{"title":"#MainBhiChowkidar (I Am Also a Watchman): Indian Journalists Responding to a Populist Campaign Challenging Their Watchdog Role in Society","authors":"Michael Koliska, Prashanth Bhat, Utsav Gandhi","doi":"10.1080/21670811.2023.2254811","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><b>Abstract</b></p><p>During the 2019 Indian general election, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi launched his #MainBhiChowkidar (I am also a watchman) campaign, which can be understood as an attempt to undermine the institutionalized watchdog or monitoring system, including journalism, in democratic India. Through the lens of positioning theory, this qualitative study examines how 89 Indian journalists responded to Modi’s populist campaign on Twitter. Findings show that the Indian journalists used self-positioning but especially other-positioning practices to discursively negotiate their position as watchdogs of Indian society. The other-positioning practices reveal that the journalists position Modi and his followers as “fake” and “failed” Chowkidar by providing evidence that the self-appointed Chowkidars are derelict in fulfilling their duties as watchmen. Thus, instead of engaging in an outright discursive struggle with Modi over the watchdog position in society, Indian journalists upheld their position by acting like watchdogs.</p>","PeriodicalId":11166,"journal":{"name":"Digital Journalism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Digital Journalism","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2023.2254811","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
During the 2019 Indian general election, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi launched his #MainBhiChowkidar (I am also a watchman) campaign, which can be understood as an attempt to undermine the institutionalized watchdog or monitoring system, including journalism, in democratic India. Through the lens of positioning theory, this qualitative study examines how 89 Indian journalists responded to Modi’s populist campaign on Twitter. Findings show that the Indian journalists used self-positioning but especially other-positioning practices to discursively negotiate their position as watchdogs of Indian society. The other-positioning practices reveal that the journalists position Modi and his followers as “fake” and “failed” Chowkidar by providing evidence that the self-appointed Chowkidars are derelict in fulfilling their duties as watchmen. Thus, instead of engaging in an outright discursive struggle with Modi over the watchdog position in society, Indian journalists upheld their position by acting like watchdogs.
期刊介绍：
Digital Journalism provides a critical forum for scholarly discussion, analysis and responses to the wide ranging implications of digital technologies, along with economic, political and cultural developments, for the practice and study of journalism. Radical shifts in journalism are changing every aspect of the production, content and reception of news; and at a dramatic pace which has transformed ‘new media’ into ‘legacy media’ in barely a decade. These crucial changes challenge traditional assumptions in journalism practice, scholarship and education, make definitional boundaries fluid and require reassessment of even the most fundamental questions such as "What is journalism?" and "Who is a journalist?" Digital Journalism pursues a significant and exciting editorial agenda including: Digital media and the future of journalism; Social media as sources and drivers of news; The changing ‘places’ and ‘spaces’ of news production and consumption in the context of digital media; News on the move and mobile telephony; The personalisation of news; Business models for funding digital journalism in the digital economy; Developments in data journalism and data visualisation; New research methods to analyse and explore digital journalism; Hyperlocalism and new understandings of community journalism; Changing relationships between journalists, sources and audiences; Citizen and participatory journalism; Machine written news and the automation of journalism; The history and evolution of online journalism; Changing journalism ethics in a digital setting; New challenges and directions for journalism education and training; Digital journalism, protest and democracy; Journalists’ changing role perceptions; Wikileaks and novel forms of investigative journalism.
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