News Aesthetics and Myth

This book considers the presence of media illiteracy in a world in which we are supposedly consumed by media, live a media life, in a media ecosystem, surrounded only by mediated communication.

Shashidhar Nanjundaiah holds a PhD in Mass Communication and Media Arts from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, an MS in Corporate and Professional Communication from Radford University, Virginia, and an MA in English and a BSc in Physics from the University of Mysore, India. His career has straddled the distance from banking to media practice and his current vocation as an academic administrator and teacher.

Introduction: Is there a problem? 1. The discomfort with media literacy 2. Trust, promise, and duty 3. Post-reflexive modernity 4. Continuity in postcolonial narration 5. Aesthetics, presentation, absentation 6. Case study: The spectacle of India's Potemkin village 7. News aesthetics and the narrative structure 8. Case study: Invisibility in Boolgarhi 9. Towards demystification of media illiteracy 10. An evaluative framework Conclusion: Some reflections