Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The political economy approach has been extensively deployed in the field of communication studies to investigate the workings of global and national media systems. However, not much attention has been given to local media systems in situations of political conflict in a non-Western context. This paper investigates the political economy of local media in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory divided between two nuclear-armed nations, India and Pakistan, in South Asia. The underlying argument of the paper is that the local media’s political economy is shaped not only by the state and private advertisers but non-state actors such as rebel groups and organisations leading an indigenous movement for independence have an equally important role to play in determining the economics of the media. Without all these stakeholders, the media would probably cease to exist in a conflict region. Therefore, the notion of consensus serves best for the media in such political economies to survive and thrive. The paper, which uses an historical-anthropological method to study the contours of the proposed subject, will be a contribution towards an understanding of media economics in a conflict region and will, therefore, inform wider debates on the political economy of media.