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ONLINE JOURNALISM AND ELECTION

REPORTING IN INDIA

Saayan Chattopadhyay

The news media scenario in India has been transformed substantially in the post-liberalization

period as privatization and deregulation have facilitated cross-border flows of capital and

technology. Online news media, a new yet popular segment, has emerged in the past decade in

the wake of India’s rapid integration into the global economy. This article focuses on online news

reporting of the last general election in India: the 2009 Lok Sabha election. Although there are an

impressive number of studies regarding online social networking or new media in the global

context, scant attention has been paid to the Indian subcontinent, the involvement of Indian

politicians and political journalists with online media. Considering these aspects, this article

explores how online media in India are changing the established political culture, albeit in a

limited manner, and raises the issues that interweave notions of modernity, class-consciousness,

and emerging participatory practices. The article seeks to make sense of how Indian journalism is

transforming through social media use by analysing three different stakeholders during the Indian

general election: politicians, political journalists and ordinary citizens. The very fact of ‘‘being’’ or

‘‘using’’ social media, it argues, becomes an ‘‘enticing’’ aspect for politicians to relate to the young,

urban, upwardly mobile middle-class citizens of India and becomes pivotal in the discursive

construction of a binary between the ‘‘old’’ politics/politicians and the ‘‘new’’ politics/politicians in

present-day India.

KEYWORDS election reporting; India; journalism of attraction; modernity; new media; online

journalism; political blogs; 2009 general election

Introduction

General elections in India are the world’s largest exercise in electoral democracy. The

15th Lok Sabha1 election involved over 700 million voters, an increase of 43 million over

the previous general election in 2004. Votes were cast in more than 800,000 polling

stations scattered throughout the country for over 5000 candidates from seven national

political parties and several regional parties. Five hundred and forty-three politicians were

elected to the lower house of a new national Parliament. The process, spread over five

phases, involved four million electoral officials and six million police and civilian personnel.

Each time India has voted, it has been the world’s largest exercise in electoral democracy

and with India’s growing population, this trend is set to continue (Tharoor, 2009).

The 2009 general election marked a significant watershed in online campaigning as

well as online election reporting in India. The measure of blogs, election microsites and

social media use by professional journalists as well as political leaders reached a

substantial level. Social media and dedicated campaign websites emerged as important

communication and fundraising platforms for political candidates. Meanwhile, journalists

and independent bloggers too found new avenues for online election reporting that could

potentially deliver electoral benefits. With Facebook, Orkut, and Twitter leading the way,

social networking sites emerged, although in a limited manner, as the online tools that

Journalism Practice, Vol. 6, No 3, 2012, 337�348ISSN 1751-2786 print/1751-2794 online

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offered professional journalists, independent bloggers and political candidates another

effective way to connect with citizens.

Internet adaptation emerged relatively late in India compared to the West, marking

its presence in a limited way only since the mid-1990s. Initially confined within the

metropolitan cities of India, Internet reach was limited by poor access to computers and

low bandwidth. In the early 2000s, Internet penetration improved as computer prices went

down and small towns were connected to the Internet by private service providers. By

2007, India ranked fifth in the list of top-20 countries using the Internet, with an estimated

base of 42 million Internet users*some 3.6 per cent of the world users. Against this

background, publishers of Indian dailies were initially hesitant to launch Web editions, but

most eventually did so as part of a ‘‘me-too’’ syndrome (Thakur, 2009).

In this article I review a number of websites, blogs, social network communities and

microsites that covered the general election. I also consider my personal interactions with

journalists working for online editions of established print media in India to analyse the

ways in which Indian journalists used the Internet while reporting the 2009 general

election. The initial section of the article broadly outlines the increased enthusiasm and

interest generated around online media during the 2009 general election. In the following

section I discuss how online media in India are changing the established political culture,

albeit in a limited manner, and raise the issues that interweave notions of modernity, class-

consciousness, and emerging participatory practices. I argue that at this particular period

in India, when it comes to online election reporting in particular and any such critical

practices of online news reporting in general, it is useful to understand the modes as the

journalism of attraction and the journalism of utilitarian integration. The article then

explores the engagement of three different publics*political leaders, political journalists

and ordinary citizens*to understand the shifts in established journalistic practices during

elections as the consequence of their interrelated practices. In the concluding section I

seek to question in what way the transition from the journalism of attraction to the

journalism of utilitarian integration remains problematic in Indian online election reporting.

The 2009 General Election and the Enthusiastic Online News Media ofIndia

The 2009 general election, given the unstable nature of coalition politics in India,

witnessed three main national pre-poll alliances among Indian political parties. The two

larger coalitions were The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and National Democratic

Alliance (NDA), whilst the Third Front, led by the Left Front, was essentially a collection of

regional political parties who were neither in UPA nor in the NDA. UPA took an early lead

and maintained it to emerge victorious.

In the months leading up to the election, the Indian Internet community*comprising of journalists, political commentators, bloggers and ordinary citizens*had

also been involved in discussions on various issues concerning the 2009 general election.

Central to these debates were controversy surrounding Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader

Varun Gandhi’s provocative anti-Muslim speech and subsequent detention; the incidents

of shoe-throwing against Congress and BJP politicians; and the (primarily online) election

campaigns of Congress candidate Shashi Tharoor, Rahul Gandhi, BJP contender L. K.

Advani, and Independent candidate, danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, among others.

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For professional journalists and independent bloggers, the emerging spheres of

independent blogging platforms or election microsites of established Indian media

organisations encouraged enthusiastic dissemination of views and opinions. Blogger

Manoj Kewalramani, a former senior online news producer at NewsX and special

correspondent at NDTV-Convergence, travelled through 11 states in 45 days to get a first-

hand experience of the mood on the ground during the election period. His blog was later

published as a book, Voterfiles: A Political Travelogue (Kewalramani, 2010). Likewise,

independent blogger Chakresh Mishra conducted state-wise pre-poll predictions for the

Indian elections. Swapan Dasgupta, the former managing editor of India Today and an avid

blogger, published a series of articles on the 2009 general election. Indian Muslims, an

online ‘‘platform that engages all Indians in a constructive dialog on issues concerning

Indian Muslims’’ involved a number of freelance journalists, columnists and political

commentators, in election reporting from a minority perspective. Several newly

launched election-specific sites and blogs, such as Indian-elections.com, indianelections09.

umbc.edu, indian-election2009.blogspot.com, indiaelections.co.in, indian-electionaffairs.com,

indianelectionnews.com, votereport.in, youthkiawaaz.com, covered the 2009 general elec-

tion in impressive ways. However, most of these sites shovelled content from other

mainstream (often offline) news media and ceased to operate properly once the election

was over.

In terms of individual sources, merinews.com, thisismyindia.com and the Outlook

India election blog performed notably by linking to important stories from elsewhere

along with publishing original content. BlogAdda, OneVote, Election Samachar, Votereport

and several other websites promptly aggregated the debates and conversations, while

mypopkorn.com, an online Indian video portal, aggregated the Web-cast feeds from

mainstream news channels on the Indian general election. Emerging online services such

as CoveritLive was used for live blogging of election results by both established news

websites like NDTV and independent news-political blogs like Offstumped.

However, the independent blogs often became the site for oblique lobbying for

certain political ideologies. Yossarin, in his popular blog Offstumped, focused on bringing a

‘‘right of centre reality check to Indian politics’’, similar to Chakresh Mishra’s blog Promise

of Reason. Swapan Dasgupta, veteran journalist and a well-known BJP sympathizer,

regularly posted on his blog Usual Suspects, along with publishing in mainstream media.

These blogs had a limited but noteworthy impact on popular political sentiment as a

number of mainstream news websites linked to such blogs because of their critical, but

somewhat partial, discussion on political issues. And of course, the official websites of

political candidates often linked to blogs that identified with their political ideologies.

However, the celebratory applause regarding the use of online media during the

Indian general election must be received with suspicion. With only 3.7 per cent Internet

penetration in India, online election reporting and election-related services only include a

minor, mainly urban segment of the population (Shrivastava, 2007). Moreover, apart from

Google India’s elections-centre, almost all the national election-related websites,

independent political blogs and news aggregator services were available only in English,

making them accessible to less than 10 per cent of India’s population. A blogger at

IndiaVision (2009) remarked,

Though the digital approach to the Indian elections is significant and impressive, it will

not greatly impact on the election results. The Indian elections will be primarily decided

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by the poor rural population of the country, many of whom have never accessed a

candidate comparison website.

Evidently, the ostensible increase in excitement regarding the election coverage by

Indian online media is largely a contribution of the young urban middle-class Indians, who

are rapidly recognizing the potential of the Internet to communicate. However, as I have

discussed elsewhere, it is important to remember that these young urban middle-class

Indians are often least interested in political news in particular and hard news in general

(Chattopadhyay, 2009, p. 294).2

Nonetheless, the traditional media frequently published reports of how the 2009

general election campaign enthusiastically embraced online media. The Economic Times

reported that ‘‘The Twitter tag ‘#indiavotes09’ was the number one topic on the trends list

of Twitter search, demonstrating once again the strength of Indians using these new

technology tools’’ (IANS, 2009). These reports covering the Indian election and Web

technologies often employed the celebratory rhetoric of demonstrating such ‘‘strength of

Indians using these new technology tools’’. Indeed social media have in the last few years

become increasingly important in the Indian news media segment. The 26/11 Mumbai

attacks in 2008 remain the major turning point for social media and online journalism in

India, with journalists using blog posts and comments posted online by Mumbai residents

and eyewitnesses. In fact, according to Alexa, India ranks third after the United States and

Germany in the number of Twitter users.

Certainly there are some structural changes which have affected the patterns of

news media organizations in India. To what extent print, broadcast and Web journalism

should be integrated was at the centre of industry discussions from the late 1990s and into

the new millennium. The rising influence of the Web on national news reporting and the

continuing pressure online technologies brought to bear on newsroom operations

compelled more newspapers to mull over how to best integrate their print newspaper and

online news services (Allan, 2006; Compton, 2010). Here it is important to recollect how in

the last few years almost all the established print and broadcast news organizations in

India have integrated new Web-based content and services*ranging from microblogging,

‘‘citizen reporting’’ sections, discussion forums, and readers’ comments on stories.

Nonetheless, it was becoming increasingly evident that the success of the typically

smaller online operations was dependent on tapping the talents and news-gathering

resources of the vastly larger print newsrooms (Paul, 2000). Perhaps that is why even small

and mid-segment local, vernacular newspapers in India (like Aajkaal or Sangbad Pratidin in

Bengali) also have their own websites, often available in vernacular languages, but without

exclusive Web content.

While the Internet was used substantially in political mobilization and campaigning,

the news media offered limited exclusive content and most of the sites dedicated to the

2009 election*even those that aimed to enlist youth in other areas of democratic

participation*lacked sustainability beyond the election season. This problem was echoed

in a blog post on IndiaVision (2009) stating:

The half-billion Indians under the age of 25 can reap what [Nandan] Nilekani calls their

‘‘demographic dividend’’ only if their motivation for change lives beyond the immediacy

of elections and the horror of terrorism. They must denounce cynicism as the defining

characteristic of a bygone generation and hold on for dear life to their refreshing change

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in civic-mindedness. It is their attitude that will decide if this century will truly witness

India Shining.

Indeed, Indian netizens, consisting chiefly of the urban upwardly mobile youth,

seemed to be interested only in knowing about the results*and that too from established

offline news media. Perhaps, it was only the aspect of the ‘‘immediacy’’ of online media in

declaring results that attracted them to search the Internet. On the day of declaring the

results ‘‘India elections results 2009’’ was the top search term on Google India, and the

top-20 search items in Google India were all related to the election, with websites of

popular offline media companies featuring prominently in them. This contrasts with the

top search term on the previous day, which was the brand name of a popular car with only

one media website visible in the top-10 search terms (IANS, 2009).

Emerging Journalistic Practices: Modernity and Class-consciousness

Modern journalism in India is marked by the emerging participatory practices and

collaboration between traditional media and new media. Though this specific notion of

modernity in Indian journalistic practice is intrinsically connected with an evident class-

consciousness. For instance, the collaboration between Hindustan Times and Google India

resulted in what they hyperbolically describe as the ‘‘ultimate election website’’ and which

‘‘empowers the Indian voter like never before’’ (PTI, 2009). This new initiative, targeted

towards Indian youth, enabled voters to study and analyse their candidates and the

constituencies, alongside instant access to news reports and analysis published by

hindustantimes.com. Editor in Chief of Hindustan Times, Sanjoy Narayan, enthusiastically

stated, ‘‘it is a perfect match where our content generation and extensive coverage of the

elections is complemented by Google’s cutting-edge technology’’ (Hindustan Times, 2009).

These collaborations point to the changing media ecology in India, and the

‘‘gadgetization’’ and standardization of the technical tools of communication prompt us to

question the celebrated ‘‘pull’’ technology against the ‘‘push’’ technology of the traditional

media. Operating such sophisticated applications to extract the true potential of the

online news website requires skills that go beyond the minimum literacy level and take

into account language, age, gender and a whole range of cognitive and technical

competence. Therefore, simply the availability of the tools and services of communication

becomes redundant since the capability of accessing such services to their true

potentiality remains unattained. This pull-capability paradigm deconstructs the techno-

topian construction of the information society by the neo-liberal Indian nation-state. As a

number of researches show, even after acknowledging all these limitations of a

developing nation, the changing media ecology must not aim to ‘‘install’’ such new

modes of journalistic practices mediated by new technology. Rather it needs to organically

‘‘integrate’’ changing journalistic practices into the larger existing news-gathering and

delivery organisation (Chattopadhyay, 2009).

Hence, as I have mentioned earlier, one may not deny the class-consciousness of

these practices, especially considering the linguistic and economic aspect of access. Much

of the debate regarding online information is centred on the benefits for the haves and

the disadvantages for the have-nots. In other words, the Internet is a valuable resource for

journalistic engagement, only for those who have access to computers. At the same time,

access to the Internet does not guarantee increased serious journalistic activity or

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enlightened political discourse. Shifting journalistic writings on general elections to a

virtual space effectively excludes a large number of people who do not have access to this

space. Moreover, connectivity does not ensure a more representative and robust public

sphere (Papacharissi, 2002).

However, the Internet does provide various possibilities for journalistic expression

and several ways to influence the election process and become politically active. As

discussed earlier, Internet users in India were able to find voting records of

representatives, track candidates’ progress, join special interest groups, and write

comments in response to reports, features and columns on the election. Nevertheless,

most deliberations were dominated by a privileged few (Geomeme Strategic Consulting,

2010; Open Source Center, 2010), and more responses were generated when the

discussion involved individuals with a certain political clout (Hacker and Van Dijk, 2000).

However, it is not certain that this transfer of political discussion to an online space will

lead to additional democratic engagement or a substantial impact on the political

process. Yet it is even more important for Indian politics with its complex multiparty

system and often biased reporting. Regardless of the fact that the Internet provides

additional space for election reporting, it is still plagued by the inadequacies of the

political system. It provides public space, but does not constitute a public sphere

(Papacharissi, 2002). In the 2009 general election in India, the Internet enabled politicians

to prompt followers, intensify support and engage more with the allegedly politically

apathetic demographic group of young voters. Sashi Tharoor and L. K. Advani are two

emblematic examples of such Indian political leaders, who essentially benefited from

their use of the Internet*a medium that still confounds many of their political

adversaries. In turn, they carved out a niche in the mind of the voters, irrespective of the

election outcome. Tharoor’s ‘‘enthusiastic embrace of the social-networking tool

Twitter’’, for some a symbol of his progressiveness in a parliament mostly populated

by ageing men, sparked a series of controversies (Thottam, 2010). Similarly, L. K. Advani

launched an Internet campaign through Google and put it up on 2000 websites, along

with launching his own website and blog. It is perhaps not surprising that almost all the

political bloggers and online journalists claimed that such political activities on the

Internet were hardly going to change the course of the election, which would still

be decided in India’s small towns and villages. ‘‘But, even if it ‘fails’’’, according to one

blogger, ‘‘the campaign will set a precedent for all future elections in India, just like the

‘India Shining’ campaign did, five years ago’’ (Mishra, 2009).3 The Indian political system

is too complex to secure such prospects. However, the Internet brings in supplementary

means of communication, and these supplementary channels facilitate wider access to

political information, encouraging enthusiastic ‘‘keypad democracy’’ (Grossman, 1995).

But considering the post-liberal climate of India, the very characteristic of being online

becomes crucial for certain candidates*especially because there are large numbers of

young voters and an online presence indicates ‘‘modernity’’ in contrast to the old,

traditional ‘‘off line’’ politics. Journalistic writings, by journalists as well as independent

bloggers, on the online political campaigns often emphasized the notion of (techno-

logically) ‘‘modern’’ politicians in contrast to technologically challenged ‘‘pre-modern’’

politicians in India. This notion of modernity is constituted by the virtue of ‘‘being’’

online and ‘‘using’’ Web media*an emblematic trope of India’s rising IT-based

modernity.

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The Journalism of Attraction and the Journalism of Utilitarian Integration

I argue that at this particular period in India*when it comes to online reporting of

elections in particular and other significant news events in general*it can be useful to

understand the practices as the journalism of attraction and the journalism of utilitarian

integration. In the former, the reader/visitor is somewhat external to the story space, an

effect created by the centrality of the discussion around the use and deployment of Web-

based media; besides, there is usually a lack of interactive options in the published news

story. But more importantly, the politics of using Web technology gains primacy over

other vital political, social and economic issues in such journalistic articles. The overall

strategy is one of explaining, analysing and even displaying online ‘‘attractions’’ with

reference to online political campaigns and election procedures rather than the telling of,

or analysis of, a ‘‘political’’ story. A cursory glance at the columns and blog posts by

journalists in established news media websites provide a clear example of this mode of

journalism. With their popular and directly political news reports, columns and features in

offline editions, the ‘‘attraction’’ of social media and Web election initiatives were often

foregrounded rather than the issues, policies and socio-economic concerns that directly

affect the politics and electoral decision making. Here, I do not seek to claim that the

discussion on the use of social media for political campaigns, or the use of technology, is

entirely devoid of serious political concern. Rather, I am aiming only to emphasize the

predominance of the journalistic discussion on the emerging Web media engagement of

the political candidates in the general election. When it comes to exclusive political

columns or features, it is often written for the print edition and (re)published on the Web

edition.

The journalism of utilitarian integration, by contrast, is more collective and

implements a range of interactive devices like crowdsourcing, user-generated content,

Twitter feeds or CoverItLive (a Web-based service for ‘‘liveblogging’’)*actively used both

by traditional bloggers as well as professionals in mainstream media to drag us into the

story space. The technology in this context becomes subordinate to the news/

information/narrative drive, an attribute perfected by emerging Web-based applications,

to the point where technology is naturalized and is often conceived to be ‘‘invisible’’. On

the whole, the effort is to produce a unified sense of space and time, a coherent story

world that may even include the reader as well. Truly ‘‘newsworthy’’ information is not just

highlighted in this process but becomes a fundamental element; it must offer sufficient

and relevant facts and a particular verifiable, transparent trajectory to improve the effect.

Here, I should clarify that online election reporting during the 2009 Indian general

election can neither be exclusively identified as the mode of journalism of attraction or the

journalism of utilitarian integration. Instead, the emerging and uneven adoption of online

services has resulted in a juxtaposition of these two modes. However, as I try to illustrate in

the following section, certainly, there is an increased proclivity towards the latter

in contrast to the nature of online election reporting during the previous general election

in 2004.

The Transition from ‘‘Attraction’’ to ‘‘Integration’’

Indian politician’s uses of social media and the Internet were fairly limited, though

journalists covering the elections were largely enthusiastic about it and often reported

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online campaigning from a positive angle. The reports often tried to point out in what way

these political leaders should employ online media to ‘‘organize their appeal for votes in a

more effective manner’’ (Reuters, 2008).

Not only will they [politicians using online media] be reaching out to an enormous and

often untapped vote bank, (India has about 50 million internet users according to a

Research and Markets report) but they will also be able to build a database which can

prove invaluable in the future.

In a similar vein, online reporters like Satrajit Sen (2008), senior correspondent at

AlooTechie, expressed their enthusiasms: ‘‘many Indian politicians have begun considering

the internet as a viable medium for interactive communication and are, consequently,

making their presence felt in the World Wide Web’’. Thus a large number of reports,

published as exclusive Web content, analyse and even ‘‘predict’’ the possibility or

limitations of the political leaders in mobilizing support through the use of the Internet in

India (Datta, 2009; Mishra, 2009). Hence, journalists covering the election effectively

constituted the notion of the Internet as a viable and necessary platform for political

campaigning and in the process constructed the notion of an emerging modernity of

Indian politics. Thus their journalism of attraction is unfolded in two trajectories: first, as

reporting the ‘‘attraction’’ of the emerging practices of online media and second, for being

a part of that very attraction (by the ‘‘virtue’’ of being online) which they reported.

Perhaps the most rapidly progressing journalistic initiative is the citizen reporting

sites of India, which, to a large extent, encapsulates a number of attributes of the

journalism of utilitarian integration. The much talked-about Ushahidi model, which was

used to crowdsource reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the

beginning of 2008, was employed in India as well. Vote Report India, led by Gaurav Mishra,

was a collaborative citizen-powered election-monitoring platform based on the Ushahidi

engine, and managed by eMoksha, a non-profit organization. This citizen reporting and

crowdsourcing was wholeheartedly welcomed by professional online journalists, as

Devangshu Datta (2009) at Business Standard remarked:

One of the few exceptions to generally poor cyber-coverage is Vote Report India . . . The

intention is to provide a platform for citizens to monitor and report news about elections

and irregularities. It’s quite impressive in its use of communication channels, social

networks, blogger tools, etc.

Likewise, a number of collaborations between online initiatives and established

(offline) news media like the Times of India, Hindustan Times, Mid Day and Radio Mirchi

emerged during the 2009 general election and facilitated such citizen reporting initiatives.

The Times of India entered into a partnership with Wadanatodo [Don’t break your

promise], a national campaign to hold the government accountable to its promise; Radio

Mirchi in collaboration with the public interest campaign No Criminals launched the ‘‘Lead

India’’ initiative, which gained significant popularity. In addition, VoteIndia.in helped voters

to make an informed choice by emailing them information about politicians’ qualifications,

work, track record and criminal background. Similarly, ‘‘Jaago Re’’, initially established by

Tata Tea, and later supported by Radio One, Yahoo India and Mid-Day, featured

information on voting, issues, blogs, election news, videos and downloads to persuade

citizens to take proactive roles in the political system. These developments merit deeper

engagement and individual attention to explain their implications. However, the scope of

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this article does not allow discussion of these aspects in detail, beyond that of political

journalists.

The shift from the journalism of attraction to the journalism of utilitarian integration

becomes evident in the journalistic practices of political journalists and bloggers, writing

online. The Facebook page, Twitter feeds or updates on candidates’ websites do not only

provide an increased access to sources but in the process also facilitates the transparency

and credibility of the news story. Several online reporters echo Lydia Polgreen of The New

York Times, that ‘‘its a living lab where Amartya Sen’s Argumentative Indian can be

observed and immersively experienced’’ (cited in Yossarin, 2010). Conceivably the blogs by

professional journalists and independent political bloggers are, to a certain extent, closer

to the journalism of utilitarian integration than the official election microsites of the

established media houses like CNN-IBN’s IBNpolitics.com or the Indian press information

bureau’s election microsite. Maneesh Madambath (2009), while short-listing some of the

important blogs on the 2009 general election, remarked:

The elections for the 15th Lok Sabha was perhaps the most keenly contested and the

most debated one ever in the short history of the Indian republic. Guess that is also more

due to the fact of the growing voices online fueling talks, discussions, debates, views and

even tweets.

These ‘‘growing voices’’ include a number of professional and semi-professional

journalists and political commentators, who enthusiastically contributed to the online

election reporting and analysis. Journalist Sauvik Chakraverti analysed the election

situation in his blog Antidote, while Daniel Taghioff of thusmagazine.com provided a

hypertext view of the 2009 general election, and Gaurav Mishra published a series of

reports on his popular site, Gauravonomics. Mehul Srivastava in his reports in Business

Week, Zoya Hasan and Sidharth Bhatia in their respective columns in dnaindia.com,

Sundeep Dougal in the Outlook India blog, and a number of journalists associated with

prominent Indian media houses along with journalist and author, Rahul Pandita, Kanchan

Gupta and strategic expert B. Raman of Rediff News reported and analysed the election

with a large number of comments and lively discussions. What is common to all these

varied writers and journalists, publishing online about the general election, was a marked

shift from the earlier focus on the ‘‘attraction’’ of the online media and the technology

itself to the actual political, socio-economic and cultural aspect with increased readers’

participation, tie-up with aggregator sites and links to sources available on the Web. Thus

enabling the reader to find the report useful and utilitarian in terms of his or her own

analysis of the political conditions during and after election.

Conclusion

Irrespective of these emerging practices, election reporting in Indian online news

media continues to be unyieldingly entrenched within the established organisational

hegemony*oppressed under ownership control and political intervention*constricting

the contours of acceptable political debate and endorsing favourable news agendas.

There are a number of pressing issues that constrict the transition from the journalism of

attraction to the journalism of utilitarian integration. Firstly, the limited advertising

revenues generated from online editions, and especially exclusive online initiatives,

questions the economic viability of such endeavours. Only the Web versions of popular

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Indian daily newspapers, such as the Times of India, The Hindu and Hindustan Times, and

television news channels, like NDTV, Times Now, IBNLive and AajTak, ‘‘have been making

profits or have broken even’’ (Thakur, 2009). Hence, it is perhaps not surprising that online

news media sites were top search terms only on the day the election results were declared.

Second, reporters and correspondents covering the election were usually assigned

for offline print or broadcast editions. Only a handful of news media websites have an

independent editorial structure for the Web edition, even during elections. The online

department is often described as the systems department, computer department, or the

electronic and Web department, and the department is dominated by ‘‘technical staff’’

(Thakur, 2009).

Third, habitual shovelling of election news from other editions, poor management of

user-generated content and an severe lack of high-quality exclusive Web content pose a

substantial impediment to the transition to the journalism of utilitarian integration.

However, it can be said that we are only witnessing a nascent period of adoption and

dissemination of emerging technology in the realm of Indian online reporting and the

2009 general election, within its limited scale, provided a critical site to reassess and

evaluate the prevailing journalistic conditions and practices.

In the 2014 Indian general election, it is likely that journalists will embrace online

media further. Yet more importantly, the dynamic nature of online journalism needs to

become consistent with conventional forms of journalistic practice, with organizational

guidelines promoting journalists to utilize the intrinsic capability of the online media.

There is likely to be a greater integration of user-generated content and professional

reports, especially in terms of election reporting, because of its widening reach and the

pressure of immediacy. Such integration would certainly facilitate participation and

transparency in online election reporting. These new adoptions both within and external

to Indian news organizations may open up possibilities for journalists to acquire greater

agency. However, all these developments depend upon the decisions of corporate

management, which in turn will determine the accepted practices of individual journalists

and the evolution of online election reporting in India.

NOTES

1. Lok Sabha is the lower house of Parliament in India.

2. As a consequence, the exclusive content of online news sites in India point to a

considerable shift from hard news to soft news. For instance, a review of the most visited

sections of rediff.com, indiatimes.com or ibnlive.com would reveal that people are more

interested in headlines rather than the full report as they predominantly visit only the

homepage. Sections such as photo gallery, special features, film reviews, and gossip

columns are reasonably more popular than the news sections. This not only answers the

relative popularity of the news portals than the participatory journalism sites or a typical

news site but also underscores the selection of soft news items as ‘‘exclusive news’’

content on the news sites.

3. The ‘‘India Shining’’ campaign refers to the controversial 2004 election campaign by the

Bharathya Janatha Party (BJP), which included the ‘‘India Shining’’ advertising promotion,

hailing the successes of the Indian economy and featuring the cheerful faces of happy

and prosperous Indians from different socio-economic strata. The BJP-led government

spent an estimated US$20 million to broadcast the ‘‘India Shining’’ campaign on all TV

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channels in all the major Indian languages to showcase its achievements along with

outdoor advertisements and newspaper ads. It set the pattern for Indian election

campaigns since then: 40�50 per cent on print, 20 per cent on outdoors, 15 per cent on

TV, 5�10 per cent on Internet and mobile, and the rest on radio, film theatres and on-

ground activities.

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