Irrelevant and Untrustworthy: Workers Experience of Mainstream and Social Media in India

Description

Based on a survey of over four hundred workers and small farmers of four regions of three states (Uttarakhand, Delhi and Tamil Nadu), this study looked at how these sections consume and experience both mainstream media and social media. To our knowledge it is the first study of its kind. The findings were striking. Overall, we found that fears that working class populations uncritically accept what they receive either on mainstream or social media do not appear to be founded in reality. Rather, a large proportion of our respondents showed a significant level of critical engagement with all types of media.

The KISLAY Social Research Collective is a collective of researchers based in India. We aim to produce grounded, rigorous studies, particularly focusing on unorganised, understudied and new forms of production, labour and social action. The Collective currently consists of Shankar Gopalakrishnan, Vinod Badoni and Rajendra Shah (based in Uttarakhand); Ramendra Kumar and Anita Juneja (based in Delhi); and MS Selvaraj (based in Tamil Nadu).