an interesting behaviour is micro-coordination. A new but fast growing communication channel is short message service (SMS). SMS is used for ‘micro-coordination’, a concept that refers to the instrumental use of IM and mobile phones to coordinate a meeting by allowing individuals to adjust and readjust in real time, the time and place of meeting.19 Rather than setting a fixed time and place, youth converge in real time to a common location. Social networking sites have additional features:they allow users to present information about themselves (such as age, gender, location, education, and interests); encourage users to link to known and likeminded others whose profiles exist in the site or to invite known and likeminded individuals to join the site; and enable users to establish and maintain contact with other users, to post content, create personal blogs, and participate in online groups. Besides the communication element, social network sites are sites for identity formation and experimentation. Most sites encourage users to construct accurate representations of themselves, but it is difficult to know to what extent individuals do so. The use of different social media to stay in contact all the time with peers has raised the question of how youth accommodate online participation with their busy schedules. With the extensive use of computers, multitasking 19

 Richard Ling and Birgitte Yttri, ‘Hyper-coordination Via Mobile Phone in Norway’, Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, ed. James E. Katz and Mark Aakhus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 139–69.

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has become part of the way teens manage a busy life. Media multitasking can be defined as engaging in more than one media activity at a time, switching constantly between such activities as email, IM, web search, and sending text messages to friends.20 In other words, teens are switching back and forth between different activities. It is true that some multitasking existed in the past, with adolescents doing homework and listening to music at the same time, but now it has been expanded from media to social multitasking, conducting various conversations simultaneously with different members of the peer group. In a comprehensive study on multitasking in the US, when youth were asked how often they use other media when using each of four media (reading newspapers, watching TV, using computers, and playing video games), it was found that about a quarter are multitasking most of the time, about half from time to time, and only 20 per cent of the teens never multitask. From this preliminary study, it is clear that multitasking results from computer use. One central finding of the study was that multitasking is not common when the primary media being used is television. On the other hand, multitasking is very common when using the computer. When using email, 83 per cent of the respondents With the extensive use of computers, multitasking has become part of the way teens manage a busy life.

20

 Ulla G. Foehr, Media Multitasking Among American Youth: Prevalence, Predictors and Pairings (Menlo Park: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2006).

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reported simultaneously engaging in other media activity. When using IM, 75 per cent reported doing this activity simultaneously with other media consumption. It is not surprising that when using the computer for any purpose, youth report simultaneously engaging in other computerrelated activities. For example, when the computer is used for computer games, it is very likely that it is also being used for IM and phone conversations. When the computer is used for IM, it is very likely to be used simultaneously to search websites, watch television, and send email. Finally, when searching for websites, the most popular secondary activity is conducting IM conversations.21 What are the outcomes of perpetual contact, micro-coordination, and multitasking? These activities might create an image of youth who are socially overloaded, managing hundreds of contacts, and exposing themselves to the risks of contact with strangers. This image seems to be different from the behaviour and views that teens report. Users are able to build a network of connections that they can display as a list of friends. These friends may be offline actual friends, acquaintances, or people they only know or have The Internet plays an met online, and with whom important role in adothey have no other link. A lescent life as a cultural study in the US found that artefact and a culture in 91 per cent of all social itself. networking teens say they use 21

  See Foehr.

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the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently, while 82 per cent use the site to stay in touch with friends they rarely see in person, and 72 per cent use the sites to make plans with their friends.22 In the UK, the findings are similar, and while users reported massive numbers of individuals as ‘friends’, the actual number of close friends is approximately the same as face to face. The research found that although the sites allowed contact with hundreds of acquaintances, people tend to have around 5 close friends, and 90 per cent of their contacts were people they had met face to face. Only 10 per cent were contacts made with total strangers.23 Social networking sites facilitate youth to update others about their activities and whereabouts, part of the culture of perpetual contact. Youth report that the number of individuals in their contact list is important because it is often used as an indication of social standing, the extent of being socially involved with others.24 The Internet plays an important role in adolescent life as a cultural artefact and a culture in itself. It is important to recognize that adolescence is a developmental stage with some common characteristics and at the same time, a socially nonhomogeneous group of individuals who adopt different components of the Internet for different purposes. Rather than thinking of the Internet in dichotomist terms, 22

  See Lenhart and Madden.  James Randerson, ‘Social Networking Sites Don’t Deepen Friendships’, The Guardian (10 September 2007): . 24   Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, ‘The Benefits of Facebook “Friends”: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12:4 (2007): . 23

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either reflecting social values and norms or generating a Net Generation, it is useful to think of constant interrelations that are being created, bridging, and mutually affecting online and offline youth lives. Youth adoption of the Internet presents opportunities for participation in the information society. The most frequent use of the Internet is for conducting social contact with family, friends, and acquaintances. For some adolescents, belonging to a peer group and participating in social activities are dependent on access. The social participation of adolescents is shaped both by their developmental need for social association and the technological features of the Internet. The need for social association explains why the majority of the contacts in social networking sites and IM are with friends from school. The features of the Internet support the intensification of youth social life that is expressed in perpetual contact. The need to manage this perpetual contact leads to media and social multitasking— strategies that are needed to cope with perpetual contact with one’s peer group. A smaller group of adolescents are active participants in the production of web content and digital culture. Rejecting parental conceptions of privacy, youth are using commercial and non-commercial sites to express to a large and often unknown audience their identities, artistic creations, and everyday experiences. The expression of identity is a developmental need that is expressed in a digital space. Here again, the social meets technology and in this unique encounter creates a change in our conception of private

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and public space. Personal information about our feelings and whereabouts are published on the Internet. The perception is that we are sharing experiences and emotions with our friends, when in fact they are being shared with an infinite audience. Thus, online spaces are being used as a continuation of everyday communication to reflect on experiences at school and plan joint activities. At the same time, the online experience of conducting multiple activities and conversations with others is incorporated in the way youth approach daily life, and the boundaries between offline and online, and public and private, are constantly being blurred, mutually affecting each other in various ways. These mutual effects are in need of more in-depth study and understanding.

Glossary Immersion: Involvement. Homogenize: Change to look alike, standardize. Discrepancy: Divergence or disagreement. Causation: The act of causing something to happen. Perpetual: Eternal, permanent.

Exercises

  I Answer the following questions in two or three sentences.

1.  What are the two major perspectives mentioned? 2.  Who are called ‘digital native’? 3.  Who is a social actor? 4.  What is UGC? 5. Name a few digital spaces where you present yourselves.

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II answer the following questions in not more than 100 words. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

III

Write a short note on technological determinism. Write a short note on social construction of technologies. Write a short note on net-generation. Comment on the creation of a culture in digital space. Write your views on commercial companies targeting the youth via digital spaces.

answer the following questions in about 300 words.

1. Write an essay on Internet as culture and as cultural artefact. 2. Write an essay on the influence of Internet on Indian Youth.

sUPPlEMENTary ExErCIsEs

Creative Task Predict the future of Internet.

Project Conduct a survey among your friends to find out how many of them use Internet and why. Write a report.

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TEXT TWO Writing Online: Websites, Blogs and social Networking

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Good writing is even more important in social media where much of the communication is in writing. Of course, we do have videos and audio too, but for the most part, readers need to be hooked in by reading the content. It is important to come across as professional, credible and linkable. It will also help to consider these three Cs when writing online. Your writing must be: • Clear (readable and understandable) • Concise (straight to the point, efficient) • Consistent (reliable, dependable) Remember too that your reader is number one! Picture them when you write; write with them in mind; write from their point of view. Ask yourself ‘what’s in it for my readers?’ you might also wat to ask yourself some questions about your readers: • • • • •

Who are they? What is your relationship with them? What do you know already? What do they want to know one? Is your language and tone appropriate?

Here are some other issues about your audience that you need to be aware of: • • • • •

They have a very short attention span. They have limited time. They want to interact rather than be passive. They have a mission, a reason for reading. They will more likely scan than read word-for-word.

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Writing for websites

Writing for a website is different to any kind of writing. All the rules when it comes to writing for websites. There are two key reasons why your writing on your website must be simple, clear and concise. 1. People want to find information quickly. If you do not get to the point quickly, they will not spend a lot of time on your website. 2. People are scanning your writing to find the information they want. They are looking for keywords that attract their attention. Not everyone will enter your site at the home page. They may follow a link to a specific page. So make sure on every page there is a clear link to your home page, a guide to pages on your site, basic information about your organisation or specialism, plus contact details. With this in mind, here are my top 10 tips making your website much more reader-friendly and that means visitor-friendly. 1. Choose keywords first It pays to pick your keywords in advance. It’s much easier to tailor your writing to your keywords if you decide what they are before you start. By focusing the two or three keywords in your writing, the higher search engines will rank your website when someone searches for one of your chosen keywords.

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CAUTION: When choosing keywords, try to be creative. People may type in something different or even misspellings, so it is advisable to consider including variations of the words instead of just the obvious choices. 2. Include a title on every page As people are scanning, they really appreciate a clear headline on the top of every page of your website. This makes it easier to determine if the page contains the information they are looking for. 3. Use sub headings Break up your pages with sub headings as this is again great for scanning. People are not interested in seeing one big block of text. 4. Keep paragraph and sentences short Short paragraphs are much easier to read than long ones, and short sentences are also easier to read. When people are scanning websites for information, they want to find information and understand it quickly. 5. Use white spaces Lots of white spaces will help to frame your website writing and minimise eye strain and fatigue. The more you can do to help with this problem, the more likely it is that visitors will hang around. 6. Use bullets and numbers Bullets and numbers help writers to keep writing brief and straight to the point. They also help readers pick out information easily.

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7. Watch your language The web is no place for long sentences and long, technical words. It is even more important when writing for a website that you keep your language plain and simple. Use simple conversational languages, as though you are having a conversation with reader, casual and friendly. 8. Use contractions Writing in an informal casual style, it will come naturally to use contractions. Say ‘You‘ll’ instead of ‘You will’, ‘It’s instead of ‘It is’, etc. This will help you keep sentences short and conversational. 9. Use sans serif fonts like arial On paper, serifed fonts like Times New Roman may be easier to read. However, on your website it is important to keep your choice simple. Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, and others that are ‘sans serif’ (without feet) are much easier to read on a screen. 10.  Do not forget to proofread Make sure that you can do everything to eliminate any errors from your website. Typos stand out so much more on websites, so proofread your writing, then get someone else to proofread, and to use spell-check.    The same rules as these for websites also apply to ezines, eblasts, and blogs. Writing for blogs

I have a blog, so I know how disappointed I feel when my content does not get the attention I think it deserves. One way

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that we can help ourselves, apart from great promotion, is to know how to write great blog posts. Here are my suggestions: 1. Do your research Find out what people want to know. Do your research and give them the latest information, with your own opinions thrown in too. People will respect you for giving your own thoughts. 2. Compose a killer headline This is probably one of the keys to determining how popular your post will be. Social media users have thousands of submissions all vying to capture their attention. If you want to stand apart from the rest, you must create a compelling headline, one that is attractive enough for people to click on it.   3. Start with a great introduction Once your reader has clicked on your killer headline, you only have a matter of seconds to convince the reader to stick around. If your openings remarks do not suck the reader in, they will be off somewhere else immediately. Your introduction should really cut to the core of what your post is about.   4. Stay focused Online readers only have a short attention span, with no tolerance for fluff. So eliminate padding and any non-essential text. It is crucial to keep your points focused. There is a fine line between flavour and fluff!   5. Keep it ‘social’ The key word in social media is ‘social’—that means conversational. Write in a casual, friendly style as if you

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are speaking to the reader ­face-to-face. Put your personality in to the content, and include readers just as you would in speaking.   6. Use the right tone Tone comes from word and phrase choices and from use of punctuation. Consider your reader and your relationship with them. Consider how you want to be perceived. Reflect all this in the tone you use. Let your personality shine through in your writing. Let your readers really get to know the real you.   7. Avoid sales pitches You could shoot yourself in the foot if you overpromote yourself in your blogs. First and foremost, make your content educational, informative and useful, with no ulterior motives. Avoid ‘marketese’.   8. Use pictures Pictures great because they add a visual appeal to your post. No one likes being greeted with long blocks of text, so pictures are a great supplement for your content.   9. Be consistent Consistency is important in the way you write, as well as your formatting. Be consistent in display, design, language use and formatting. 10. Make a commitment Writing well for blogs is a long-term commitment, and a real learning experience. Keep trying to write great content, learn from your mistakes and ... your successes. You will eventually hit on a formula that works for you.

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    I did not add ‘proofread’ in that list, because this should be obvious. Before you hit ‘send’ or ‘apply’ or ‘post’, read what you wrote wearing the hat of the reader. Grammar, spelling and punctuation are important for readability as well as your reputation. Writing for social networking sites

Not so long ago, we used to keep a diary to record our daily doings, privately. Now, people update their status on social media networking sites regularly, often minute by minute. Very often though, status updates do not make compelling reading, like these for example: • • • •

Having breakfast Walking the dog Eating a tuna sandwich My bus is packed today

There is no doubt, however, that social media networks are fantastic communication machines. They allow people to feel connected to a virtual community, make new friends and keep current ones, and learn things they did not know. They encourage people to write more (which cannot be bad) and to write well and concisely (which is not easy). Unfortunately, the downside is that it means people are writing instead of talking, so our face-to-face communication skills are seriously suffering.

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What makes a good status update? Most experts seem to agree that personality is what drives people to follow you, especially on Twitter, plus of course making your updates useful and interesting. If you keep posting things like ‘Having coffee with Lisa’, people will soon bored with you. So what makes a great status update? We know they need to be short, But what else? As with every written message, it is important to start by asking ‘What’s your aim?’ or what do you want readers’ reactions to be when they read your update? Perhaps it would help to consider if you want people to: DO somethiong. Here, you are calling to some kind of action. THINK something. You are educating them or sharing something useful with readers. FEEL something. You are building rapport by giving readers information that will evoke an emotion, for example it may make them smile, laugh, cry, whatever.   Remember this quote from Maya Angelou, ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’. ..Rafting positive status updates Here are three keys to writing positive status updates. .. Be genunine Let your personality shine through and build up rapport with your readers. Make your aim to help your fans

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and friends understand you better, to see more of your true personality. Avoid meaningless, mindless drivel, and TMI (too much information). ... Be generous It is not all about you. It is all about being helpful to your readers, your supporters, your friends. Be helpful by giving them information that will help them, including links and other resources. Social media is all about sharing. .. Be grateful Always show appreciation and gratitude when others are generous. A simple ‘Thank you’ always makes people smile, or you could share a comment, or .... it, or repost something interesting. What goes around comes around! CAUTION: Remember people have short attention spans and limited time. Choose your status updates carefully, otherwise people can stop following you very quickly. Writing techniques for social media networking sites 1. Keep posts brief You will annoy your friends immensely if you write long-winded, unedited posts. People are scanning sites like Facebook, not reading it word for word. So keep your posts brief and include links to longer texts or blogs posts. 2. Include details Details are important. This does not mean you can make your posts long. But if you are talking about your cat, tell us your cat’s name. If you are dining with your wife, tell us

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her name. Giving details like this will help people fell more connected to you. 3. Share your feelings The more feelings you share, the more authentic you will appear. If you are taking your dog to the vet, tell us how it makes you feel. If you have an important meeting tomorrow, share your feelings. This will again bring readers closer to you, helping them get to know the real you. 4. Consider your audience Just as with any type of writing, it is important to rememberwho you are speaking to. All your friends will see your posts, so draw people into what you are saying by asking questions, and by revising your text with the audience in mind. 5. Write to one person, not many Your posts should be worked like you are speaking to one person, not to several hundreds in your network. Keep your posts conversational by using personal pronouns and contractions. Use a warm, relaxed, friendly tone. Example: I am off to dinner with hubby Markat the new restaurant Otto’s in Sentosa. I am so excited! My book Model Business Letters, Emails and other Business Documents has been translated into 8 different languages! What are your thoughts on putting ‘Regards’ at the end of emails? What do you use instead? Really looking forward to attending the Global Speakers Summit in Vancouver in December 2013. Will you be there?

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6. Do not be vague Vague posts are confusing and irritating. People do not want to read ‘I am about to start something exciting’. Remember the advice earlier in this chapter – clear, concise, consistent!   7. Use correct punctuation Your posts give an impression of you, and it may be a first impression to some people. Better make sure it’s a good one. Put full stops at the end of sentences, and learn the correct use of the apostrophe.   It is or It is (with an apostrophe) always says either it is or it has.   8. Do not overuse exclamation marks If absolutely necessary, include one exclamation mark. But please do not use multiple exclamations!!! It’s very annoying!! We do not need them at the end of every sentence! OK?!!!   9. Ask questions A great play to get the attention of your readers is to ask questions, or somehow ….. them into a discussion. Questions make people think and respond with their own thoughts – this is the ultimate goal of any successful social media strategy 10. Do not boast You will turn off your audience if you show off all the time. Don’t!

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11. Do not badmouth others It is not a good idea to speak badly about people on social media. If you are mad at someone and you post about it, it will not reflect you in good light. My mum had the best advice – if you don’t have anything good to say, better not say anything! 12. Maintain variety It is not a good idea to post about the same topic all the time. People will get bored and will not respond or interact. Use an assortment of techniques – some personal comments, some links, some fun stuff, some serious stuff, some photos or vidoes. A word of warning about abbreviations: So many people today are using misspellings for words, like de (the), dat (that), dis (this), wud (would), tot (thought), frens (friends), dun (do not) even witchew (with you). This may be the language you use when texting or instant messaging friends, but it is not a good idea to get into the habit of using these non- words. When you post something on Facebook, it is going out to a much wider audience. It will not give a good impression of you. It will not give a good impression of you. In fact, it will have the opposite effect, especially if being viewed by potential employers. If you use any abbreviations like this, do you do so all the time or just with friends? It is really important that you learn to adapt your communication style depending on who you are talking to, otherwise you could end up in trouble.

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   Did you know that the Romans started the practice of missing out vowels to save the cost of the messenger who usually charged per letter? This is much like what teenagers are doing today to save the cost of sending an extra text message. CAUTION: If you are not getting any comments on your posts, it should tell you something. Are your posts clear and concise? Do they show any emotion? Are they warm, positive, engaging? Do they invite interaction. The level of engagement you receive is possibly the best rating of the quality of your posts. Checklist

Be clear, concise and consistent in your online writing. Keep your readers in mind and write from their point of view. Consider that your readers will have a short attention span online and will be scanning rather than reading. Use plain, simple, conversational language, as through you are having a conversation with your reader. Put your true personality into your content, and write in a casual, friendly style. Help your reputation by making sure your grammar, spelling and punctuation are correct. Make sure status updates are useful and interesting, because personality is what will make people follow you.

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Consider the 3Gs of positive status updates: be genuine, generous and grateful. Build rapport with your readers by considering if you want them to do something or feel something. Do not put anything on your social networking site that you wouldn’t want a potential employer or client to see. Exercises

I Answer the following questions in two or three sentences.

1. What are the three C’s to be considered when writing online? 2. Why are keywords important in writing for websites? 3. What are the fonts preferred for websites? 4. Why is abbreviation not advisable for writing online? 5. Why is it important to craft positive status updates?

 II Answer the following questions in not more than 100 words.

1. What are the points to remember when writing for websites? 2. What are the points to remember when writing for blogs? 3. What makes a good status update? 4. What are the writing techniques for social media networking sites? 5. Share your experience of writing on digital space.

III Answer the following in about 300 words. 1. Comment on the write-ups that you come across networking sites. 2. Write an essay on the importance of writing online.

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sUPPleMeNtArY exerCises

Creative task Predict the future of Internet or try writing a script to be published on a website.

Project Conduct a survey among your friends to find out how many of them write on digital space and why. Write a report.

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TEXT THREE How Google Has changed Our Language

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Every once in awhile, a product or a company’s name becomes so famous that it gets added to our vocabulary. A generation ago, people started making ‘xerox’ copies. Before that, people started taking ‘aspirins’ instead of ‘pain medicine’ and covering wounds with ‘band-aids’ rather than ‘adhesive strips.’ Today, it is common to hear someone say they ‘googled’ something. The name Google was taken from the word googol. A googol is a 1 followed by 100 zeros. And now, a new term has emerged, that is, Narcissurfing, the habit of surfing the Web looking for your own appearances. Narcissurfers are those who Google themselves on a daily or weekly basis. Google has achieved success and changed our language in a world first filled with failures—the Internet companies. Google works because it uses a different business model. The company’s primary edge is its ability to organize a vast amount of information into a system that can be easily accessed using the Web, and Google provides information to users at free of cost. The company sells advertising that is linked to the free information. The search engine provides access to a vast variety of Websites that help connect customers with information about products, ideas, social trends, and an endless variety of additional services. Need something translated from Russian to English? Go to Google and numerous free translation services are quickly at your disposal. Of course, those translation services are more willing to sell you courses to help you learn various foreign languages at the same time.

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‘A search’ according to Steve Cohen, vice president in charge of products at Basis Technology, ‘is made up of two stages: indexing and retrieval.’ One primary advantage held by Google is that the company has been able to expand indexing and retrieval searches into nearly 100 languages. It was not an easy task. For example, many Asian languages, in their print forms, do not have spaces between words. This created a major challenge for word box search engines. Using tools from Basis Technology, Google is able to offer searches in Asian languages as well as other challenging languages. The net result is a global company with a worldwide reach.

Exercises

 I Answer the following questions in two or three sentences. 1.  What is to ‘Google’? 2.  What is meant by narcissurfing? 3.  What is a ‘search’ according to Steve Cohen?

II Answer the following questions in not more than 100 words.

1.  Write your experience of Google. 2.  Write a short note on Google and education. 3.  Has Google changed our language? 4.  Compare Google with other search engines. 5.  Pros and cons of Google.

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sUPPLEMENTArY ExErcisEs

creative Task Predict the future of Google. Prepare a short note.

Project Google changed ‘the language of our lives’. Write your observation for a newspaper.

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TEXT FOUR Quality of Videos Uploaded in the Social Networks and Its Impact on the Age Group of 18–25 Years’ Student Community

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The Internet Works Ceaselessly Even at this moment, trillions and trillions of folks are using the Internet, this very moment, surfing through various sites such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Twitter, or LinkedIn, to name a few, for various purposes such as using it as a search engine, for social networking, for video sharing, or for reference. For example, YouTube, which is a  video-sharing  website, not only allows users to upload, view, and share videos but also run partnership programmes with media corporations such as BBC, CBS, etc. Both the individuals and large production companies have used YouTube to grow audiences. For the purpose of statistics: 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second. • Over 4 billion videos are viewed per day. • Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month. TED curator Chris Anderson said it’s not far-fetched to say that online videos will dramatically accelerate scientific advance, and that video contributors may be about to launch “the biggest learning cycle in human history”. Here, I must say, the Educational Sector occupies an important place. Graphic Commentary is Opening the Doors of Opportunity The dominance of the social web provides everyone with the power of speech. The global connection and knowledge provides virtual platforms for the ingenious souls.

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Today’s youth are exposed to a media-intense milieu ‘The  Growing up with Media Study’ confirms that today’s youth are using a wide range of media technologies. Use ranges from the inert ones like listening to music, watching programmes on television to the more collaborative ones such as engaging in WhatsApp, playing video games, etc. Regardless of anything, the youth of this generation skilfully embrace new technologies and especially social media with alacrity. We have heard a (plethora of terms used to describe the generations, gen Y, to indicate they followed gen X or gen why, pertaining to their questioning natures! Indeed, this generation is difficult to pindown and even harder to comprehend. ‘The Emerging Adulthood’: typically defined as 18–25 years of age Several factors differentiate emerging adulthood from other life stages and have specific relevance to the formation of behaviour patterns including identity development and shifting interpersonal influences. Psychologists say that this period is marked by important transitions such as asserting independence and increasing autonomy in decision-making; however, at the same time, adult responsibilities such as financial independence and residential and employment stability are still in flux. This period of emerging adulthood may be an important,

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yet overlooked, age for establishing long-term behaviour patterns. One defining characteristic of this life stage is the development of a self-identity. Emerging adulthood is a time for the exploration of new ideologies and behaviours that allow individuals to express their individuality. ‘We are more Tech Savvy’. When you start connecting many people with global social networks such as Facebook (with over 900 million users), then opportunities and access to markets that were once local now become global. Let us first understand that this age group of 18–25 is exposed to and is influenced by everything “Global” by way of knowledge sharing, global opportunities are available in terms of jobs, trade, research, etc. by way of geopolitical unrest and so on. Thanks to the Web and social media, virtually, the world is but a click away for this generation. Change and Continuity is the Norm ‘The 18–25 group’ can also be called an Age of Compromise, for they believe in change; they feel you have to move on to keep the global pace, and they are prudent enough to know that a sense of continuity has to prevail. Empowerment and Team Work Spells Success They have the right tools for change. This multitasking generation is convinced it has what it takes to change the

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world because it believes in the power of individuals, working together. The easy access to information and equally easy implementation with an equally quick feedback sets one up for success ! A concept well-developed by the marketing and advertising gurus express the value of the old concepts and the novelty of the new. They convey messages of change and the need to move on for progress. A Boon for Education, Researchers, and Students The Internet and the search engines are providing a surfeit of information, which is being devoured by the second. Students and Research Scholars wanting to pursue Higher Education in Foreign Universities can have data on multitudes of them at one and the same time. They can also interact with the authorities on a video chat or a video call (at free of cost), which eventually helps them to take a sensible decision. Yet another aspect of videos on Internet is that one can also listen and watch to lectures, interviews, and presentations by experts from faraway places, just sitting at home. It is highly a welcome facet of Internet that it is easily accessible, affordable, and less time consuming. One can upload videos of one’s choice. For example, the short films that one makes uploaded on Internet fetches a worldwide circulation. It is in a way taking one’s talent to

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the world. Take one’s message to the world all over sitting at home and at a low budget. Meanwhile videos of torture representing pain and suffering in the world community or videos of the Earthquake that happened in Nepal or videos of a ‘White’ cop taking law in his own hands stir the innate goodness in mankind and make him/her want to contribute their mite, as a remedy to the immediate society they live in, to the Nation and to the World for now, it has no barriers The Surge of Graphic Information: Is it a Boon or a Curse ? As the saying goes… A coin has two sides… Let us now also examine the negative influences of quality of videos. It is all about smart phones… Not necessarily how smart you are It has become a status issue what kind of mobile phone do you have? Some in this age group may not be economically independent or have the means but that does not deter them from buying the higher end models. Advertisements about easy EMIs ignite this ‘want’ but who is going to pay this bill? Constant Connectivity—at What Cost? The morning starts and ends with ‘scrolling’. This pastime of wanting to view all the time has almost become an

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obsession. Entertainment, video games, and sports (in that order) take top priority. They Become a Recluse This preoccupation with viewing and downloading of videos—not necessarily informative information. Here it would be apt to quote a report: YouTube has also faced criticism over the offensive content in some of its videos. The uploading of videos containing defamation, pornography, and material encouraging criminal conduct is prohibited by YouTube’s terms of service. Conclusion One can say that prudence is the key. Sift the information, which is literally available on your fingertips, analyse, and apply it judiciously, and enjoy your stay in this seamless world! Note: Two short films from YouTube are mentioned in the syllabus to view them as examples for videos on the Internet. Short films from Internet, Facebook Short film—Status Updated (www.facebook.com/mostviralmedia/videos/472625903685/) by Abhinav Sunder Nayak Applied? (www.imdb.com/title/tt1966351/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_) by Nitin Menon

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EXERCISES

I

Answer the following questions in about 300 words.

1. Comment on the videos that you come across on social media networking sites. 2. Write an essay on the role of videos in geopolitical unrest.

SUPPLEMENTARY EXERCISES

Creative Task Write a short play with the theme of videos on Internet.

Project Conduct a survey among your friends to find out how many of them upload their own videos and stills on Internet. Prepare a report.

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A05 Native Media in English Model Question Paper Time: 3 hours

Total Marks: 80 (10 × 1 = 10 marks)

I  Answer the following questions. 1.

Clutter is: (a) Block (b) The excessive number of messages delivered (c) Barrier (d) Excessive time

2. An environmental activist in India is: (a) Sachidanandan (c) Amartya Sen (b) Vandana Shiva (d) Romila Thapar 3. UGC in social media means: (a) User-Generated Content (b) User General Context (c) University Grants Commission (d) User General Comment 4. River that flows over Silent Valley region is: (a) Malaprabha River (c) Ghataprabha River (b) Kabani Puzha (d) Kunthipuzha River  5. Break the silence is on: (a) Caste system (b) Child sexual abuse

(c) Child marriages (d) Child labour

6. Satyamev Jayate means: (a) Truth alone triumphs (b) Truth revealed (c) Truth means victory (d) Truth and victory 7. Protection of children from sexual offences act was enacted in the year: (a) 2002 (c) 2012 (b) 2004 (d) 2000

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8. What is TRP for television programmes? (a) Television Rating Point (b) Target Reference Point (c) Technical Review Panel (d) Temporary Registration Permit 9. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar is a: (a) Biologist (b) Astronomer 10.

(c) Chemist (d) Astrophysicist

IM refers to: (a) Internet message (c) Integrated message (b) Instant Messenger (d) Integrated messenger

II Answer any ten of the following questions in a sentence or two.  (10 × 2 = 20 marks) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

What is a digital divide? How is science different from scientific temper? Name a few NGOs that work for the cause of human rights in India. What is the Act for the protection of children in India? What is the foundation work done by Bill Gates in India? Which is the first anti-dam struggle in India? Name other anti-dam struggles in India. What are the fonts preferred for websites? What are the three C’s to be considered when writing online? What is meant by Narcissurfing? What are the advantages of advertising on TV? What is a Blog?

III Answer any four of the following questions in a paragraph.  (4 × 5 = 20 marks) 1. Write a short note on social media as the power to communicate. 2. According to Narlikar what were the differences between the past and present generations? 3. Write on the role of television reality shows in India. 4. Write a note on your observation of medical practice in Kerala.

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5. Share your experience of writing on digital space. 6. Write a short paragraph on any TV advertisement. IV Answer any two of the following questions in 300 words.  (2 × 15 = 30 marks) 1. Do you agree with Narlikar’s views on the present day’s youth being more superstitious? Discuss. 2. Write an essay on advertisements on Internet networks on television. 3. Critically comment on any one of the issues dealt with in Satyamev Jayate episodes. 4. Write an essay on the role of videos in geopolitical unrest.

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