Political Economy of Media

Arani's preoccupation with media and its various manifestations emanate from the early days of his journalistic career followed by his intellectual engagements as an academic. Consequently, both his topics of research and teaching curriculum are inspired by politics of news making and dissemination, media ownership and its impacts on media consumption and so on.

In his doctoral thesis that allowed him to explore the discourse of political economy of media from a quintessentially academic standpoint, his primary aim was to understand manufacture of news through mediated buzzwords. Mediated buzzwords are coined by media houses and disseminated through newspapers or news channels. In the light of this, the focus in particular was to explore how mediated buzzwords are manufactured by newspapers before an election and how these buzzwords condition the influence of news on the electorate. Within this context, Arani's larger goal has been to explore media-politics-society interrelationship in one of the biggest democracies in the world and one of the most significant South Asian countries i.e. India. His thesis adopted a society-centric approach that considers media as a social institution and tried locating media’s role vis-a-vis politics (state) and the electorate (society) especially before and during a national level election.

Courses at Krea

The courses he teaches at Krea, are heavily informed by Arani's research interest in the political economy in India. Currently, he offers two required and one elective course(s) at undergraduate levels:

• Political Economy of Development

• Communities and Identities in India

• Media and the Public