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CSSS organises a talk by Mark Allen Peterson

CSSS organises a talk by Mark Allen Peterson

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CSSS organises a talk by Mark Allen Peterson
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Centre for the Study of Social Systems

School of Social Sciences

 

CSSS Colloquium

 

Mark Allen Peterson

(Professor in Anthropology and Global and Intercultural Studies, Miami University, CAS Visiting Professor, CSSS, JNU)

 

Will be presenting a paper on

 

Digital Disruptions: The Promises and Perils of the Informatic Revolution in India

 

Date & Time: March 12th, 2018 (Monday), 3.00 pm

Venue: CSSS Committee Room, SSS-II

 

Abstract: What will Indian political communication look like in the post-truth era? Disruptions in the ways news is gathered, created, circulated, remediated and shared in the twenty-first century, and the ways these changes have transformed political communication, have led to a claim we’ve entered into a “post-truth” world in the United States, Europe and, in a somewhat different sense, the USSR. Others have claimed that the very nature of digital disruptions—the shift from radial to distributive systems, the ease of sedentary and mimetic newsmaking, and the business model of social media that rewards quantity over quality—make these trends inevitable. In this paper, the author looks at digital disruptions in Indian news media since the turn of the century, and discusses some of the real and potential consequences of those disruptions, their promises and their perils.

Bio: Mark Allen Peterson is a professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University. He is the author of Connected in Cairo: Growing Up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East (2011, Indiana University Press) and Anthropology and Mass Communication: Media and Myth in the New Millennium (2003, Berghahn). He is co-author of International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues (2017, 4th edition, Westview). He has published more than 40 scholarly articles on globalization and localization, modernity, and media and culture. He has conducted fieldwork in Egypt, India and the United States.

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.