ABSTRACT

Digital news media aim to seize the opportunity of the growing market of the Internet use in India. While the rise of digital start-ups or digital native news websites in the news industry is remarkable, it has not heralded significant changes in newsroom diversity. It has been established that media in India, as elsewhere, is largely dominated by male journalists and that the narratives are created by those from upper class and caste. This invites questions over the institution’s ideology toward having representations from religious minorities, dalits, adivasis, women, LGBT, disabled etc. that could result in producing pluralistic discourses. This study explored newsroom diversity and its manifestations in three Indian digital native newsrooms. Data were collected through participant observation and interviews from founders, editors and journalists in the three newsrooms. The study revealed that all three newsrooms are reasonably diverse on the basis of gender but less diverse in terms of religion and caste.

摘要

数字新闻媒体旨在抓住印度不断增长的互联网使用市场的机遇。虽然新闻行业中数字初创企业或数字原生新闻网站的崛起令人瞩目，但它并未预示着新闻编辑室多样性的重大变化。已经确定，与其他地方一样，印度的媒体主要由男性记者主导，并且叙述是由来自上层阶级和种姓的人创造的。这引发了对该机构的意识形态的质疑，这些意识形态可能导致产生多元化的话语。本研究探讨了新闻编辑室的多样性及其在三个印度数字原生新闻编辑室中的表现。数据是通过三个新闻编辑室的创始人、编辑和记者的参与观察和采访收集的。研究表明，所有三个新闻编辑室在性别方面都相当多样化，但在宗教和种姓方面则不太多样化。