media, information, the contemporary

Tag: Sonic and Audio Culture


  • Media and Mobilization: Digital Media and the Shia Public Sphere in West Bengal

    For the past 20 years, globalization and new media have been influential in shaping the religious landscape of South Asia. The Shia imagination, even in the remotest villages of Bengal, was first fired by the era of anolog technology via cassettes and then caught in the web of digital media. This is a phenomenon more apparent in the traditions of Muharram, as the Shia religious morality enacted through mourning over the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, in the battle of Karbala in 680 AD re-creates the community’s historical-narrative basis. Within 200 years of the historical event, the story/history seeped into the domain of the community’s narrative imagination…

  • The Act Of Media Workshop – Report & Recordings

    The Act of Media Workshop, 08-10 January 2016, brought together academics, researchers, and legal practitioners, to discuss themes that were broadly related to law, media and technology. One of the main aims of the workshop was to breakdown disciplinary boundaries, and rethink categories such as ‘media law’. The workshop was divided into six substantive sessions,…

  • The Act Of Media Workshop – Report & Recordings

    The Act of Media Workshop, 08-10 January 2016, brought together academics, researchers, and legal practitioners, to discuss themes that were broadly related to law, media and technology. One of the main aims of the workshop was to breakdown disciplinary boundaries, and rethink categories such as ‘media law’. The workshop was divided into six substantive sessions,…

  • Item Numbers in the Digital Age: From Cinema to a Landscape of Techno-Tactile Sensations

    This is the fourth and final research note from Silpa Mukherjee, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme.

    In my introductory post I referred to the new phenomenon of online citation culture built around item numbers as the item number effect.[1] Amateur digital culture spawned by social networking and micro-blogging platforms, and online platforms that encourage user generated content build an archive of virtual signage associated with the item number that now bleeds out of cinema and becomes more than music. Here I signpost the registers of a new fan identity which often curiously blends with the star’s…

  • Media Encounters of the Nineties Romantic Song

    This is the fourth and final research note from Abhija Ghosh, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme.

    “I’m a child of the nineties. An era when Rahul Roy was the country’s biggest superstar for a while…I’ve also lived through a time when the average person’s only contact with the outside universe was through newspapers, the radio and one channel on the telly- a channel that you couldn’t even watch unless you went to your balcony and repositioned its antenna every now and then.”[1]

  • Hinglish Workshop 2015 – Recordings

    Following upon a successful workshop at Sarai-CSDS in August 2014, the Hinglish Workshop 2015 was organised at SOAS, University of London on 27-28 May, 2015. The workshop sought to continue our exploration of the new porousness of Hindi and English in everyday and cultural practices and the relationship between language choice/use and social, cultural and political imaginaries.

  • Hinglish Workshop 2015 – Recordings

    ‘Hinglish: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Hindi-English Bilingualism in Contemporary India’ Following upon a successful workshop at Sarai-CSDS in August 2014, the Hinglish Workshop 2015 was organised at SOAS, University of London on 27-28 May, 2015. The workshop sought to continue our exploration of the new porousness of Hindi and English in everyday and cultural…

  • From Popular to Viral: The HAHK-DDLJ Media Swirl

    This is the third research note from Abhija Ghosh, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. In mid 2014, a range of online film news content focused on two big blockbuster family romances of the nineties, Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, marking twenty years since their…

  • Item Numbers and Loudness

    This is the third research note from Silpa Mukherjee, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. MORTY ROSENFIELD WAS SO STONED on Euphoria, a hot new synthetic drug, that he danced faster than a speeding cursor on a computer screen. It was 3 o’ clock one morning last July at…

  • Can Speak? Will Speak: Interpreting Digital Forensics

    This is the second research note from Pallavi Paul, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. In truth the subtle web of thought Is like the weaver’s fabric wrought: One treadle moves a thousand lines, Swift darts the shuttle to and fro, Unseen the threads together flow, A thousand knots…