Class 12 Sociology Chapter 7 Mass Media and Communications NCERT Solutions

Q. Trace out the changes that have been occurring in the newspaper industry. What is your opinion on these changes?

Answer: The newspaper industry in India has changed in three connected ways.

Growth despite fears of decline: Many expected the rise of television and the Internet to sideline newspapers, but Indian circulation actually grew: average daily circulation rose from 39.1 million copies (2006) to 62.8 million copies (2016), a compound annual growth rate of 4.87%, with the north zone growing fastest at 7.83%. This was driven by more literate people migrating to cities (e.g. Delhi’s Hindustan edition grew from 64,000 to 425,000 copies between 2003 and 2005) and by district/block editions meeting small-town and rural readers’ needs (Malayala Manorama, Eenadu, Dina Thanthi, Dainik Bhaskar).

Technology change: From the late 1980s, newspapers became fully automated: from a reporter’s desk to the final page-proof: through PCs networked over LANs and newsmaking software. A reporter’s shorthand notebook, pen, typewriter and plain telephone gave way to a digital recorder, laptop or PC, mobile or satellite phone, modem, dish and antenna (Box 7.10’s Amar Ujala example: about 100 reporters and 100 photographers serving 13 editions across UP and Uttarakhand).

Changing content and readership: Reading habits changed: older readers read the whole paper, younger readers go straight to sections of specific interest: pushing newspapers toward “infotainment,” a mix of information and entertainment, and turning the newspaper into more of a consumer product than a carrier of fixed traditional values.

Opinion: These changes show a genuinely resilient industry that adapted rather than declined: but the shift toward infotainment and dependence on advertisers’ revenue (noted in Box 7.11) also means content is shaped more by what sells than by a fixed public-service mission, which is worth watching critically even as circulation numbers look healthy.

Q. Is radio as a medium of mass communication dying out? Discuss the potential that FM stations have in post-liberalisation India.

Answer: No: the chapter’s own evidence shows radio has not died out, only changed shape.

Radio’s continuing reach: By 2000, All India Radio’s programmes reached about two-thirds of Indian households (around 110 million households, over some 120 million radio sets) in 24 languages and 146 dialects; today AIR has grown to 480 stations and 681 transmitters, covering 99% of the population over 92% of the country’s area.

FM’s post-liberalisation potential: Privately owned FM stations arrived in 2002, boosting entertainment programming, though they are barred from broadcasting political news bulletins, which is why many specialise in particular kinds of popular music. Popular FM brands (Radio Mirchi: Times of India group; Red FM: Living Media; Radio City: Star Network) belong to media conglomerates, showing real commercial confidence in the medium. Films like Rang De Basanti and Lage Raho Munna Bhai even use radio as an active plot device, reflecting its continuing cultural presence.

Community radio’s example: Box 7.14’s Raghav FM Mansoorpur 1, a self-built village station in Bihar reaching thousands of villagers within a 20 km radius, shows FM’s potential to serve local needs: local news, film songs, public-interest health messages: that large networks cannot.

Conclusion: The book sees enormous potential in FM’s future: further privatisation and community-owned stations, driven by a growing demand for local news, matching a worldwide trend of local radio replacing big networks. Radio has not died: it has found a new, more local role.

Q. Trace the changes that have been happening in the medium of television. Discuss.

Answer:

The state-TV era: TV began experimentally in 1959 for rural development. SITE (August 1975 to July 1976) broadcast directly to 2,400 rural TV sets across six states. Doordarshan set up stations in Delhi, Mumbai, Srinagar and Amritsar by 1975, adding Kolkata, Chennai and Jalandhar within a year. Colour broadcasting began during the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, and hit soap operas (Hum Log, 1984-85; Buniyaad, 1986-87) and serialised epics (Ramayana, 1987-88; Mahabharata, 1988-90) drew massive, loyal audiences and advertising revenue.

The globalisation era: In 1991, India had just one state-controlled channel; by 1998 there were about 70. The 1991 Gulf War (which popularised CNN) and the launch of Star-TV the same year, followed by Zee TV (1992), signalled the arrival of private satellite television. By 2000, 40 private cable/satellite channels existed, including regional ones (Sun-TV, Eenadu-TV, Udaya-TV, Raj-TV, Asianet). Cable operators grew from 100 (1984) to about 60,000 (1999).

Localisation: Foreign channels adapted to Indian audiences rather than imposing foreign content: STAR Plus, originally all-English, began a Hindi programming belt from October 1996 and became fully Hindi by February 1999 (slogan: “Aapki Boli. Aapka Plus Point”), while STAR Sports/ESPN added Hindi audio tracks and larger players launched regional-language channels.

Today: Per TRAI’s 2015-16 Annual Report, India became the world’s second largest TV market after China. Channels run 24×7 with lively, informal news, and entertainment TV produces superstars and formats like reality shows (Kaun Banega Crorepati, Indian Idol, Bigg Boss).

Opinion: Television changed from a single state-run channel serving a development mission to a vast, competitive, commercial industry: a change that has made news “more immediate, democratic and intimate,” in the book’s own words, but has also raised real questions (as Box 7.12’s coverage of the Prince rescue shows) about whether the drive for exclusive live coverage can shade into voyeurism, and whether serious political and economic issues get neglected in the process.

Q. Imagine a world where there is no television, no cinema, no newspapers, no magazines, no internet, no telephones, no mobile phones. Write down your daily activities in a day. Identify the occasions when you used the media in some way or the other. Find out from an older generation what life was like without any of these forms of communication. Compare it with your life. Discuss the ways work and leisure have changed with the developments in communication technologies.

Answer: A typical day’s list shows media at almost every step: an alarm or messages on the mobile phone, the morning newspaper or news on television, online classes or study material, calls and chats with friends, music or videos in free time, and even Board results and textbooks on the Internet, as the chapter notes. Older people usually recall a life where news came late, by word of mouth or the radio; letters took days; one family telephone or none; and leisure meant talking, games, fairs and the occasional film. Work has changed because people can be reached anywhere (the chapter’s plumbers, electricians and carpenters with mobile phones), migrants keep regular touch with their villages, and information travels instantly; leisure has become more home-based and screen-based, and it now mixes with work because the phone is always on.

Q. Have you seen the range of advertisements of mobile phones? Have you noticed the diverse social groups that they are catering to?

Answer: Yes. Mobile phone advertisements target very different groups: young people and students (cameras, music, games, social media), professionals (speed, business features), rural and low-income buyers (cheap handsets, long battery life, regional languages), families and older people (easy use, keeping in touch with children), and migrants who need to call home. This shows the chapter’s point that the market shapes media and communication, and that different sections of people use them very differently.

Q. Ask anyone you know from a generation that grew up in the first two decades after independence about the documentaries that were routinely shown before the screening of films. Write down their recollections.

Answer: Write down what they remember. The chapter tells you what to expect: the Films Division of the government produced newsreels and documentaries, shown before the screening of films in every movie theatre, documenting the development process as directed by the state. People usually recall films on dams, factories and the Five Year Plans, the Green Revolution, family planning, health and hygiene campaigns, national leaders and national events, and messages against untouchability and child marriage. Connect their recollections to the chapter’s point that the media was then seen as a partner in nation-building and a means to inform the people of developmental efforts.

Q. Identify a cross section of people from an older generation. Find out from them what television programmes consisted of in the 1970s and 1980s? Did many of them have access to television?

Answer: Their answers usually match the chapter. Programmes on Doordarshan’s stations were a mix of news, children’s and women’s programmes, farmers’ programmes (such as agricultural advice) and entertainment such as film-based programmes; from the mid-1980s, soap operas like Hum Log and Buniyaad and later the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. Access was limited: there was a single state channel, sets were costly, and many people watched on a neighbour’s or a community set (the SITE experiment of 1975-76 reached only 2,400 community sets in rural areas of six states). Access widened after colour broadcasting began with the 1982 Asian Games and the number of transmitters increased in 1984-85.

Q. If the Internet removes the need for all these elements by allowing music to be marketed and downloaded directly, what will be left of the music industry? How do you see the influence of mobile applications on music industry?

Answer: The factories, distribution chains, music shops and sales staff built around CDs and cassettes shrink or disappear, but the industry does not vanish: what remains is the making of music (artists, composers, studios), the ownership of rights, and the companies that market music online, which are still concentrated in the hands of a few large conglomerates. Mobile applications have become the main way many people listen to music: streaming apps make huge libraries available cheaply, let independent and regional artists reach listeners directly, and earn through subscriptions and advertisements, while also making it harder for many artists to earn from sales. This shows the chapter’s point about the fusion of forms of media and the global reach of music.

Q. Find out how many places do the newspaper you are most familiar with, brought out from. Have you noticed how there are supplements that cater to city specific or town specific interests and events? Have you noticed the many commercial supplements that accompany many newspapers these days?

Answer: Check the print line of your newspaper, which lists its editions and printing centres; large papers are brought out from many cities, and Indian-language papers often from district towns too (the chapter’s Amar Ujala feeds 13 editions across Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand; Eenadu was published from 10 towns in Andhra Pradesh by 1998). Most papers carry city or town supplements with local news, events and advertisements, and commercial supplements on property, jobs, education, shopping or festivals. This reflects the chapter’s points that newspapers compete by bringing out editions from multiple centres, that local news has become central, and that dependence on advertisers gives them a larger say in content.

Q1. Do you think readers have changed or newspapers have changed? Discuss.

Answer: Both have changed, and each has pushed the other. Readers have changed: younger readers have specific interests like sports, entertainment or society gossip and go straight to those pages, while older people read the paper in its entirety. Newspapers have changed too: to reach a wide range of readers they carry a plurality of stories, cut prices, depend more on advertisers, and treat the paper as a consumer product; the box says production of a newspaper is no longer related to a commitment to values that embody a tradition.

Q2. Discuss the term infotainment. Can you think of examples? What do you think the effect of infotainment will be?

Answer: Infotainment is a combination of information and entertainment, used to sustain the interest of readers with varied interests. Examples: news pages full of celebrity and film gossip, colour supplements on lifestyle, news presented as dramatic stories or quizzes, and television news with music and sensational visuals. Its effect can be good, since more people read and follow the news, but it also risks trivialising news: serious political and economic issues may be neglected, and what sells matters more than what is important.

Q. You may have watched on television the whole rescue operation. If not you can choose from any other event. Organise a debate in class around the following points:

1. What is the likely impact of this competition among television channels to outdo one another in running exclusive live coverage of events for gaining higher viewership? Channels drop all other news to stay with one event, so other important issues go unreported; coverage becomes sensational and emotional; and viewers are drawn into a kind of national hysteria, as the box describes. It can also put pressure on those handling the rescue.

2. Can we look at this issue as a kind of voyeurism (peep into some other people’s private/intimate moments) indulged in by television cameras? Yes, to a large extent: continuous footage of a frightened child crying for his mother, and asking people “what do you feel about Prince?”, intrude into a family’s private suffering for the sake of viewership; the box itself says there are other instances when TV intrudes into the personal lives of people.

3. Is it an example of the positive role played by television media in highlighting the plight of rural poor? Partly: it showed the danger of open borewells, brought help and public concern, and made people across faiths pray together. But the coverage centred on one dramatic event rather than on the everyday problems of the rural poor, so it is at best a limited example of that positive role.

Q. Have you watched a dubbed programme? What do you feel about it?

Answer: Most students have watched dubbed cartoons or films, for example American programmes in Hindi. The chapter says STAR and Sony dubbed US programming for younger audiences because children seemed able to adjust to the peculiarities that arise when the language is one and the setting another. A good answer gives your own view: dubbing makes foreign content understandable and shows how transnational channels localise; but the jokes, names and settings can feel odd, since the characters speak Hindi in an American setting.

Q. Which of these programmes can be identified as interactive shows, as family soaps, talk shows and reality shows? Discuss.

Answer: Of the chapter’s own examples, Kaun Banega Crorepati, Indian Idol and Bigg Boss are reality shows; Kaun Banega Crorepati (a quiz where viewers can take part) and Indian Idol (where viewers vote) are also interactive shows. Family soaps are long-running serialised family stories, like Hum Log and Buniyaad in the Doordarshan era. Talk shows are programmes where a host discusses issues with guests or a studio audience. Add current examples of each that you watch.