Media and Information Literacy Repository – South Asia

Background Despite decades of a call to action to engage men in reproductive health, men are often left out of programs and interventions. In India, where half of pregnancies are reported as unintended, patriarchal gender norms and still dominant patterns of arranged marriages make engaging men in family planning and strengthening couples communication critical in increasing reproductive autonomy and helping young couples meet their reproductive goals. This study explores the feasibility and acceptability from the men’s perspective of the pilot of a gender transformative intervention for newly married couples in India. Methods A pilot study was conducted of TARANG, a 4 month intervention for newly married women, with light touch engagement of husbands (4 sessions). A total of 41 husbands participated in the pilot, and we collected baseline knowledge and endline feasibility and acceptability data from them, along with in depth qualitative interviews with 13 men. The study was conducted in June 2023-January 2024. Results Men had low levels of knowledge about biology, family planning, with the majority of men reporting that no one had provided them information about these topics. Most men wanted to delay the first birth by at least 2 years, yet less than a quarter had discussed childbearing plans with their partner or engaged in family planning methods. While all men reported high acceptability (satisfaction and usefulness), feasibility (participation) was low, with only 43% attending 2 or more sessions. Main barriers to participation included commitments due to work and migration. Men reported that the intervention led to improvements in their relationships with their wives, gave them a sense of empowerment, and led them to become resources for other men in their community. Conclusions Men in these rural communities are not receiving the information that they need to meet their reproductive goals, however, they greatly desire this information and ways to improve relationships with their new wives. Such an intervention appears to have the potential to help change norms and spread information in the community and provide men with positive, life affirming feelings. Providing information through technology could address barriers to in-person engagement.

Gender equality and women empowerment are worldwide issues that, in many parts of the world, require urgent attention. And it is a challenging task to achieve. Women empowerment is a social action which encourages the engagement of individuals, social groups, families and governing bodies. The United Nations sustainable development goal project considers the 17 goals that depend on achieving gender equality and women empowerment. Therefore, in terms of the importance and seriousness of the issue, the researcher tries to find out the relationship between community media and women empowerment. Because in a developing country like India, media from the local bodies is very important. Community media frequently reflects societal diversity in a meaningful way by reaching the last mile of listeners, piercing media-dark spaces, and broadcasting voices and opinions that would otherwise go unheard (UNESCO, 2021). Hence this study focuses on community media and how it enhances women empowerment. The study was conducted in Kanchenjunga community media situated in a rural village of West Sikkim. My hypothesis is that community media is the major source of information and it helps the women community to participate in all social actions, which leads women to achieve empowerment. The researcher employs a qualitative analysis method for the study. For that, the researcher conducted a case study with 5 focus group discussions consisting of 15 to 20 women in each group and an in-depth interview with the community media executive committee members. The study results prove that there is a positive relationship between community media listeners and women empowerment.

The purpose of the article is to address the relationship between digital literacy and women empowerment in Varanasi. Women empowerment is one of the most crucial challenges in India. This study explores how enhanced digital literacy contributes to increased empowerment among women. This study collected the data with authentic and well-developed questionnaires, and the samples size for the analysis consisted of 402 participants. The causal relationship between empowerment through digital literacy is being examined by estimating empirical data through structural equation modelling in SmartPLS. The result of this study found that digital literacy tools and techniques had positive contributions towards women empowerment. Statistical analysis shows that digital literacy has brought significant changes and development to women in economic, social and technological areas.

This article explores the dynamics of media representation and its profound impact on cultural identity and intercultural relations, exploring how various forms of media—television, films, and digital platforms—shape and are shaped by cultural identities globally. By employing key theoretical frameworks like cultural imperialism and representation theory, it examines the ways in which media influences cultural perceptions and identities across different regions, from the dominance of Western narratives to the cultural expressions in Eastern media. The review further investigates the role of modern media technologies, such as streaming platforms and social media, in facilitating global cultural exchange while also perpetuating stereotypes. Case studies of diverse media representations illustrate the dual role of media in challenging and reinforcing cultural norms and stereotypes. The findings highlight the necessity for media producers, policymakers, and educators to foster more accurate and inclusive representations to enhance cultural understanding and identity formation in an increasingly globalized world.

The advent of television technologies has significantly restructured the context within which community television producers operate. Digital technologies have undercut “spectrum scarcity” arguments for limiting access to distribution platforms and opened up new paths to reach audiences. It has also, however, seen a decline in some of the regulatory structures that provided protection to noncommercial providers in eras of spectrum scarcity. The rise of the prosumer has, in its focus on production by individuals, weakened some of the underpinnings (economic and ideological) for community-based production, with consequent challenges for the sustainability of these often precarious projects. In this article, we tease out the implications of digitization for community television operators, exploring the state of the sector in the liberal North Atlantic region, and compare “traditional” community channels with “newer” channels that have emerged in the digital context in the past two decades. Our study explores the opportunities and challenges that face the sector following the transition to digital models.

The advent of television technologies has significantly restructured the context within which community television producers operate. Digital technologies have undercut “spectrum scarcity” arguments for limiting access to distribution platforms and opened up new paths to reach audiences. It has also, however, seen a decline in some of the regulatory structures that provided protection to noncommercial providers in eras of spectrum scarcity. The rise of the prosumer has, in its focus on production by individuals, weakened some of the underpinnings (economic and ideological) for community-based production, with consequent challenges for the sustainability of these often precarious projects. In this article, we tease out the implications of digitization for community television operators, exploring the state of the sector in the liberal North Atlantic region, and compare “traditional” community channels with “newer” channels that have emerged in the digital context in the past two decades. Our study explores the opportunities and challenges that face the sector following the transition to digital models.

Youth is not a homogeneous group. With this motto in mind, YouNDigital aims to study youth, their engagement with news, and digital citizenship dynamics. One of the core elements of the project is a digital newsroom, a space for meeting and exploring digital citizenship and news, considering the significant disparities that characterise individuals in this group. In order to better understand the target groups and to support the decisions regarding the development of the youth‐led digital newsroom, the research team carried out a systematic literature review focused on youth, digital citizenship, diversity, and different methodological approaches. This article explores the outcomes of the systematic literature review, particularly delving into the data gathered in one of the subclusters (Diversities). Findings underscore the challenges of inclusivity and diversity and the need for tailored media and digital literacy interventions that consider cultural differences, socioeconomic factors, and evolving technological landscapes. They also highlight the difficulties, as well as the positive results, of using digital tools and strategies to trigger learning and motivational processes for diverse audiences—digital tools that rely on media creation, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration can promote the empowerment and inclusion of youth from distinct backgrounds, bridging the gap between their realities and citizenship experiences. For research teams, the findings point out that involvement in collaborative, immersive, and participatory processes anchored on sustained literature review processes can encourage distancing preconceptions while bringing them closer to research participants. The article contributes to discussions regarding the potential and the challenges of considering youth’s diverse backgrounds through pillars such as co‐creation or inclusive design, and the urgency of mitigating youth social and digital exclusion in order to enhance democratic participation.

This article contains reflections on the further structural transformation of the public sphere, building on the author’s widely-discussed social-historical study, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, which originally appeared in German in 1962 (English translation 1989). The first three sections contain preliminary theoretical reflections on the relationship between normative and empirical theory, the deliberative understanding of democracy, and the demanding preconditions of the stability of democratic societies under conditions of capitalism. The fourth section turns to the implications of digitalisation for the account of the role of the media in the public sphere developed in the original work, specifically to how it is leading to the expansion and fragmentation of the public sphere and is turning all participants into potential authors. The following section presents empirical data from German studies which shows that the rapid expansion of digital media is leading to a marked diminution of the role of the classical print media. The article concludes with observations on the threats that these developments pose for the traditional role of the public sphere in discursive opinion and will formation in democracies.

Social media assume a role in activism by enabling the powerless to voice widely shared grievances and organise unequally distributed resources. However, the predominant focus on the episodic effect of social media in the digital activism literature presents a limited understanding of how social media can play a role at different level of grassroots involvement and for movement continuity. By adopting a multidimensional empowerment perspective and extending the temporal scope in examining social media-enabled social movements, this study expounds on the logic of connective action (in contrast to the conventional logic of collective action) to offer a theory of social media empowerment. The study builds on a case study of an environmental movement to derive two key contributions: (1) it extends our knowledge of grassroots organising through a conceptualisation of the processes of how social media can allow individuals to assume a more proactive role in driving a social movement and (2) it provides a new understanding of the use of social media to sustain activism over time through the conceptualisation of social media empowerment mechanisms. A framework for social media empowerment in social movements is offered with implications for the mobilising practices of grassroots leaders and organisations.

Social media platforms are popular sites, attracting millions of users who connect digitally. This has prompted some to argue that social media has promoted the return of Habermas’s ([1989] 1991) public sphere. We use data from in-depth interviews with Millennials and Generation Xers to refute this claim. Specifically, our results suggest that respondents do not engage in communicative action typical of the public sphere because they avoid political discourse online. Three factors influence this: (1) fear of online harassment and workplace surveillance; (2) engagement only with politically similar others; and (3) characterization of social media as a place for “happy” interactions. In addition, we find that these three factors interrelate, often sequentially, and we explore similarities and minor differences between Millennials and Generation Xers regarding each factor.