Television Publics in South Asia

Book excerpt: Television has a prime role to play in the formation of discursive domains in the everyday life of South Asian publics. This book explores various television media practices, social processes, mediated political experiences and everyday cultural compositions from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. With the help of country specific case studies, it captures broad range of themes which foreground the publics and their real-life experiences of television in the region. The essays in this book discuss gendered television spaces; women seeking solace from television in pandemic; the taboo in digital tv dramas; television viewership and localizing publics; changing viewership from television to OTT; news and public perception of death; re-defining 'the national'; theatrical television; and post truth television news, among other key issues. Rich in ethnographic case studies, this volume will be a useful resource for scholars and researchers of media and communication studies, journalism, digital media, South Asian studies, cultural studies, sociology and social anthropology.