(Re)constructing from the margins: The role of alternative media in building the narrative and memory of social struggles

本研究探讨如何在印度的边缘化的人民，历史上被降级到主流媒体和公共话语的边缘，从事记录和拥有他们的斗争历史的社会正义的使命。以最近的农民运动为背景，研究这些社会行动者如何使用替代媒体以自己的声音讲述他们的故事，并围绕他们的生活和经历从边缘到叙述和记忆的中心：从仅仅是媒体报道的对象，在经济自由化后的快速公司化改变了印度主流媒体的时候，这是一项重要的研究进入一个利润驱动的行业，在那里，“新闻”的概念已经改变，意味着以城市为中心的新自由主义经济增长故事。所有权和意图的变化，加上上层种姓和上层阶级对新闻编辑室的统治，导致了根深蒂固的社会不平等，反映在媒体对边缘化人群的报道中。在2020年底开始的农民运动的背景下，一年后在印度政府废除引发该运动的有争议的法律后结束，它将深入分析与该运动有关的媒体倡议-来自该运动内部并提供外部支持-以及他们如何从边缘发出声音和体验，以提供霸权叙事的替代方案。这些媒体，他们的目的，策略和实践，以了解他们如何谈判叙事建设和记忆制造的边缘。

This research examines how marginalised peoples in India-historically relegated to the periphery of mainstream media and public discourse-engage with the mission of recording and owning the history of their struggles for social justice. Using the context of the recent farmers' movement, it studies the way these socialactors use alternative media to tell their stories in their own voices and undertake a journey from the margins to the centre of the narrative and memory around their lives and experiences: from the position of being mere objects of media coverage, they move to claim the position of subjects and creators of their own stories.This is an important study to undertake at a time when rapid corporatisation in the wake of economic liberalisation has transformed India's mainstream media into a profit-driven sector where the idea of 'news' has changed to mean the urban-centric, neoliberal economic growth story. Changes in ownership and intent,coupled with upper-caste, upper-class domination of newsrooms, have resulted in deeply-entrenched social inequalities being reflected in the coverage of marginalised peoples in media. On a daily basis this plays out in misrepresentation of facts and, over the longer term, in marginalisation of these communities in the nation'scollective memory.Situated within the context of the farmers' movement that started towards end-2020 and ended a year later after the Government of India repealed the controversial laws that had triggered the movement, it will conduct a deep analysis of media initiatives associated with the movement-emerging from within it and providing supporting from outside- and how they surface voices and experiences from the margins to present an alternative to the hegemonic narrative.My research will look into the organisation of these media, their purpose, strategies and practices to understand how they negotiate narrative building and memory making from the margins.