Who is Studying Kerala Media?

As Media celebrates its first birthday with a special issue, there is another cause to cheer for the magazine. A recent write-up (Media, February 2013, pp 48–49) showed that studies on Kerala media were missing in this publication. At that time, it was unclear whether the needle of suspicion pointed to the journal’s editorial bias or the poverty of research on Kerala media. 

 

It turns out that quality research on Kerala media is skinny in general, not just in Media magazine. In this article, I present data from a rapid survey of international journals of the past five years (2008–2012) and offer a few suggestions to improve the situation.

 

Kerala Media in Academic Journals

Academics communicate their research findings through talks, conferences, and books, but primarily and notably through articles in scholarly journals. There are thousands of journals in the world and the EBSCO database ‘Communication and Mass Media Complete’ alone lists more than 1,000 academic journals. To locate studies on a topic, one must dig into journals.

There is also another reason to explore journals. To help scholars identify the best and most influential journals in their subjects, Thomson Reuters uses a formula and assigns a score (called ‘impact factor’) to each journal, and then ranks the journals. The rankings are published in the World Citation Report. Increasingly universities, including in India, use this scoring system while recruiting and promoting teachers. Typically, those who publish articles in journals with higher impact factor are more likely to be recruited or promoted than those who publish in journals with lower impact factor. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that scholars studying Kerala media publish their research in journals as it helps them in career advancement and peer recognition, in addition to dissemination of findings.

In Stage One of the research, I searched for studies on Kerala media in the top-ranking journals in the “Communication” category in the World Citation Report1.  How many articles on Kerala media were published in the past five years (2008–2012) in the top ten journals in Communication?

Answer: Zero.

Since many of us perceive the quality of higher education in Kerala to be poor, it was felt unreasonable to limit the search to the world’s top 10 journals. Expecting to find studies on Kerala media in some of the other good journals, I widened the search.

In Stage Two, therefore, using EBSCO’s media database as a guide, I identified the leading publishing houses in Communication (including Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Taylor and Francis, SAGE, and Wiley–Blackwell) and searched across thousands of peer-reviewed journals. Media studies being interdisciplinary at times, the search was done across non-media, social science journals too. Considering regional peculiarity, the Economic and Political Weekly, where many Indian scholars customarily publish, was also included. Further, to offset the problem of badly-written abstracts, I searched for articles where ‘Kerala’ appears in the full text (and not just the abstracts). Thus the objective was to make the survey comprehensive2. 

How many articles on Kerala media were published in international, peer-reviewed journals in the past five years (2008–2012)?

Answer: One3.  

That is one in hundreds of journals, not just in communication, but also in allied disciplines like history, sociology, political science and economics. Indeed, the lone article on Kerala media did not appear in a Communication journal. Nor was it by an Indian. The hero of the hour was the well-known Australian scholar Robin Jeffrey, who published an article in the Journal of Asian Studies of April 2009. Titled ‘Testing Concepts about Print, Newspapers, and Politics: Kerala, India, 1800–2009’ the 25-page article presented his understanding of the ‘impact of print consumption on societies and their politics’.

That article would be of interest to many Keralites—print journalists, journalism teachers, media managers, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and curious generalists—as well as non-Keralites who are keen to know more about the state and our media. If that is so, should we not have more of such articles? Should we not have more information and insights on various other aspects of Kerala media?

Now consider another finding from my extended survey—‘Kerala’ figured in the abstracts or titles of 269 journal items (excluding the Economic and Political Weekly). It was humbling and thrilling to see studies on Kerala, and sometimes from Kerala, in diverse fields—polymers, geriatric psychiatry, hepatology, energy, interventional cardiology, horticulture, and explosives (to name just a few from the sciences) as well as in various disciplines of the social sciences and the humanities.

Thus, if you search for ‘Kerala’ in abstracts you will not be disappointed; search for ‘Kerala’ and ‘media’ (or newspaper or journalism) in abstracts, article title or full text, you will be dismayed. The survey suggests that research on Kerala was being published by many Kerala-based scholars in science, technology or medicine, fewer of them in the humanities and social sciences, and almost none in media studies. What can be done?

 

A Few Ways Forward

The dismal research output on Kerala media underscores the need to shake up the university departments in the state and encourage them to study the society in which they are embedded. There is no dearth of topics for research—the media scene in Kerala is alive and faces challenges, whether one looks at it as a consumer or producer of media. It is up to the professors and the senior administrators of universities to analyze the problem of weak scholarship and take remedial measures.

Yet, if we really wish to improve the situation, we cannot rely solely on universities. The desertification of research on Kerala media calls for a creative and giant push on several fronts, for which the university departments are ill-equipped.

There are a few small steps that existing institutions can take in the immediate term to promote research. Newspaper firms, for example, can encourage the use of their archives by lowering the entry barriers they have installed. In due course, the digitized copies of back issues of publications can be made available online either on a free-and-limited access basis or pay-and-unlimited access. Similarly, new media outlets possess information on viewership, and to promote research, they can share proprietary data, even with a lag, say of one year.

Media magazine can reserve space for peer-reviewed content (like ‘Special Articles’ in the Economic and Political Weekly), regularly carry a page or two about media studies on Kerala, and initiate a prize for the best studied article published in the magazine. The availability of a platform, greater awareness, and incentives might encourage more studies on Kerala media4. 

Civil society organizations too can pitch in. One would expect the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, for example, to study the state of science journalism in Kerala and publish their findings in their own publications, or Media, and reputed journals.

Quick and small measures like these are necessary but not sufficient. Our goal should be the bigger, systemic one of establishing a vibrant research ecosystem for media studies on Kerala. A healthy research ecosystem will supply the media industry with regular findings and insights, as well as increase media literacy and strengthen democracy. 

The broader the vision, the better it would be. Because a diverse society like ours has varied interests, the research environment will benefit from being pluralist. The environment will be vibrant and healthy if all sectors—civil society, private industry, and the state—are encouraged to fund and conduct research, share findings with the public, and raise awareness about media production and consumption.

Who should take the lead in shaping the research ecosystem on Kerala media? In my view, it should be media firms and civil society organizations because the private sector and civil society are the primary beneficiaries of the research output. Where the state can help, let it do so; but because the media sector draws legitimacy from being a political watchdog (i.e., not only an entertainment medium), we must push forward even in the face of lack of encouragement, if any, from the state. Our democratic institutions, including the press, must 

develop the strength to keep the executive in check and discard the culture of wholesale dependence on any one player or sector for research.

What would be the elements of such an ecosystem? A few suggestions are outlined here; the list can be expanded with your ideas.

1.State of the Media report: published annually or at least once every two years, each report presenting reliable data on diverse aspects of the media scene in Kerala, discussing trends, and serving as an indispensable reference source in media research.

2. Media Studies Association: a professional society of scholars and researchers studying Kerala media, with affiliate membership for journalists and the public.

3. Media Education and Research Kerala portal: a comprehensive online repository of documents, datasets, and information for studying Kerala media, and on media education in Kerala.

4. Media research organizations: think-tanks and media-watch organizations in the private sector and civil society to undertake studies (for firms, the state, and the public), offer training, and develop ethics codes.

5. Media Circles: A network of voluntary groups across the state to promote media literacy among the masses.

Depending on their objectives and resources, these institutions can kick-start initiatives like e-newsletters and publications, textbooks and teaching toolkits for media educators, prizes and fellowships, annual Media Studies Congress and conferences, competitions and events, media literacy clubs in educational institutions, and development of media analysis software.

This is a time to strengthen the research community, build bridges between various stakeholders in media research, and develop a healthy media culture in the state. It will strengthen our democratic institutions and the media industry