ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on Facebook as a protest space in India in its interplay with television news. It sought to understand which protests claim dominant space in these two media. It contributes to this ongoing inquiry on flows between older and newer media, within the larger rubric of mediated politics. The question of interplay, as posed, is addressed here by noting the correspondence of protest representation on television news and Facebook. There are numerous protests, campaigns, and movements that are present or are represented both on television news and on Facebook. The political economy of news media explains why other issues of protest concerning the urban and rural poor comparatively had marginal number of news stories. News media's focus on middle class women, and the relative lack of focus therein on urban working class or rural women on similar question of violence and injustice, has been noted by both scholars and media professionals.