Introduction: South Asian Media in the Nougthies

This introductory note identifies the scope of this special issue as a challenge to predominantly technology-based analysis of media in South Asia. By exploring the ways in which specific power structures, multiple cultural and social milieus, and the flourishing of technological possibilities play out in the different case-studies, these authors reject the view of media as an all-encompassing power by highlighting different cases where a disjuncture between technological progress and social or political change takes place. The textual and ethnographic studies of this volume show that media groups can only be successful in participating in social change if the audiences are already responsive or ‘culturally intimate’ with their contents. We are in favour, hence, of a social analysis that accounts for technological potential (mostly borrowed by the ‘centre’ of economic and technological global power) and its localised use. Keywords: South Asian media, cultural intimacy, facebook, youtube