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

这项研究考察了印度被边缘化的民族--历史上一直被置于主流媒体和公共话语的边缘--如何承担起记录和拥有他们为社会正义而奋斗的历史的使命。它以最近的农民运动为背景，研究了这些社会参与者如何使用另类媒体以自己的声音讲述自己的故事，并围绕他们的生活和经历从叙事和记忆的边缘走到中心：他们从仅仅是媒体报道的对象，转移到了自己故事的主体和创作者的位置。这是一项重要的研究，因为随着经济自由化的快速公司化，印度的主流媒体已经转变为一个利润驱动的行业，在这个行业，“新闻”的概念已经变成了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，再加上上层种姓、上层阶级对新闻编辑室的主导，导致根深蒂固的社会不平等现象反映在媒体对边缘化人群的报道中。在日常生活中，这表现为对事实的歪曲，从长远来看，这些社区在印度集体记忆中被边缘化。在农民运动的背景下，这场运动始于2020年底，一年后在印度政府废除了引发这场运动的有争议的法律后结束。它将深入分析与这场运动相关的媒体倡议--从内部涌现并从外部提供支持--以及它们如何从边缘呈现声音和经历，以呈现霸权叙事的另一种选择。我的研究将探讨这些媒体的组织、它们的目的、策略和实践，以了解他们如何从边缘协商叙事构建和记忆制作。

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the context of the farmers' movement that started towards end-2020 and ended a year later after the Government of India repealed the controversial laws that had triggered the movement, it will conduct a deep analysis of media initiatives associated with the movement-emerging from within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.