Topography of The Indian Media Economy

SAGE Reference
The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy
Author: Vibodh Parthasarathi, Preeti Raghunath

Pub. Date: 2022
Product: SAGE Reference
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529757170
Keywords: bazaars, India, topography, domain, economy, economies, digital media, legacy
Disciplines: Global Media, Media Studies, Media Economics, Digital Media, Media, Communication &
Cultural Studies
Access Date: January 13, 2023
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: 55 City Road
Online ISBN: 9781529757170
© 2022 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.

SAGE SAGE Reference
© Terry Flew, Jennifer Holt and Julian Thomas, 2023
Expanding Horizons of Media Bazaars: Topography of the DME in India
Vibodh Parthasarathi Preeti Raghunath
Introduction
Adopting the term Digital Media Economy (DME) carries with it a dual recognition. It alludes a field of inquiry
reasonably distinct within the domain of media markets in India, thus warranting a prefix; and yet, it is deeply
integrated with not only the media economy but with the wider industrial, commercial, and financial dynamics
of India. In short, the DME straddles the digital in the media bazaar and the digital media in the wider bazaars.
Located at several crossroads of the country's extant media and wider economies, the DME is an expression
of particular interests and actors marking early 21st century India. At one level, this reflects the ‘embedded-
ness’ of the DME, akin to that observed in the wider media economy (see Parthasarathi and Athique, 2020).
At the same time, the financial, industrial, and regulatory logics around the DME in India reflect typical global
tendencies (see Fitzgerald, 2019) – which therefore act as an external, possibly universalising, force shaping
the DME. Consequently, the DME indicates a site of the media economy sculpted by a particular rendition of
diverse set of changes underway in India and trans-nationally, ranging from logistics to pleasure, from trade to
usage. Consequently, the vantage point adopted by this chapter apprehends the DME, not as a rupture but,
amidst the wider histories of markets of information, of infrastructures, and of interests typifying contemporary
India.
The Indian media economy could be construed to comprise three scales of media markets: the micrological
domain, or marketplaces for goods and services; the mesological domain/scale or a set of market operations;
and, the macrological scale, or a market of interests (Parthasarathi, 2018; Parthasarathi and Athique, 2020).
The analytical purchase of such a topographical perspective on media markets rests in understanding how
and why the micro-level ‘marketplaces’ come together in meso-level ‘market spaces', which together, in turn,
rely on the ‘meta-market’ (Parthasarathi, 2018: 13).
In extending this ontological framework to the DME, we invoke terms describing different types of markets
in Indian languages. We believe such nomenclature helps us to maintain sight of the DME being constituted
by longstanding market forms characterising South Asia. We invoke Haat, the name in various languages for
sites retailing for artisanal commodities; this leads to us thinking of the Digital Haat or the micro-level domain

Page 2 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
of digital marketplaces. In a similar vein, we view the meso-level domain as the Digital Bazaar, evoking tradi-
tional trading centres, unevenly regulated and formalised as they are, that connect local/regional commodity
production to national and even international supply chains. We invoke the term ‘Satta Bazaar', describing
betting markets, since it captures two traits of the DME at the macro level. One, the Satta Bazaar is a mar-
ket of loyalties and trust linking trans-national and hyper-local circuits of information – which in some ways
captures the core of the DME at the macro level. Two, like in the traditional Satta Bazaar, this market en-
tails speculative activities and futures trade, including those offering ways to overcome ingrained challenges
faced by the state. The micro- and meso-level domains are easily visualised due to their experiential and ob-
servable nature, while the macro level is where media markets exist in their most abstract institutional forms
(Parthasarathi, 2018: 11). Nonetheless, in the DME, as in legacy media markets, it would be a mistake to view
these marketplaces and market spaces as discrete domains (ibid). To ease our narrative, however, we have
organised our engagement with scholarship on the DME in line with these three levels.
The first section threshes out the ontological framework rooted in our three-scaled approach to the media
economy. Thereafter, we outline the intellectual and institutional settings which have cradled scholarship on
the DME in India. The subsequent three sections examine scholarship talking to the three scales of the DME
– that of the micro level or the Digital Haat, the meso level or the Digital Bazaar, and, the macro level on the
Satta Bazaar. We close the chapter with some broad-stroke reflections on the DME as a field of inquiry.
A Scalar Approach to the DME
Of the three scales of media markets, the micro-level domain is where individuals readily identify with the
media economy, and where the latter is visibly embedded within rituals, schedules, and sociabilities of every-
day life (Parthasarathi, 2018). In the social settings of shopping malls, pavements, sundry shop-fronts, work-
places, and homes, we encounter the marketplace for goods and services, hardware and software, durables
and consumables, tangibles, and intangibles (Parthasarathi, 2018: 10). Through these marketplaces, we con-
tact numerous ancillary and subsidiary markets, many of which operate in informal or ‘unorganised’ manners
(Parthasarathi and Athique, 2020: 8). However, these differently organised spaces of exchange have been
determinant in expanding the (digital) media economy by enabling modest incomes to afford devices and con-
tent including by patching recycled devices into newer networks (see Rai, 2019).
In legacy media markets, the micro-level domain has remained long-tailed due to uneven economic and infra-

Page 3 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
structural growth which both reflects and reinforces low capital-capacity among retailers and purchasing pow-
er among consumers (Parthasarathi and Athique, 2020). While the practice of bundling media commodities
with other products and services retailed have remained in the Digital Haat, digitalisation through regulatory
fiat has contributed, inter alia, to formalising the micro level.
In the DME, micro-level marketplaces became peripatetic with mobile phones and other portable devices al-
lowing incessant access to streams of goods and services. This then made the dynamics of enabling, aug-
menting, or even whittling access of users to digital infrastructures rather central to scholarship (Donner and
Tellez, 2008; Ligon et al., 2019). The bi-directionality afforded by digitalisation enhanced the commodifica-
tion of the audience since in the DME they act as both producers and consumers of content (Mukherjee and
Singh, 2017; Rashmi, 2018; Srinivasan and Burrell, 2013). Lastly, the processes of valuation at play in legacy
media markets in India operated beyond textbook price setting and distribution efficiency (Parthasarathi and
Athique, 2020: 9). These scenarios are changing with the formalisation and standardisation of exchanges in
digital media markets. But we are aware that an exclusive focus on monetary pricing ignores other forms of
value that remain prominent in digital markets (see Bolin, 2011).
The meso level is the domain pertaining to the functional operations and structural organisation of the
market space occupied by media businesses. Market spaces are a set of mechanical and commercial soli-
darities that are categorically differentiated but functionally converge through various levels of formalisation
(Parthasarathi, 2018: 10). This space has traditionally been viewed in terms of business sectors, such as
broadcasting and cinema, or as procedural segments, such as hardware or content production. The ‘value
chains’ of each highlight how market spaces that explicitly connect subsidiary markets for labour, commodi-
ties, and consumers have come to be formed (Parthasarathi, 2018: 10).
Two interrelated features distinguish meso-level markets of legacy media in India: one, their regional and
territorial formulation along language (i.e., of media audience); and two, their ownership, shareholding, and
organisation being steeped in networks of history and identity. Thus, while valuation in the meso-level market
is formally accounted for via profitability, their embeddedness also makes them leverage non-pecuniary forms
of value. The ways in and extent to which these dynamics get recast in the DME has increasingly attracted
scholarly attention.
The digitalisation of production chains has seen existing actors either consolidate and reformulate operations,
or get displaced by larger industrial forces in the wider digital economy. At the same time, new businesses
have emerged, such as mobile wallets, payment gateways, and service apps.

Page 4 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
While the DME at the meso level is characterised by economies of scale, like in legacy media markets, the
role of network effects and positive subsidisation from other networked value chains gains centrality. Second,
the emergence of a more integrated media economy has led to significant changes in the composition and
balance of actors in the meso level (see Bouquillion, 2020). These changes have disrupted the role and rela-
tionships of legacy media actors in the Digital Bazaars; these disruptors include financial and industrial actors
from outside the legacy media business, and of course the state with its reformulated appeals.
The macro level is where surplus value is harvested from the meso and micro levels. What we see here is a
dense network of value transfers providing the productive mechanism for multifarious exchanges across me-
dia sectors as also across a range of non-industrial, mercantile, and financial domains (Parthasarathi, 2018:
9). This then pertains to the space of integration of commodities, infrastructure, and types of capital (financial,
social, and cultural) at work in the media economy (ibid).
In legacy media, this scale involved transactions in financial stakes via holding companies and parking equity,
and in resources such as spectrum and real estate (Parthasarathi and Athique, 2020: 442). In the DME, data
becomes a significant addition in determining stakes and wagers. With territory-bound conceptualisations of
data, the state sees itself as an important player in this domain, seeking to maintain its own interests in this
meta-market. This takes place through four prominent mechanisms: one, mediating foreign strategic and port-
folio investments in the development and acquisition of digital technologies; two, adjudicating the wrangles
between small and big, start-up and conglomerate, domestic and global enterprises; three, legitimising cer-
tain forms of property rights; and four, through the legal constitution of product and geographical markets (see
Parthasarathi, 2019).
Given the inherently trans-national nature of DME, this domain cohabits the interests of many states. Guided
by its sovereign and vested interests, the state in India is an important associate, and impediment, in sculpting
the macro-level domain of the DME. Its investments in digital infrastructures, both public and public-private,
are directed by two broad aims: one, fostering for itself new sources of financial and political surplus; and two,
pursuing many a ‘leap of faith’ (Athique, 2019) to overcome age-old institutional challenges in its apparatus,
such as leaks from the fiscal system, imperfections in surveillance, and drains from the national economy.
Pursuing both these goals in the macro-level domain reiterates our contention of viewing it as a Satta Bazaar
of the DME.

Page 5 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
The Intellectual Setting
The changing social and political contexts in which the DME has emerged have expectedly shaped the sub-
ject matter of emergent scholarship in both broad axes. But themes and concerns in DME also tell us some-
thing about the widening disciplinary moorings and institutional settings in which both axes of scholarship
have developed.
In terms of the disciplinary moorings of DME, a few observations are due at the outset. Significantly, schol-
arship on DME from media studies has brought back the emphasis on the study of production and labour in
media companies, lost for many decades due to the almost singular scholarly emphasis/obsession with the
study of media content. Second, DME scholarship has emerged from the social sciences in India (especially
political science, economic sociology, and anthropology), which has traditionally not been engaged with the
subject matter of media and communication. On the other hand, there has been a growing interest in facets
of the DME from scholarship in management and business from India, which have traditionally been distant
from media and communication studies (see Parthasarathi et al., 2020); these have brought with them an
emphasis on ‘hard’ economic issues and quantitative methods. Scholars from legal studies have significant-
ly enriched engagements with DME from riding on their decade-old interest in media/communication policy;
these have emerged from both lawyers’ professional engagements with digital media/technology firms and
from conventional academic quarters of universities and research centres (the latter hampered by the ab-
sence of wider inter-disciplinary traditions marking legal scholarship in India, such as the Law and Economics
movement in the USA). The last intellectual tradition marking DME scholarship in India stems from Science
& Technology Studies and Digital Humanities, despite their fledgling status as fields of inquiry in India. Thus,
scholarship has emerged in response to the expanding subject matter of DME, rather than from distinct intel-
lectual traditions in established disciplines – a phenomenon playing out globally as well.
In terms of theoretical and methodological approaches employed, at the risk of generalisation, some obser-
vations could be made: the predominance of neo-classical economic analysis, including in legal and man-
agement scholarship; the influence of traditions of neo-institutionalism is discernible in the increasing body
of policy-related research even as we see agonistic tendencies and process especially with respect to infor-
mality and the move towards formalisation; and the integration of ethnographic methods in both basic and
applied research. However, all these have been hampered by insufficient and robust data on and about the
DME; typical ‘industry estimates’ generated by reports and advocacy material from trade bodies have by and
large been the primary data sources in examining meso- and macro-level dynamics of the DME. This is much
Page 6 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
in line with scholarship in media studies since enumeration from official quarters has been weak and partial,
as has been the case with enumerations on almost all service sector businesses following deregulation in the
1990s (see Das and Parthasarathi, 2011).
In terms of their institutional settings, we find a surfeit of writings on the DME in India being produced from
non-traditional quarters, such as by NGOs, think tanks, research arms of corporations, and sundry trade bod-
ies. Their white papers, blogs, policy briefs, and reports have spawned a corpus of ‘grey literature’ on the
DME. Across these diverse institutional settings, such research and reflection share an advocacy orientation,
drawing on varying permutations of normative and empirically driven arguments. This is part of a wider trend
of grey literature having gained legitimacy among development/aid agencies, supranational policy bodies,
and philanthropies in their efforts at understanding the impact and relevance of particular social practices. A
cursory look at references and sources cited in official documents and scholarly works on DME reveals them
drawing on analytical insights and hard evidence from grey literature. The extent and evenness of such knowl-
edge meeting traditional scholarly standards, especially of peer review and methodological rigour, is worth
reflecting over when drawn on in scholarly debates. This is also called for since such knowledge is primarily
directed at policy advocacy and in contributing to the evidence base on the DME – a trend observed more
widely about the role of grey literature in informing public decision making (see Lawrence et al., 2014).
This chapter has limited the corpus of scholarship examined to journal articles, book chapters, and working/
policy papers authored from universities, reputable think tanks, and research centres, and published until
2021. This is not to disregard research and reflections from outside formal academia (primarily grey literature)
which have contributed to enhancing our knowledge about the DME in India. The profusion of blog essays by
lawyers, activists, journalists, entrepreneurs, while not qualifying as ‘scholarly’ articles (hence excluded from
our corpus), has immensely informed core concerns about the DME, not to forget catalysing extensive de-
bates that have been important triggers and inspiration for academic scholarship.
Experiences of the Digital Haat
Providing a lens to engagements and transactions at the micro level, this scale deals with the everyday expe-
riences of the DME. Throughout this, our focus is India-specific, although we do recognise tremendous merit
in adopting a wider, South Asian terrain of analysis (see Kumar et al., 2021). We find three broad clusters
of scholarship on India, those around aspects of consumption, usage, and circulation of digital products and

Page 7 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
services.
Consumption
Consumption emerges as a theme integral to the micro level, with its focus on users of online and offline dig-
ital offerings, in addition to issues of piracy and IP. The coming of Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming platforms
and the popularity of creative content hosted on them, has been a potential game changer for the entertain-
ment business. The numbers indicate that this consumption of content has further received an upshot during
the pandemic. The popularity of K-Pop, for instance, has attracted analyses of cultural hybridity, soft power
and cultural diplomacy, cultural proximity (Kanozia and Ganghariya, 2021) to that of acculturation of the youth
of Manipur to Korean culture (Reimeingam, 2015).
Mukherjee and Singh (2017) look at offline digital cultures of downloading and sharing of data, thereby dis-
playing the disproportionate focus on algorithmic aspects of platform affordances. The authors study the
memory cards and other storage devices that allow room for affective pleasures and aesthetic experiences.
The focus is on the coverage by news channels, of particular cultural and religious contexts and phenomena.
For instance, Ibrahim (2018) looks at how while the pressures of catering for news cycles exist, the news
stories related to love, law, and marriage draw on existing social norms and hierarchies. The offline aspect
is seen in work on mobile telephony and consumption of content associated with it. We see that work in this
area looks at the dispersal and uptake of mobile phones among the marginalised (Rashmi, 2018; Srinivasan
and Burrell, 2013), and at low-technology platforms that those who live in peri-urban and rural areas leverage
(Mudliar et al., 2012).
There has been a constant emphasis on regimes of intellectual property conditioning access and consumption
of digital media. One thread of this deals with the formal economy, be it the story of breaking away from colo-
nial property regimes (Reddy and Chandrashekharan, 2017) or the role of secondary licensing in expanding
the reach and revenue of Bollywood (Liang, 2018). In contrast, Scaria (2014) provides a bottom-up approach
to studying piracy in the Indian film industry. The author brings in nuances from local contexts in India, to pro-
vide an understanding of piracy at the local level, and presents a set of negative and positive incentives to
induce voluntary copyright compliance in India.

Page 8 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Usage
Practices of media usage in the DME can be broadly categorised into leisure and non-leisure activities. Some
of the dominant themes that emerge are pleasure, digital finance, and political use, among others, and have
been delved into below.
In this realm, usage is seen in the manner in which the digital is utilised for sensory purposes. Mallapragada
(2006) looks at how the Internet is conceptualised and used by Non-Resident Indians and Persons of Indian
Origin (as ‘Indian-American'), even as they seek to advance ideas of home, homeland, and homepage. Ran-
gaswamy and Arora (2015), in their study on the use of Facebook in Mumbai slums, draw on the idea of
‘Facebooking’ as a leisure activity, situating romance, play, and entertainment in this realm. These activities,
the authors suggest, serve as precursors to ecologies of learning. In an earlier work (Arora and Rangaswamy,
2013), the authors talk about how the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development
(ICT4D) has traditionally not taken cognisance of leisure activities beyond the anecdotal, suggesting that
there exists a bias on socio-economic lines, in imagining leisure in the Global South. By drawing on their work
on the digital practices of youth in the slums of Mumbai, the authors seek to reframe new media practices
in the South. Kumar (2014) conducts an ethnographic study of the use of Facebook by youth from socioe-
conomically disadvantaged communities. She looks at leisure activities on Facebook, and links it to develop-
ment-friendly efforts. Pathak-Shelat and DeShano (2013) present perspectives from a small town in Gujarat,
to showcase how new technologies occupy a peripheral space in the otherwise rich and interconnected social
lives of the youth.
Rai (2020) looks at the jugaad (transl. ‘improvised') economy and subaltern creativity. He draws on Sundaram
(2015) to talk about how, with the datalogical turn, the Indian media ecologies are located at the interstices,
where new informal networks are entering old and decaying networks. Further, work on political revolutions
and digital media-making practices around it (Srinivas, 2017), bring to bear ideas on regional politics and cul-
tural difference. Deshbandhu (2020) looks at gaming cultures in the everyday, in what is one of the largest
game bases in the world, according to the author. He does an autoethnography of playing with other gamers,
to understand how gamer identities are constructed, gaming habits and emergent industry trends. Kaur (2020)
looks at how arthouse and independent films construct an ‘international audience', when they target such mar-
kets owing to their deals with European and other international investors and showcasing venues. Deo and

Page 9 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Duggal (2017) draw on ethnographic fieldwork to look at the interconnect between mobile phone usage and
music listening. They bring together a range of analytic lenses to do with music, listening, im/materiality, digi-
tisation, and the mobile phone as the site that presents opportunities for media usage. Baishya (2017) looks
at the phenomenon of Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) pornography in India, as an interplay between
affect and place. The author argues that the MMS is a symptom of the phenomenon of the ‘leak', looking at
two case studies of MMS leaks and scandals from India.
The social experience with usage of digital money also emerges as an important aspect of the DME at this
level. In one of the earlier works on linking money with the DME, Birzescu and Gajjala (2011), in their work on
subaltern online participation in microfinance, contend that the subaltern is still rendered as the Other, even
though the process of continuing financialisation seems to be underway. In the telecommunication sector,
Narayanan and Dhorajiwala (2019) write emphatically about the tribulations of two women in Jharkhand, with
the same name and accounts in the same bank branch. The women struggled with misplaced cash trans-
fers in the bank accounts linked to their biometric details. Lack of better infrastructure and the difficulties it
brings for the most marginal populations in India is elucidated. In a similar vein, Ligon et al. (2019) look at
the adoption of digital payment by merchants in Jaipur, Rajasthan, in the face of the push for real-time digital
payment interfaces by the government of India. They show that while there seems to be no problem with the
supply-side of the ecosystem, it is the demand-side that is not encouraging, since consumers do not seem to
be ready to leap-frog into a digital-only ecosystem. Cashlessness is, as current scholarship explains, techno-
logical solutionism drawing on evolutionary thinking pertaining to the digital domain. Kurosaki (2018) writes
about the registered (formal) and unregistered (informal) enterprises in Delhi, explaining the ways in which
their businesses were affected by the Demonetisation exercise. The author suggests that despite the sud-
den policy push for digital money, the exercise did not succeed in reducing the cash flow in transactions.
Kurosaki also reveals that unregistered (informal) firms were more affected by the Demonetisation exercise,
and were more dependent on cash transactions, in comparison to registered firms. Significantly, studies on
digital money from other disciplines tend to underscore the long history of organised finance extracting ren-
tier incomes out of poorer demographics and informal markets (Chandrashekhar and Ghosh, 2017; Reddy
and Chandrashekharan, 2017). Donner and Tellez (2008) talk about the need for contextual research in con-
ducting research on adoption and impact of providing financial services through mobile technology, to those
without access to banking.
The Internet has served as a site for political articulation and argumentation. Thirumal (2008) talks about the
Page 10 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
usage of new media by Dalits in organising against instances of caste oppression. Kumar (2015) focuses on
subversive forms of communication and deliberation in India, in networked digital spaces. By looking at the
viral culture of videos, memes, and websites deploying parody and satire, he showcases the newer cultures
of participation. The author also draws on ideas of the mimetic production of culture enabled by the web's ar-
chitecture, to explicate this emerging subversive culture. Sundaram (2020) talks about how the graphic video
object now occupies the centre-stage in public culture in a Hindu nationalist India, while they were once seen
as peripheral to such a space. In an earlier work, Sundaram (2015) writes about the video object becom-
ing the conduit for entrapment, a police technique that is now used widely in the name of accountability and
transparency, to produce sting operations. He unravels the entrapment ecology, so to speak. Udupa (2016)
looks at the practice of ‘archiving’ of Indian Hindu nationalist ideas and affect, by non-experts. She calls this a
distinct practice of history-making, and looks at the various ways in which online users participate in religious
practice.
Circulation
Moving from consumption and usage, we find attention to the digital commodity forms, and the formal and
informal characterising their circulation. Delving into the former, Jha and Mankad (2018) examine the digiti-
sation of content, and its intertwining with India's entertainment industries. They argue that the coming of the
digital has not only reduced entry barriers, thereby diminishing the uniqueness of digital products, but enabled
the generation of ‘mutable content’ as a newer form of media commodities.
Drawing on Athique's (2020) idea of integrated commodity bundling, Arvikar (2020) reflects on the business
of digital news. He suggests in the emergent platform economy, the horizontal integration that is taking place
across businesses means that every like or click or share can be monetised. Agarwal (2017) looks at the In-
dian customers’ response to bundling, identifying that tourism services and household items were most com-
monly purchased as bundles on the Internet, and that price was the determining factor. Jonnalagedda (2011)
studies the market of ‘information goods', delineating its characteristic features, and looking at how monetisa-
tion happens by underscoring business models for such a market.
The platformisation of religion, and its commodification in the Marxian sense, is widespread in India. Thomas
(2020) talks about the rise of Hindu religious platforms in India. From PatanjaliNet to Shubhpuja, these plat-

Page 11 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
forms offer a wide array of allied services like pilgrimage packages, offerings for rituals, etc. Mallapragada
(2010) looks at how the Hindu religious websites are a remediation, drawing on Bolter and Grusin (1999),
of the earlier religious paraphernalia like calendar art, photographs of deities, etc. Sinha (2011) looks at the
Hindu diaspora and their commoditisation of Hindu rituals and religious practices. The author draws on mate-
rialism and visuality as the two lenses in conducting such an exercise. The informal markets that characterise
circulation of products and services are seen in the integral role of the bazaars as crucial sites mediating ac-
cess to smuggled video games to Indians (Deka, 2016; 2017).
Continuity and Change in the Media Bazaar
The meso level of the DME entails the integration of the once distinct legacy media and tele-communication
businesses with the wider digital economy. We refer to this level of the DME as the Digital Bazaar – analogous
to the traditional bazaar involving the organisation of production and distribution that, while remaining vary-
ingly regulated and formalised, connect commodity production to national and international supply chains.
Three broad themes are prominent in scholarship: digitalisation, including access to digital infrastructures and
digital integration in the production organisation of the media; platformisation of the media business and con-
comitant reconstitution of work/labour; and accumulation of interests in the integrated digital economy and
regulatory challenges spawned.
Digitalisation
Often lying at the cusp of micro- and meso-levels markets, scholarship on providing digital access has been
by far the oldest and probably the largest. This first emerged as extension of earlier debates on develop-
ment where access to technology was viewed as the biggest impediment in ensuring social welfare – debates
captured under the umbrella of ‘ICT for development’ scholarship (such as Kumar and Thomas, 2006; Pal,
2003; Sreekumar, 2006). The other thread of scholarship on access, particularly to telecom, pertains to the
very genesis of the infra that has enabled what we now recognise as the DME. Here, typically economistic
issues of determinants of demand and tele-density, allocative efficiency, and aspects of technology choice/
adoption/performance have dominated (Gupta and Jain, 2016; Jain and Dara, 2017; Mani and Sridhar, 2015;

Page 12 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Narayana, 2011) in ways that often overlap with industry and policy studies in telecommunication.
The traditional ‘developmentalist’ and subsequent ‘marketist’ thrusts come together in examinations of ‘Digital
India’ – a state imaginary that at once refers to an infrastructure and a metaphor for the digital society that is
to be India. Critical perspectives emphasise allocative imbalances and democratic accountability ingrained in
the operationalisation of (Mudgal, 2014; Saraph and Kathpalia, 2018). Such perspectives then talk to schol-
arship on access that has tended to spotlight access provision to marginalised citizens and communities, and
the ways in which technological choice and standards mediate what is made available to which demography
(Cecchini and Scott, 2003). Others tend to implicitly point at how such state imaginary runs contra to regula-
tory curtailment of access through Internet shutdowns and their implications on citizenry and markets at large
(see Goel, 2018; Kathuria et al., 2018).
Scholarship on legacy media found common ground with that on digital media in their examinations of trans-
formations in the production and business organisation of the former. Under the umbrella concept of digi-
talisation, scholarship has sought to trace the multifarious transitions in the organisation media and cultural
industries. In doing so, numerous ideas have got suffixed to ‘the digital’ – viz. ‘transitions', ‘migration', ‘disrup-
tion', ‘start-ups’ etc – that are laden with normative and theoretical standpoints. The tensions such evocations
offer is clearly visible in scholarship on the digitalisation of the news and particular newspaper business. This
is particularly so in navigating between the analytical emphasis on digital expansion versus digital migration
in the newspaper business (Aneez et al., 2016), and that on continuities and ruptures in business strategies
of native digital news outlets (Girija, 2019; Sibal, 2019). While a fair share of scholarship on digital journalism/
news is anchored in perspectives on political communication, as is the case globally, there is an increasing
body of work located squarely in debates on the DME. Analytically, these debates share concerns about the
challenges of digital and bi-directional access faced by users, the motivations of native digital news ‘start-ups',
and the risks faced by them from online intermediaries (see Aneez et al., 2017; Harlow and Chadha, 2019;
Nielsen and Sen, 2016; Prasad, 2019). Methodologically, fairly common here is the adoption of mixed method
approaches comprising interviews, organisational study, and analysis of user/consumption data.
The dynamics of continuity and rupture is equally visible in scholarship on digitalisation unfolding in various
sectors of the audio-visual media. In the cinema business we have come to realise the impact of digitalisation
on industry interactions (Stephanie et al., 2012), on the operations of film exhibition (Hill and Athique, 2013)
and publicity practices of individual film theatres (Sreesanth and Balasaravanan, 2020). In the business of

Page 13 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
recorded music, scholars have examined the integration of digital technologies at two levels: in the production
of music in studios (Booth, 2008) and avenues of distribution following the advent of mobile phones creat-
ed by established majors in the industry, minor labels, and individual musicians in India's hinterland (Booth,
2017; Tripathy, 2012). In fact, the digitalisation of the operations of distribution has been the analytical focus
running across studies on different sectors. Thus, we find a thread of scholarship over the last two decades on
digital transition in the growing and lucrative TV cable distribution business. Significantly, since digitalisation
in TV distribution was catalysed by state interventions, unlike that in cinema and music, scholarship has en-
gaged with the implications of regulatory measures (Jayakar, 2011; Pandit, 2019; Singh and Bandyopadhyay,
2014). We have gained knowledge about the industrial and organisational strategies of national and local ac-
tors, and the altered relationships between such actors comprising the value chain of digital TV distribution
(Parthasarathi et al., 2016; Kathuria et al., 2019).
Platformisation
All such scholarship implicitly points to the long history of the ‘platformisation’ of the legacy media (Athique
and Parthasarathi, 2020). Consequently, many of the organisational and political concerns underlying them
have continued, resurfaced and/or attenuated in the more recent work on media platforms. This vibrant body
of scholarship grapples with the emergence and growth of the multitude of actors and motivations marking
the platform economy – viz. suppliers of music or video content, pursuing advertiser or subscription driven
business models, propelled by domestic or global players, and among the former, actors from legacy content
industries or those from telecom, web and other digital infrastructural businesses (Fitzgerald, 2020; Mukher-
jee, 2019). In getting a sense of this multitude that at once consists of national and trans-national actors and
strategies, some scholars found opportunities to revisit debates on media imperialism and centre–periphery
relations marking the globalisation (Fitzgerald, 2019), others focused on tensions reflected in national policy
and administrative frameworks and that between national and trans-national logics of governance (Bouquil-
lion, 2020), while still others unearth the strategic imperatives of players in engaging with or capturing the
infrastructure enabling access to their offerings (Arvikar, 2020; Ithurbide, 2020; Tiwary, 2020).
Research on platformisation of the audio-visual media has equally delved into aspects of work and labour.
This is welcome given such interest has been tremendously wanting in research on the legacy audio-visual
businesses. There, two threads are worthy of mention, albeit limited to the context of the cinema, since they
Page 14 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
have also attracted scholarship in the DME: the precarity of labour and their travails of unionisation (Chitrapu,
2018); and the importance of social and kinship networks in the mainstream of the media business (Lorenzen
and Mudambi, 2010).
Following the spurt in online and platform content, there has been an expanded interest in the lives and labour
of the media precariat (such as Kumar and Haneef, 2017). Much as media labour in metropolitan centres are
shown to prefer the precarity of the DME to the hegemony and insularity characterising opportunity in the
legacy media business (Mehta, 2019), those at the periphery are observed to find incremental and unchar-
tered opportunities in the DME (Tripathy, 2018). Most significantly, research on labour outside the media in
the wider information economy has attracted widening scholarship. While we can trace the roots of this to
aspects of teleworking in various sectors including the media (Aundhkar et al., 2000), the more substantive
body of scholarship emerged around work processes in offshored call-centre and software enterprises in India
during the late 1990s. The focus was on everyday lives, entailing their routinisation work, precarity of labour,
and predicaments of identity, all shaped in an inter-related manner by their professional interactions in global
companies and social location in emerging metropolitan India (McMillin, 2006; Patel, 2006; Ramesh, 2004).
Significant in all this has been the active desire to forefront the dynamics of gender amidst this incipient global
information economy. Lastly, the proposition of ‘cybercoolies’ (Ramesh, 2004) in early debates on outsourcing
and call-centres has striking resemblance to recent concerns of the ‘uberisation’ of work. This is evident in
studies on the development of the gig or app economy around urban transportation, short-term housing, and
logistics (Bijarnia et al., 2020; Brocaho, 2007; Surie and Koduganti, 2016; Verma et al., 2020). In pursuing
analytical concerns around the informality and precarity of labour, such scholarship widens our understanding
of the platformisation processes underway in India.
Accumulation
Meso-level markets in the DME have been characterised by an abundance of domestic and trans-national
actors displaying both orthodox and unorthodox strategies to accumulate interests across the wider digital
economy. This has sparked examinations of strategies of resource mobilisation and regulation of competition.
A fair amount of this has addressed actors in the telecommunication and web business, these being the key
actors in the increasingly integrated digital economy.

Page 15 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
In exploring resource mobilisation by dominant access providers, the role of financial strategies, regulatory
support, and extra-economic forces have equally evinced interest (Hill and Athique, 2018; Mukherji, 2008;
Parthasarathi and Srinivas, 2019). The sudden rise of the telecom giant, Reliance Jio, as a consequential
player and its impact on existing markets in the digital economy has particularly attracted attention (Curwen
and Whalley, 2018; Mukherjee, 2019).
The accumulation of interests in the multi-sided markets characterising the platform economy has provoked
reflections on challenges to the extent scope of competition law and the institutional emit of antitrust bodies. A
lot of such research, broadly inspired by the law and economics framework, finds locus on classical concerns
of monopolisation, abuse of dominance, and predatory pricing by both domestic and global actors (Basa,
2018; Bhattacharjea, 2018; Parsheera et al., 2017; Parthasarathi, 2019), with studies on Google being recur-
rent (Krishnan, 2018; Pingali, 2018). Competition emerges as a meta-concept, since it is cross-cutting schol-
arship on data localisation, platforms, and net neutrality. Regulatory debates on the latter witnessing a signif-
icant flashpoint inspired three broad types of reflections: one, on the role of actors in the intense and public
nature of advocacy (Prasad, 2018; Shahin, 2017); two, on the types of discourses about openness emer-
gent and possible in the digital economy (Gurumurthy et al., 2016; Prasad and Sridhar, 2015; Singh, 2010);
and three, the limits to the principle of neutrality in the constantly evolving digital economy (Parsheera, 2018;
Singh, 2015).
In closing this section, a footnote is called for on methodological trends reflected in research of meso-levels
markets. These trends convey a sense of intellectual heterodoxy generally observed in media economics in
India (see Parthasarathi et al., 2020). One, in research on the markets of operations where digitalisation and
platformisation have unravelled themselves, we see noticeable influences from institutional economics and
an equally discernible turn towards an economic sociology of the media economy. Two, in literature on com-
petition in the digital economy we see the beginnings of a hybridisation between legal studies and (largely
neo-classical) economics, which is significant since Indian academia has been largely bereft of a tradition
akin to the law and economics movement in North America.
Staking Markets of Interests and Trust
Like in legacy media markets, this scale in the DME is too nebulous to be recognised in our everyday en-

Page 16 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
counters with audio-visual, information, and communication businesses (Parthasarathi, 2018: 9). This scale
is essentially about markets of interests, loyalties, and trust linking trans-national and hyper-local circulations
in the DME. A new, large market of interest in the DME is that around data. This includes data generated and
used in the meso- and micro-level markets, as also that harvested in the wider digital economy by state and
non-state actors. In both operations, practices and strategies around data harvesting become part and par-
cel of broader contests to enhance and fortify particular interests. Much like money markets are congenitally
infused with state interest, currency being the domain of the sovereign, data and its markets have become a
site where the state has come to play a central role (Arora, 2019; Ramanathan, 2010).
Reflecting on scholarship on these complex and overlapping dynamics, we demarcate two broad bouquets
of research: one, the particular industrial role and commodity character of data in the DME; and two, the
datafication of society more generally, including research on biometric identity, considerations in privacy, and
surveillance by state and private actors. Given the scope of this chapter/handbook, here we focus on the for-
mer while evoking the latter in as far as it helps to set the intellectual and social context of scholarship on the
former.
Scholarship on datafication of society in India has been synonymous with, when not triggered by, the world's
largest intervention in governance through biometric, the Aadhaar initiative. Aadhaar symbolises the visions
of the state to leverage data in attaining, or betting to attain, its longstanding market and non-market ob-
jectives. Arora (2019) traces the colonial legacy of information infrastructures, tying it to the Aadhaar, while
Godhwani (2020) looks at the making of budget data from PDF files. These efforts make state discourse nec-
essarily marked by normative and ideological values to legitimise its own pursuits and interests – something
scholars have been quick to unpack. From its outset well over a decade ago, scholarship on Aadhaar moved
beyond the dimensions of affordances of population registers and biometric systems to think about how the
Indian state seeks to redefine citizenship to bring to effect the consumer citizen (Maringanti, 2009; Shukla,
2010). One strand of this has pivoted around debates about privacy: its absence in the technological and le-
gal design of such mega interventions (Ramanathan, 2010), more charitable arguments about privacy as a
reassurance to consumers being pulled into webs of the digital economy (Raghavan, 2017), or it representing
a key trade-off in public digital infrastructures (Srinivasan et al., 2018). Another strand widened the questions
on identity and governance to provide rich reflections on both the nature of the state and the reconfiguration
of the social (Chaudhari and König, 2017; Nair, 2018; Rao and Nair, 2019).
This abundance of scholarship on what we may call the ‘platformisation of the state’ lays bare the social,

Page 17 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
political, and intellectual contexts for research on the macro level of the DME – i.e. that embodying ‘data as
interests'. First, the mega initiative of ‘Digital India’ in which Aadhaar is nested embodies the imaginary of
operationalising the vision of the larger digital economy (see Gurumurthy and Chami, 2018; Mukherjee, 2019;
Ohm et al., 2019; Singh, 2020) – a space within which the DME operates and through which it often sus-
tains itself. Second, Aadhaar forms the enabling context for other elements of this mega digital imaginary,
such as the regulatory push towards digital money and digitalisation of payments (Athique, 2019; Jain and
Gabor, 2020). This, in turn, has provided a fillip to the usage and uptake of OTT video (FICCI-KPMG, 2017),
a common barometer of the expansion of the DME. This is but one way on which the micro- and macro-level
markets are bound together, since both the ‘national’ money market and that of the media economy cohabit
the interests of the state (Parthasarathi and Athique, 2020).
Debates on datafication have spawned normative and theoretical discussions on the character of data itself
(see Mertia eds, 2020). We find data is imagined in at least three ways: first, in terms of ownership, say com-
mercial or government data; second, its functional genesis, or that generated by citizens using the Internet,
portable devices, and/or availing public services; and third, its legal character, i.e. personal and non-personal
data (see Banga, 2019; Panday and Malcom, 2018). Irrespective of the neatness of these typologies, there is
unanimity over data embodying a fundamentally different kind of asset: while individuals may own it, its mon-
etisation occurs at the aggregate level and through extensive algorithmic capabilities only few actors possess.
Thus, the issue of how individuals or communities could benefit from the asset they own/produce is deemed
important, especially in grappling with conceptual and policy issues on a ‘commons approach’ to data. This
brings us to the role of the commodity status of data in shaping the balance of power within the DME.
Analytically, we witness two broad baskets of discussions: data in trade, and trade in data. While the former
opens up on to research on the industrial strategies of actors in the DME, the latter captures the wide-ranging
scholarship on data localisation and sovereignty.
The macro level is the domain where digital conglomerates emerge after feasting on data extracted from
media, information, and communication businesses operating at the meso level. These data conglomerates,
masquerading as telecom, web, or logistics companies, are the prime actors in the ‘market for interests’ in
and around the DME. The dynamics of data in trade pertain to the role of data in industrial strategies of ac-
tors in the DME (Mukherjee, 2019; Kumar, 2020) and shifts in their relative balance of power between actors
compared to that in the earlier media economy (Ithurbide, 2020; Kumar, 2018). The former gets enmeshed
with emerging debates on cloud computing infrastructure, given the presence of ‘superstar firms’ (Autor et al.,

Page 18 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
2017) across the media infrastructure and media content (Banga, 2019; Fitzgerald, 2020).
Scholarship on ‘trade in data’ is marked by tropes of data localisation and digital sovereignty. Not surprisingly,
these reflect the extensions and complications of longstanding debates on international trade between more
and less industrialised countries. This is more so since leading actors in the DME are legally incorporated and/
or physically located in the former while the latter inhabit the growing consumers and users of their products.
The digitalisation of exportable products like software, music, e-books, and video games – earlier exported
as physical products but increasingly being delivered electronically – has attracted the attention of seasoned
scholars on international trade (Banga, 2017; Joseph and Parayil, 2008).
However, cross-border data flows have become a prominent issue also because of its experienced and an-
ticipated implications on domestic legal, political and other economic dynamics. Some have pinpointed lo-
calisation being driven by law enforcement, protection of individual data, geo-political strategies, and human
rights (Panday and Malcom, 2018). Although regulatory interventions address these in specific and overlap-
ping manners, scholars are able to identify three axes, viz. civil liberties, government functions, and econom-
ic perspectives (Bailey and Parsheera, 2018). The latter are part of prominent ‘liberal’ standpoints arguing
against localisation due to it resulting in jurisdictional fragmentation of the Internet (echoing arguments of Sil-
icon Valley conglomerates) and becoming an impediment to the trans-nationalisation of domestic players in
the DME and the wider digital economy (Bailey and Parsheera, 2018; Banga, 2019).
Conclusion
The picture we have painted of DME as an object of systematic scientific endeavour is not necessarily an
exhaustive one. Nevertheless, it can claim to capture the tone and texture of ongoing scholarly engagements,
which are as wide-ranging and dynamic as the object of study itself. Three features of such engagements
are worth reiterating here. One, there is clearly a methodological tension between apprehending the DME
as a historical rupture and as reflecting embedded continuities. Two, rather than getting caught in this, our
scalar approach to the DME offers an avenue to visualise the inter-relationships, not always explicit in extant
debates, between its constituent markets. Three, while the profuse scholarship on the various scales of the
DME have been attended to from a rich set of analytical and theoretical quarters, there is tremendous scope
to imbibe interdisciplinary sensibilities. A lot of what we have captured in this chapter has been refracted by
the institutional settings where research on the DME have played out.

Page 19 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
References
Agarwal, R. (2018). Indian customers’ attitude towards bundling: A basis for classification and targeting. Glob-
al Business Review, 19(2), 510–31.
Aneez, Z., Chattapadhyay, S., Parthasarathi, V. and Nielsen, R. K. (2017). Indian news media and the pro-
duction of news in the age of social discovery. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Arora, P. (2019). Politics of algorithms, Indian citizenship, and the colonial legacy. Global Digital Cultures:
Perspectives from South Asia, pp. 37–52.
Arora, P. and Rangaswamy, N. (2013). Digital leisure for development: Reframing new media practice in the
Global South. Media, Culture & Society, 35(7), 898–905.
Arvikar, H. (2020). Portfolios of fear and risk in platform news. In A. Athique and V. Parthasarathi (Eds.), Plat-
form capitalism in India (pp. 239–58). Palgrave Macmillan.
Athique, A. (2019). A great leap of faith: The cashless agenda in Digital India. New Media & Society, 21(8),
1697–713.
Athique, A. (2020). Integrated commodities in the digital economy. Media, Culture & Society, 42(4), 554–70.
Athique, A. and Parthasarathi, V. (Eds.) (2020). Platform capitalism in India. Palgrave Macmillan.
Aundhkar, A., Vaz, N., Pillai, G. A., Murthy, D. L. N., Thakar, S. S., and Gothoskar, S. (2000). Nature of tele-
working in key sectors: Case studies of financial, media and software sectors in Mumbai. Economic and Po-
litical Weekly, 35(26), 2277–92.
Autor, D., Dorn, D., Katz, L. F., Patterson, C., and Reenen, J. V. (2017). Concentrating on the fall of the labor
share. American Economic Review, 107(5), 180–5.
Bailey, R. and Parsheera, S. (2018). Data localisation in India: Questioning the means and ends. NIPFP
Working paper series #242. National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. Retrieved from: www.nipfp.org.in/
media/medialibrary/2018/10/WP_2018_242.pdf
Baishya, A. K. (2017). Pornography of place: Location, leaks and obscenity in the Indian MMS porn video.
South Asian Popular Culture 15(1), 57–71.

Page 20 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Banga, R. (2017). Rising product digitalisation and losing trade competitiveness. United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development. Retrieved from: https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gdse-
cidc2017d3_en.pdf
Banga, R. (2019). Is India digitally prepared for international trade? Economic & Political Weekly, 54(5),
53–62.
Basa, C. (2018). Does price fixing by app based on-demand taxi services pose a competition law concern in
India? Competition Policy International. Retrieved from: www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/does-price-
fixing-by-app-based-on-demand-taxi-services-pose-a-competition-law-concern-in-india/
Bhattacharjea, A. (2018). Predatory pricing in platform competition: Economic theory and Indian cases. In
A. Bharadwaj, V. Devaiah, and I. Gupta (Eds.), Multi-dimensional approaches towards new technology (pp.
211–30). Springer.
Bijarnia, S., Ilavarasan, P. V., and Kar, A. K. (2020). Comparing SERVQUAL for transportation services in
the sharing economy for emerging markets: Insights from Twitter analytics. In N. P. Rana, E. L. Slade, G. P.
Sahu, H. Kizgin, N. Singh, B. Dey, A. Gutierrez, and Y. K. Dwivedi (Eds.), Digital and social media marketing:
Advances in Theory and Practice of Emerging Markets (pp. 127–34). Springer.
Birzescu, A. and Gajjala, R. (2011). Digital imperialism through online social/financial networks. Economic
and Political Weekly, 46(13), 95–102.
Bolin, G. (2011). Value and the media: Cultural production and consumption in digital markets. Routledge.
Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding new media. MIT Press.
Booth, G. D. (2008). Behind the curtain: Making music in Mumbai's film studios. Oxford University Press.
Booth, G. D. (2017). A long tail in the digital age: Music commerce and the mobile platform in India. Asian
Music, 48(1), 85–113.
Bouquillion, P. (2020). Industrial and financial structures of over-the-tops (OTTs) in India. In: A. Athique and
V. Parthasarathi (Eds.), Platform capitalism in India (pp. 129–49). Palgrave Macmillan.
Cecchini, S. and Scott, C. (2003). Can information and communications technology applications contribute to
poverty reduction? Lessons from rural India. Information Technology for Development, 10(2), 73–84.
Chandrashekhar, C. P. and Ghosh, J. (2017). The financialization of finance? Demonetization and the dubious

Page 21 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
push to cashlessness in India. Development and Change, 49(2), 420–36.
Chaudhari, B. and König, L (2017). The Aadhaar scheme: A cornerstone of a new scheme in India? Contem-
porary South Asia, 26(2), 127–42.
Chitrapu, S. (2018). Associations and networks: Inequalities in film and TV production. In A. Athique, V.
Parthasarathi, and S. V. and Srinivas (Eds.), The Indian media economy, Vol. 1: Industrial Dynamics and Cul-
tural Adaptation (pp. 152–70). Oxford University Press.
Curwen, P. and Whalley, J. (2018). High-speed data provision by mobile networks in the Asia-Pacific region.
Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance, 20(3), 225–43.
Das, B. and Parthasarathi, V. (2011). Media research and public policy: Tiding over the rupture. In R. Mansell
and M. Raboy (Eds.), The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy (pp.243–60). Wiley Black-
well.
Deka, M. (2016). Bazaars and video games in India. BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 7(2), 172–88.
Deka, M. (2017). Calculation in the pirate bazaars. Journal of Cultural Economy, 10(5), 450–61.
Deo, A. and Duggal, V. (2017). Radios, ringtones, and memory cards or, how the mobile phone became our
favourite music playback device. South Asian Popular Culture, 15(1), 41–56.
Deshbandhu, A. (2020). Gaming culture(s) in India: Digital play in everyday life. Routledge.
Donner, J. and Tellez, A. (2008). Mobile banking and economic development: Linking adoption, impact, and
use. Asian Journal of Communication, 18(4), 318–32.
Fitzgerald, S. (2019). Over the top video services in India: Media imperialism after globalization. Media Indus-
tries Journal, 6(2), https://doi.org/10.3998/mij.15031809.0006.206
Fitzgerald, S. (2020). The networked media economy and the Indian gilded age. In A. Athique and V.
Parthasarathi (Eds.), Platform capitalism in India (pp. 43–65). Palgrave Macmillan.
FICCI-KPMG. (2017). LAIFC Report – The ‘digital first': The Indian OTT market. FICCI.
Girija, S. (2019). A case study of production practices and user participation in an advertising-free digital
news media organisation. TripleC: Communication, Capitalism and Critique, 17(1), https://doi.org/10.31269/
triplec.v17i1.909

Page 22 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Godhwani, G. (2020). Making India's budget machinable. In S. Mertia (Ed.), Lives of data: Essays on compu-
tational cultures from India. Institute of Network Cultures.
Goel, S. (2018). Internet shutdowns: Strategy to maintain law and order or muzzle dissent? Economic and Po-
litical Weekly, 53(42). Retrieved from: https://www.epw.in/engage/article/internet-shutdowns-strategy-main-
tain-law
Gupta, R. and Jain, K. (2015). Adoption behavior of rural India for mobile telephony: A multigroup study.
Telecommunications Policy, 39(8), 691–704.
Gurumurthy, A. and Chami, N. (2018). Digital India through a gender lens: IT For Change. Heinrich Boll Foun-
dation.
Gurumurthy, A., Chami, N., and Thomas, S. (2016). Unpacking digital India: A feminist commentary on policy
agendas in the digital moment. Journal of Information Policy, 6(1), 371–402.
Harlow, S. and Chadha, M. (2019). Indian entrepreneurial journalism. Journalism Studies, 20(6), 891–910.
Hill, D. and Athique, A. (2018). The role of off-shore financial centres in Indian telecoms. In A. Athique, V.
Parthasarathi, and S. V. Srinivas (Eds.), The Indian media economy, Vol 1: Industrial dynamics and cultural
adaptation (pp. 66–92). Oxford University Press.
Ibrahim, A. (2017). Law, love, and marriage: Television news and the production of publicity in North India.
BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 8(2), 224–43.
Ithurbide, C. (2020). Telecom and technology actors repositioning music streaming. In A. Athique and V.
Jain, R. and Dara, R. (2017). Framework for evolving spectrum management regimes: Lessons from India.
Telecommunications Policy, 41(5–6), 473–85.
Jain, S. and Gabor, D. (2020). The rise of digital financialisation: The case of India. New Political Economy,
25(5), 813–28.
Jayakar, K. (2011). The conditional access system: The dynamics of a la carte pricing for cable television in
India. International Journal of Communication, 5, 1502–22.
Jha, S. K. and Mankund, N. (2018). Examining digital competencies within the entertainment industry. In A.
Athique, V. Parthasarathi, and S. V. Srinivas (Eds.), The Indian media economy, Vol. 2: Market dynamics and

Page 23 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
social transactions (pp. 80–98). Oxford University Press.
Jonnalagedda, S. (2011). Revenue generation in the information era: Opportunities and challenges. IIMB
Management Review, 23(1), 51–63.
Joseph, K. J. and Govindan Parayil (2006). Trade Liberalization and Digital Divide: An Analysis of the In-
formation Technology Agreement of WTO. Centre for Development Studies. CDS Working Papers no. 381.
http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/3107#.Vzzy-_5wVC9
Kanozia, R. and Ganghariya, G. (2021). Cultural proximity and hybridity: popularity of Korean pop culture in
India. Media Asia, 48(3), 219–28.
Kathuria, R., Kedia, M., and Sekhani, R. (2019). An analysis of competition and regulatory intervention
in India's television distribution and broadcasting services. Indian Council for Research on International
Economic Relations. Retrieved from: https://icrier.org/pdf/An_Analysis_of_Competition_and_Regulatory_In-
terventions.pdf
Kathuria, R., Kedia, M., Varma, G., Bagchi, K., and Sekhani, R. (2018). The anatomy of an internet blackout:
Measuring the economic impact of internet shutdowns in India. Indian Council for Research on International
Economic Relations. Retrieved from: https://icrier.org/pdf/Anatomy_of_an_Internet_Blackout.pdf
Kaur, H. (2020). At home in the world: Co-productions and Indian alternative cinema. BioScope: South Asian
Screen Studies, 11(2), 123–45.
Krishnan, A. (2018). Should the Google search engine be answerable to competition regulation authorities?
Economic and Political Weekly, 53(35), Online.
Kumar, A. (2018). Media portfolios after credit-scoring: Attention, prediction and advertising in Indian media
networks. Postmodern Culture, 28(2).
Kumar, A. (2020). Deriving a tangible promotional calculus: platform monopolies and political advertising. Me-
dia International Australia, 176(1), 52–65.
Kumar, A. and Haneef, S. (2017). Convergence of technologies and journalists: Translation of journalistic
practices through ANT perspective. Estudos em Comunicação, 22, 105–22.
Kumar, K. and Thomas, A. (2006). Telecommunications and development: The cellular mobile ‘revolution’ in
India and China. Journal of Creative Communications, 1(3), 297–309.

Page 24 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Kumar, N. (2014). Facebook for self-empowerment? A study of Facebook adoption in urban India. New Media
& Society, 16(7), 1122–37.
Kumar, S. (2015). Contagious memes, viral videos and subversive parody: The grammar of contention. Inter-
national Communication Gazette, 77(3), 232–47.
Kumar, S., Mohan, S., and Punathambekar, A. (2021). Beyond the nation cultural regions in South Asia's
online video communities. In S. Cunningham and D. Craig (Eds.), Creator Culture: An Introduction to Global
Social Media Entertainment (pp. 170–88). New York University Press.
Kumar, V., Lahiri, A., and Dogan, O. B. (2018). A strategic framework for a profitable business model in the
sharing economy. Industrial Marketing Management, 69, 147–60.
Kurosaki, T. (2018). Informality, micro and small Enterprises, and the 2016 demonetisation policy in India.
Asian Economic Policy Review, 14(1), 97–118.
Lawrence, A., Houghton, J., Thomas, J., and Weldon, P. (2014). Where is the evidence? Realising the value
of grey literature for public policy and practice: A discussion paper. Swinburne Institute for Social Research.
Retrieved from: https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2014-11/apo-nid42299.pdf
Liang, L. (2018). Film as commodity: Copyright, piracy, and circulation. In A. Athique, V. Parthasarathi, and S.
V. Srinivas (Eds.), The Indian Media Economy, Vol. 2: Market Dynamics and Social Transactions (pp. 60–79).
Oxford University Press.
Ligon, E., Malick, B., Sheth, K., and Trachtman, C. (2019). What explains low adoption of digital payment
technologies? Evidence from small-scale merchants in Jaipur, India. PLoS One, 14(7).
Lorenzen, M. and Mudambi, R. (2010). Bangalore vs. Bollywood: connectivity and catch-up in emerging mar-
ket economies, AIB Insights, 10(1), pp. 7–11.
Mallapragada, M. (2006). Home, homeland, homepage: belonging and the Indian-American web. New Media
& Society, 8(2), 207–27.
Mallapragada, M. (2010). Desktop deities: Hindu temples, online cultures and the politics of remediation.
South Asian Popular Culture, 8(2), 109–21.
Mani, S. and Sridhar, V. (2015). Diffusion of broadband Internet in India: Trends, determinants and chal-
lenges. Economic and Political Weekly, 50(51), 54–62

Page 25 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Maringanti, A. (2009). Sovereign state and mobile subjects: Politics of the UIDAI. Economic and Political
Weekly, 44(46), 35–40.
McMillin, D. (2006). Outsourcing identities: Call centres and cultural transformation in India. Economic and
Political Weekly, 41(3), 235–41.
Mehta, S. (2019). Precarity and new media: Through the lens of Indian creators. International Journal of Com-
munication, 13, 5548–67.
Mertia, S. (2020). (Eds.) Lives of data: Essays on computational cultures from India. Institute of Network Cul-
tures.
Mudgal, V. (2014). Union budget and the ‘digital divide': Old wine in new bottle, Economic and Political Week-
ly, 49(31), Online.
Mudliar, P., Donner, J., and Thies, W. (2012). Emergent practices around CGNet Swara, voice forum for cit-
izen journalism in rural India. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Com-
munication Technologies and Development (pp. 159–68). Association for Computing Machinery.
Mukherjee, R. (2019). Jio sparks disruption 2.0: Infrastructural imaginaries and platform ecosystems in ‘Digital
India'. Media, Culture & Society, 41(2), 175–95.
Mukherjee, R. and Singh, A. (2017). Reconfiguring mobile media assemblages: Download cultures and
translocal flows of affective platforms. Asiascape: Digital Asia 4(3), 257–84.
Mukherji, R. (2008) The politics of telecommunications regulation: State–Industry alliance favouring foreign
investment in India. The Journal of Development Studies, 44(10), 1405–23.
Nair, V. (2018). An eye for an I: Recording biometrics and reconsidering identity in postcolonial India. Con-
temporary South Asia, 26(2), 143–56.
Narayana, M. R. (2011). Telecommunications services and economic growth: Evidence from India. Telecom-
munications Policy, 35(2), 115–27.
Narayanan, R. and Dhorajiwala, S. (2019). The namesake: Human costs of digital identities. Economic and
Political Weekly, 54(49), Online.
Nielsen, R. and Sen, A. (2016). Digital journalism start-ups in India. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journal-
ism.

Page 26 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Ohm, B., Parthasarathi, V., and Ståhlberg, P. (2019). Critical explorations of media modernity in India. Culture
Unbound, 10(3), 322–31.
Pal, J. (2003). The Developmental promise of information and communications technology in India. Contem-
porary South Asia, 12(1), 103–19.
Panday, J. and Malcolm, J. (2018). The Political economy of data localisation', Partecipazione e conflitto,
11(2), 511–27.
Pandit, S. (2019). Public policy and the digital deadline: The implementation of the Digital Addressable Sys-
tem (DAS) in West Bengal. Journal of Digital Media and Policy, 10(2), 217–28.
Parsheera, S. (2018). A gendered perspective on artificial intelligence. In 2018 ITU Kaleidoscope: Machine
Learning for a 5G Future (pp. 1–7). IEEE.
Parsheera, S., Shah, A., and Bose, A. (2017). Competition issues in India's online economy, NIPFP Working
Paper Series, 194. National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
Parthasarathi, V. (2018). Market dynamics of the Indian media economy. In A. Athique, V. Parthasarathi, and
S. V. Srinivas (Eds.), The Indian media economy, Vol. 2: Market dynamics and social transactions (pp. 60–79).
Oxford University Press.
Parthasarathi, V. (2019). The Conundrum of Relevant Market: Market Definition in India's Complex TV Distri-
bution Business. Indian Journal of Law & Technology, 15(2), 494–520.
Parthasarathi, V. and Athique, A. (2020). Market matters: Interdependencies in the Indian media economy.
Media, Culture and Society, 42(3), 431–48.
Parthasarathi, V. and Srinivas, A. (2019). Problematic ownership patterns: The evolution of the television dis-
tribution networks in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 54(12), Online.
Parthasarathi, V., Amanullah, A., and Koshy, S. (2016). Digitalization as formalization: A view from below. In-
ternational Journal of Digital Television, 7(2), 155–71.
Parthasarathi, V., Chitrapu, S., and Elavarthi, S. P. (2020). Media economics in India: Traversing the Rubicon?
In M. Bjørn von Rimscha (Ed.), Management and economics of communication. De Gruyter.
Patel, R. (2006). Working the Night Shift: Gender and the Global Economy. ACME: An International Journal
for Critical Geographies, 5, 9–27.

Page 27 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Pathak-Shelat, M. and DeShano, C. (2014). Digital youth cultures in small town and rural Gujarat, India. New
Media & Society, 16(6), 983–1001.
Pingali, V. (2018). Internet search engines and two-sided markets: implications for antitrust analysis. Econom-
ic and Political Weekly, 53(38).
Prasad, R. (2018). Ascendant India, digital India: How net neutrality advocates defeated Facebook's Free Ba-
sics. Media, Culture & Society, 40(3), 415–31.
Prasad, R. (2019). Digital disruption? Journalism startups in India. Journalism, 22(8), 2122–38.
Prasad, R. and Sridhar, V. (2015). Unfinished tasks in the liberalization of spectrum for mobile services. Eco-
nomic & Political Weekly, 50(13), 46–52.
Rai, A. (2020). Jugaad time: Ecologies of everyday hacking in India. Duke University Press.
Ramesh, B. (2004). ‘Cyber coolies’ in BPO: Insecurities and vulnerabilities of non-standard work. Economic
and Political Weekly, 39(5), 492–7.
Rangaswamy, N. and Arora, P. (2016). The mobile internet in the wild and every day: Digital leisure in the
slums of urban India. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 19(6), 611–26.
Rao, U. and Nair, V. (2019). Governing with biometrics. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 42(3),
469–81.
Raghavan, M. (2017). The Privacy Judgment and Financial Inclusion in India, Economic and Political Weekly,
52(51), 58-61
Ramanathan, U. (2010). A Unique Identity Bill. Economic and Political Weekly, 45(30), 20–14.
Rashmi, M. (2018). The offline media economy: Digitally marginalized users of mobile phones. In A. Athique
and V. Parthasarathi (Eds.). The Indian media economy, Vol. 2: Market dynamics and social transactions (pp.
202–19). Oxford University Press.
Reddy, P. and Chandrashekharan, S. (2017). Create, copy, disrupt: India's intellectual property dilemmas. Ox-
ford University Press.
Reimeingam, M. (2015). Korean media: A catalyst of acculturation to Korean culture in Manipur. Journal of
North East India Studies, 5(2), 1–17.

Page 28 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Shahin, Saif. (2017). Facing up to Facebook: How digital activism, independent regulation, and mass media
foiled a neoliberal threat to net neutrality. Information, Communication & Society, 22(1), 1–17.
Saraph, A. and Kathpalia, L. (2018). Democratic accountability in digital India. Economic and Political Weekly,
53(46), 25
Scaria, A. G. (2014). Piracy in the Indian film industry: Copyright and cultural consonance. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Sibal, P. (2019). Can independent journalism thrive under paywalls? Economic and Political Weekly, 54(4).
Singh, P. (2010). From a public Internet to the Internet mall. Economic and Political Weekly, 45(42), Online.
Singh, P. (2015). Net neutrality is basically internet egalitarianism. Economic and Political Weekly, 50(19),
12–15.
Singh, P. (2020). Aadhaar: Platform over Troubled Waters. In Athique, A., Parthasarathi, V. (Eds.), Platform
Capitalism in India (pp. 201–19). Palgrave Macmillan.
Singh, T. and Bandyopadhyay, S. (2014). Factors affecting choice of cable services in small towns of India.
National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. Available at: www.ncaer.org/publication_de-
tails.php?pID=231&pID=231
Sinha, V. (2011). Religion and commodification: ‘Merchandizing’ diasporic Hinduism. Routledge.
Sreesanth, K. and Balasaravanan, T. (2020). Adapting to new media: A case study on exhibition and publicity
practices of a rural single screen theatre in the digital era. South Asian Popular Culture, 18(2), 163–76.
Sreekumar, T. T. (2006). ICTs for the poor: Civil society and cyberlibertarian developmentalism in rural India.
In G. Parayil (Eds.), Political economy & information capitalism in India: Digital divide, development divide
and equity (pp. 51–87). Springer.
Srinivas, S. V. (2017). Politics in the age of YouTube: Degraded images and small screen revolutions. In J.
Neves and B. Sarkar (Eds.), Asian video cultures: In the penumbra of the global. Duke University Press.
Srinivasan, J. and Burrell, J. (2013). Revisiting the fishers of Kerala, India. In Proceedings of the Sixth Inter-
national Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (pp. 56–66). Asso-
ciation for Computing Machinery.

Page 29 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
Srinivasan, J., Bailur, S., and Seshagiri, S. (2018). The poverty of privacy: Understanding privacy trade-offs
from identity infrastructure users in India. International Journal of Communication, 12, 1228–47.
Stephanie, L., Sharma, R., and Ramasubbu, N. (2012). The digitisation of Bollywood: Adapting to disruptive
innovation. Media Asia, 39(1), 3–16.
Sundaram, R. (2015). Publicity, transparency, and the circulation engine: The media sting in India. Cultural
Anthropology, 56(12), S297–S305.
Sundaram, R. (2020). Hindu nationalism's crisis machine. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 10(3),
734–41.
Surie, A. and Koduganti, J. (2016). The emerging nature of work in platform economy companies in Bengalu-
ru, India: The case of Uber and Ola cab drivers. E-Journal of International and Comparative Labour Stud-
ies, 5(3). Retrieved from: file:///Users/vibodhparthasarathi/Downloads/helpdesk,+SURIE_KODUGANTI_FI-
NAL.pdf.pdf
Thirumal, P. (2008). Situating the new media: Reformulating the Dalit question. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala
(Eds.), South Asian technoscapes. Peter Lang.
Thomas, P. N. (2020). Notes on the platformization of mainstream Hinduism. In A. Athique and V.

Tiwary, I. (2020). Amazon Prime Video: A platform ecosphere. In A. Athique and V. Parthasarathi (Eds.), Plat-
form capitalism in India (pp. 87–106). Palgrave Macmillan.
Tripathy, R. (2012). Music mania in small-town Bihar: Emergence of vernacular identities. Economic and Po-
litical Weekly, 47(22), 58–66.
Tripathy, R. (2018). The artist as entrepreneur: Talent, taste, and risk in Haryana and Bihar. In A. Athique and
V. Parthasarathi (Eds.), The Indian media economy, Vol.1: Industrial dynamics and cultural adaptation (pp.
197–213). Oxford University Press.
Udupa, S. (2016). Archiving as history-making: Religious politics of social media in India. Communication,
Culture, and Critique, 9(2), 212–30.
Verma, R. K., Ilavarasan, P.V., and Kar, A. K. (2020). Inequalities in ride-hailing platforms. In A. Athique and
V. Parthasarathi (Eds.), Platform capitalism in India (pp. 178–98). Palgrave Macmillan.

Page 30 of 31
SAGE SAGE Reference
• bazaars
• India
• topography
• domain
• economy
• economies
• digital media
• legacy
https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529757170

Page 31 of 31

Topography of The Indian Media Economy

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Topography of The Indian Media Economy

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

SAGE Reference

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

Author: Vibodh Parthasarathi, Preeti Raghunath

© 2022 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.

Expanding Horizons of Media Bazaars: Topography of the DME in India

Vibodh Parthasarathi Preeti Raghunath

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

A Scalar Approach to the DME

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The Intellectual Setting

Experiences of the Digital Haat

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

Continuity and Change in the Media Bazaar

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

Staking Markets of Interests and Trust

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

push to cashlessness in India. Development and Change, 49(2), 420–36.

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

social transactions (pp. 80–98). Oxford University Press.

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

Sinha, V. (2011). Religion and commodification: ‘Merchandizing’ diasporic Hinduism. Routledge.

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

Thomas, P. N. (2020). Notes on the platformization of mainstream Hinduism. In A. Athique and V.

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy

You might also like