The 21st century is widely being described as a “media-saturated era”. Innumerable issues and events in public life are relentlessly being given exposure and ‘meaning’ through the act of mediation by media of various kinds— print, broadcast, electronic and digital. As a consequence, there has been a significant increase in media’s role expectation in the mind of the audience around the world. But what is the state of affairs, especially in the context of a sensitive issue like forced migration, insofar as media’s role performance is concerned? Any search for explanation of the divergence and convergence of role expectation and role performance brings up a core media practice, namely, agenda setting, by which the mainstream media determine which issues are to be promoted and publicized as salient in public perception. Insofar as the media representations of forced migration/ forced displacement are concerned they are to be situated within this theoretical framework to go beyond a sectoral approach marked by scattered instances.

The issue of forced migration/ forced displacement in the realm of mainstream media generally falls in the technical category of “catastrophe communication”. In the specific context of South Asia, while there are instances, some quite impressive, of the mainstream media giving due attention to the issue the point should not be over emphasized. Forced migration, especially those following instances of intense violence like war, partition and ethnic conflict, have drawn mainstream media’s attention to unleash various media representations, but all within a specific and mostly brief time-span— as long as the media believes that the ‘drama content’ retains the interest of the audience [specific instances will be given during the lecture]. In general the mainstream media’s act in putting forced migration in its ‘primary’ agenda has been short, scattered, capricious and abrupt. Often such representations are floated superficially, highlighting only the ‘event-oriented’ manifestations, without addressing the root causes. This practice is based on an arbitrary assumption that the audience fast lose interest in specific issues of forced migration and that “there is no market for it beyond a certain point”. This in turn enforce discursive closure.

South Asia is a site for many instances of forced migration. But the mainstream media being what it is on the question of media taking greater cognizance of such a vital issue mere reliance on its “good sense” is not a pragmatic and adequate approach. There is greater need to be pro-active in communicative act— both in terms of generating extra-media human communication in the form of critical dialogues and in terms of strengthening the media communication, especially the largely underestimated local and alternative media, to exert pressure on the mainstream media to put forced migration in its agenda more systematically.

Select Readings

C. Bosso, “Setting the Agenda” in MM. Margolis and G.A. Mouser eds., Manipulating Public Opinion, Pacific Grove, 1989.
W.L. Bennett and R.M. Entman: Mediated Political Communication in the Future of Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
S. Iyenger and D.R. Kinder: News that Matters, Chicago University Press, 1987.
Ujjwal K. Chowdhury, “When the Dog Barks, but Sparingly: Indian Media and Displacement Issues” in O.P. Mishra ed., Forced Migration in the South Asian Region: Displacement, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, Manak Publications, 2004.
Samir Kumar Das, “In Search of the Victim: Auditing the Mainstream Media in Contemporary India”, http://www.mcrg.ac.in/mediareport2.htm
Anthony Oliver-Smith, “Disasters and Forced Migration in the 21st Century”, 11 June, 2006, http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/