(Mediated) parenting wars: a new mum’s account

Natural birth, breastfeeding, dummies – the debates and online discussions can be vicious, keyboard warriors lashing out from the safety of their anonymity – but what’s a new mum to do? Ranjana Das, a new mum herself, finds out first hand. Ranjana is a lecturer at the University of Leicester researching media audiences, and the mediation of childbirth

Raped! The Indian polity in shambles (guest blog)

A 23 year old student, varyingly named by the media as the treasure (Amanat), the light (Jyoti) or the fearless (Nirbhaya) – died, after being gang-raped and tortured with an iron rod by 6 drunk men on a moving bus in the Indian capital New Delhi on 16th December 2012. The capital, and some other cities, erupted in unprecedented protests which began online, then went offline and continued through the New Year – demanding not just the gallows for the rapists, but a reform of the Indian penal code which provides little for sexual crimes, let alone sexual crimes of this kind – most of which are not caught or reported, let alone dealt with, legally. Former Polis Silverstone Scholar Ranjana Das, now teaching at the University of Leicester, reports on the deeper, disturbing politics of gender, image and power in India that have been exposed by this case

Algorithms in the public domain: parents' fears and expectations about invisible and super-visible children

Algorithms and data-driven technologies are increasingly used in the public domain, despite unevenness in public trust, as many know from the UK’s A-levels algorithms fiasco. Research on the consequences of automated decision-making calls for a people-centred approach, critically querying datasets and data traces. Indeed, families and households increasingly are data. For www.parenting.digital, Prof Ranjana Das discusses her research on how parents feel about algorithms

Interpretation: from audiences to user

In this thesis I primarily address those within media and communications studies who research mass media audiences and their engagement with a diverse range of texts. I ask in what ways our knowledge about the interpretation of genres, emergent from many decades of empirical research with mass media audiences, is useful in understanding engagement with new media. This conceptual task is pursued empirically by applying a conceptual repertoire derived from reception analysis to interviews with youthful users of the online genre of social networking sites (SNSs). The thesis presents findings on the heterogeneity of children’s experiences in using SNSs following their perceptions of authorial presence, their notions of others using the text, their expertise with the interface and pushing textual boundaries. I explore four tasks involved in the act of interpretation – those being intertextual, critical, collaborative and problem-resolving. In analysis, I also reflect on a selection of the core conceptual tools that have been animated in this thesis, in research design as well as analysis and interpretation. It is concluded that inherited concepts - text and interpretation, continue to be useful in extension from the world of television audiences to the world of the internet. Second, inherited priorities from audience reception research which connect clearly to the conversation on media and digital literacies prove to be important by connecting resistance and the broader task of critique to the demands of being analytical, evaluative and critical users of new media. Third, the notion of interpretation as work is useful overall, to retain in research with new media use, for there is a range of tasks and responsibilities involved in making sense of new media

A turn to digital for maternal wellbeing: potentials and pitfalls

As the COVID-19 pandemic creates an array of unprecedented pressures on society, and on parents and children, its impacts are likely to be felt intensely in pregnancy and maternity. To mark Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week, Dr Ranjana Das, Reader in Media and Communication at the University of Surrey and LSE alumni, outlines the potential impacts from the rapid move to online support to meet the needs of isolated new mums. Discussing her new book, Early Motherhood in Digital Societies: Ideals, Anxieties and Ties of the Perinatal, she argues in favour of a strategy for maternal digital well-being which distinguishes the specific needs of mothers and offers integrated digital and offline service provision

Approximation: using tech to replicate in-person connections during the COVID lockdowns

The earliest lockdown in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, saw widespread disruption of in-person support for new parents, both formally and informally. The offline and the online were separated, demarcated, and these separations had profound importance attached to them. The absence and interruption of in-person support, both formal and informal, had implications for new mothers, babies and families. For www.parenting.digital, Prof Ranjana Das discusses her research with 14 new mothers and pregnant women and her new paper, exploring attempts to ‘approximate’ in-person ties within the confines of mandatorily digitally mediated interactions

Compromising social justice in fairtrade?

The study investigates whether Fair Trade Organizations (FTOs) are able to adhere to their principles of social justice and development goals as they enter mainstream markets which are dominated by neo-liberalism, unequal terms of trade and propagation of the "free market" principle. Through a case study of Kala-a craft marketing Fair Trade Organization in West Bengal, India, the paper shows shifts in the development of the FTO, the introduction of a certification regime and the emerging contradiction between the intentions of the FTO and its actual practice in the contemporary period. The implications of shifts in orientation from solidarity based notions of social justice to market oriented social justice, in particular on the weakest link and most vulnerable section who are women craft workers at the bottom of the production chain are investigated. A production chain analysis of handicraft production gives evidence of violation of FT principles and ILO's decent work norms and also reveals characteristics of the informal economy with producers having no entitlements to minimum wages, or social security benefits. There remains gender bias in the employment of women in the fair-trade production chain. The data shows that there is no challenge to gender segmentation and in fact a reinforcement of the feminine stereotype. Declining partnership with cooperatives, rising partnership with large scale NGOs and setting up of a Business Development Unit within the organization are some of the strategic shifts in the FTO. These shifts and the lack of implementation of FT principles indicate that the FTO is succumbing to the logic of the neo liberal mainstream market resulting in a drift away from the social justice principles within the Fairtrade Network. While onstage FTO's use the principle of "fairness" particularly in relation to Northern Corporations, this notion of fairness is not extended to the lower end producers through which they are expanding in the global market

Family and media: a new POLIS report

If you want to understand the future of the media you have to understand how families use it. From TV to radio, from telecoms to social networking, media has become personal and domestic