About the book
Acts of Media seeks to consolidate a field of multidisciplinary work around media technologies that intersects with legal scholarship. This volume brings together contributions from leading academics, lawyers, researchers and policy experts about contemporary India and Sri Lanka. The approaches to law and media taken in this volume challenge us to think outside of traditional disciplinary descriptions. Rather than approaching the law as being outside of, and constantly catching up with the media, the contributors of this book view law and media as being deeply intertwined.
The chapters in this volume address the relationship between law and media through different entry points—disputes over media and information systems shaping law, theories of law that incorporate media forms, and law and media co-producing trials. The multidisciplinary nature of this book has facilitated a rich and productive conversation among legal scholars, researchers and lawyers from disciplines such as constitutional law, law and technology, media and cinema studies, legal anthropology and political science.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Entanglement of Law and Media in Contemporary India Siddharth Narrain
PART I: Law and Media Infrastructures
What Is Video? Video and the Moment of Legal Disruption Ishita Tiwary
Censored, Curated and Licensed: Item Numbers after Film Silpa Mukherjee
Sexual Expression, Law and Media in Contemporary India Bishakha Datta
The Constitutional Basis for Internet Freedom Apar Gupta
Revisiting the 2012 North East Exodus: Virality, Incitement to Violence and the Law in India Siddharth Narrain
On WhatsApp, Rumours and Lynchings Chinmayi Arun
Hate Speech and Social Media in Sri Lanka Sanjana Hattotuwa and Roshini Wickremesinhe
PART II: Evidence, Forensics and Trials
True Lies and False Truths: The Case of Talwar Veena Hariharan
Narco Videos, Forensic Psychologists and the Truth Telling Apparatus: Tracing Evidence, Law and Media Trials Jinee Lokaneeta
The Talwars and Presumed Guilt Shohini Ghosh
Objects as Exhibits: Performances of the Forensic Pallavi Paul
Censorship Through Forensics: Video Evidence in Post-war Crises Rebecca Wexler
About the Editor and Contributors
Index
Editor
Siddharth Narrain is currently a Scientia PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law and Justice, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. He has previously worked as an Assistant Lecturer (Visiting) at the School of Law, Governance and Citizenship (SLGC), Ambedkar University Delhi (2018-19); as a Research Associate with the Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi (2015-17); as a lawyer and legal researcher with the Alternative Law Forum (ALF), Bangalore (2006-13); as a Principal Correspondent with The Hindu newspaper’s Delhi Bureau (2005-6), and as a Reporter with Frontline Magazine (2003-4). He has a bachelor’s degree in law (BA LLB Hons) from the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, a post-graduate diploma in print journalism from the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), Chennai, and a master’s degree in law (LLM) from Harvard Law School. He is a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Scholarship in 2012. Siddharth has co-edited (with Mayur Suresh) The Shifting Scales of Justice: The Supreme Court in Neo-liberal India (Orient Blackswan, 2014).
The Acts of Media workshop was conducted at Sarai-CSDS between 8-10 January, 2016, bringing together academics, researchers, and legal practitioners, to discuss themes that were broadly related to law, media and technology. Details of the event are available on the website here.
The book is available for download here.