Journalism in the Digital Era

With the onslaught of digital media platforms the legacy media especially Print and Broadcast media is facing drastic changes in the media environment. The journalism or Journalistic practices as a form of mass media and as a profession is facing severe setbacks. All those nuances should be explored and thus resolve this crisis situation. The emergence of a scenario where computer- mediated system of production, distribution and exhibition of media messages or information are accepted as the need of the hour, the traditional barriers between different forms of mass communication are gradually getting obliterated. In this age of trans-mediality, it is expected that the constant flow of information or media content, transgressing not only the geographical boundaries but social, cultural, economic and linguistic also, is nothing irrelevant.

However, the proliferation of satellite channels, and later digital media platforms at the end of 20th and 21st century with an integrated network of communication, captured the entire space of communication giving rise to a dominant popular culture which decries the so-called puritan conflict between high-brow culture and mass culture. Thus, the scope of dissemination of messages beyond physical boundaries of different countries, got expanded. That marked the dissolution of the era of one- dimensional state- controlled media. But the veracity of those messages transmitted on different platforms of media are always questionable as it completely changed the dynamics of textual or ideological immersion with the mediated reality and thus leading to a scenario where authorship of a particular text has become untenable. In the absence of digital literacy and legal framework to monitor and supervise this surge of information, the average common users of digital media channels in India have become more susceptible to be deceived by the information producers and in this process, they get trapped in a chain of disinformation created by the corporate media strategists/ lobbyist and elite media planners.