There are many definitions of
mass media, but the one formulated by
Lang and Lang includes all the important features and therefore will be used
throughout this discussion. For Lang and Lang, mass media are the “products of
the use of a technology by professional specialists to disseminate large
amounts of identical content to a physically dispersed mass.” The cultural
media, in an Indian context, are defined by Singer as the “concrete media of
song, dance, play, sculpture, painting, religious
story, and rite.” They are, in other words, cultural performances. The cultural
media have drawn much of their content from the Mahabharata and
the Ramayana, the two great epic poems of Hinduism. However, popular folk mythology has also contributed to the content of the
cultural media, and an overlapping of content between different forms of cultural media has
created a centripetal effect similar to the one first described by Lerner. Lerner
found that exposure to one form of the mass media was correlated positively to exposure
to other forms. In the case of the cultural media, exposure to one form facilitates understanding
of other forms. Sculpture, song, and dance may tell a similar story, and an
understanding of one helps in understanding the others. Because of this, the
cultural media have linked different regions and local traditions within India
Content is a necessary consideration in a discussion of mass and cultural media, but it is not a sufficient basis for definition. While the content of the cultural media is religious in origin, the content of the mass media may be secular or religious or both. As Handlin puts it, ”the slick magazine can easily sandwich in cathedrals and madonnas among the pictures of athletes and movie queens.”’ Of much greater importance than differences (or similarities) in content is the fact that the mass media belong to a literate tradition. The technological production of the mass media requires literates with specialized skills, while the understanding of the written mass media requires literacy also. The cultural media are part of a sacred oral tradition which has existed in
Both types of media have a
self-limiting content, but the reasons for this limitation vary. The cultural
media are limited by the material available in the texts and folk mythology of
Hinduism. Because of the diversity and complexity of Hinduism, this limitation
allows a great variety of content, but still results in some repetition of the
most popular symbols and stories. The content of the mass media theoretically
is limited only by the imagination of its creators and producers. In reality, familiar and
financially successful themes are repeated, and there are negative limits
beyond which content cannot go. These negative limits are determined by the
proven inoffensiveness of the content to large numbers of people. Abrams calls
this the "law of optimum inoffensiveness," and argues that it is
"to a large extent integral to the technical nature of the media The
results of these negative limits include repetition of content, a sameness of content and an
expectation by audiences that they will be familiar with the themes and content
presented.
In summary, while the mass media may
utilize the same content as the cultural media, the means of production, the reason
for their production and their cultural traditions (oral and literate) differ.With the preceding discussion of
cultural media and mass media as a guideline, this article attempts 'to
determine the contemporary relationship of India's Hindi news mass
media, primarily through a content analysis of a sample of popular Hindi and
English language publications. One Hindi news daily, Nav Bharat Times, one Hindi weekly, Dharmayug, one English-language newspaper,
Times of India. Analysis is to determine if there is an overlap of content between the two
types of media, if the content between the English-language publications and
the Hindi publications differs, and if so, if this will hinder the development
of a truly mass (all-India) written media.
