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MASS
COMMUNICATION
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OF SOCIOLOGY
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ASSIGNMENT
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RAUNAK TRIPATHI
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MASS MEDIA AND RELIGION IN

CONTEMPORARY INDIA
The medias the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to
make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and thats
power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
The possibility of mass mind control has loomed in front of the general
public, since the inception of mass media. In the present era of
globalization, a major section of the society depends on information and
communication to remain connected to the world on a daily basis for
various reasons. Hence, we put our trust on the media as an authority for
providing us with information, education and entertainment. The first
and the foremost function of the media is to provide news and
information to the masses. The next is to provide entertainment to the
masses in todays fast paced stressful life. The third important function is
to educate the population about their rights, morals, social and religious
obligations. The mass media has a huge impact on society in shaping the
public opinion of the masses.
CASE STUDY ON INFLUENCE OF MASS MEDIA

Pakistani media influenced the public opinion against the Taliban in

Swat by repeated telecast of a video clip showing whipping of a woman
by a Talibani. Before that the public opinion over the military action
against the Taliban in Swat was divided, but repeated telecast of this
short video clip changed the public opinion over night in the favour of
the government to take action.

Contemporary India is known as the Land of Religions. However,

what is indubitably unique about India is that it is the birthplace of
several major world religions. A bewildering array of other religious
practices, both outside the faiths and within the faiths, is encountered all
over India.
Mass media plays an important role in establishing the religious
diversity and religious tolerance in the country. The major impact of
mass media has been on the diffusion of religion and culture. Diffusion
describes the spread of a specific cultural trait or religious belief from
the point of origin throughout an area and into the neighbouring regions.
For instance, during the middle of the last century, cinema played a very
significant role in spreading a cult associated with the worship of
Santoshi maa. Also, in the closing decades of the last century, the small
screen played no less significant role in carrying messages of Ramayana
and Mahabharata to almost every individual, irrespective of caste,
religion, community, age and gender. Today, television focuses on Indian
culture and their respective religious beliefs and emphasizes a great deal
of sharing and tolerance. There are three metaphors to describe three
aspects of media and their impact on religion. These are the media as
conduits, media as languages and media as environments, all of which
facilitate changes in the amount, content and direction of religious
messages in society, while at the same time they transform religious
representations and challenge the authority of the institutionalized
religions. Media uses different methods of formatting and framing the
content of its messages, influencing the narrative construction and the
status of reality, which affect the relationship between the sender and the
receiver. In this way, the media is therefore able to alter, manipulate and
form religious presentations as it sees fit.

Another major impact of mass media has been the substantial increase in
the religious conversions. This is also due to the increased diffusion of
religious beliefs amongst the masses by the media. Religious conversion
is a serious issue in the country. Religious conversion is the adoption of
a set of beliefs identified with one particular religious denomination to
the exclusion of others. In other words, religious conversion could be
described as abandoning of adherence to one denomination and
affiliating with another. Conversion is normally considered as an
insincere act, sometimes for relatively trivial reasons such as parent
converting to enable a child to be admitted to a good school associated
with a religion, or a person adopting a religion, or a person adopting a
religion more in keeping with the social class he or she aspires to. Mass
media has become the centre of proselytism too. Proselytism is the act of
attempting to convert by persuasion of another individual from a
different religion or belief system. Many people use mass media as a
tool to promote their set of religious beliefs thereby, urging people to
convert their religion. The acceptance and proselytizing of western
culture by the cinema has created a lot of issues amongst the masses who
believe that the western culture poses a major threat to the principles of
many religions. Many political parties support a certain religious belief.
Their ideas and principles are conveyed to the society via the mass
media. For example, Indias Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party
and the rightwing organisations at its base have long worried about
Christian and Islamic preachers proselytising among Hindus.
In the recent years, the country has been gripped by a fierce debate on
how far the countrys constitutional guarantee of religious freedom
should extend and, in particular, whether it covers the right to convert to
a faith other than the religion of ones ancestry and birth. Media has
been the basic mode for exchange of information between the masses
and the political rulers regarding the same.

CASE STUDY: Homecoming in the Christmas season is supposed to

be a joyous occasion, accompanied by camaraderie and cheer. Not so for
the small community of Christians in Agra, a town in the northern Indian
province of Uttar Pradesh. On the Christmas Eve, the flock of believers
were cowering in fear, because a couple of churches were burnt and
there was the looming threat of more skirmishes with the belligerent
among their Hindu brethren spiralling into serious communal clashes.
The mass media brought this into the light by showing how the peace
and harmony in the country was challenged in the name of religion. This
led to a series of protests. Another programme was brought to the light
known as the GRAND GHAR WAPSI programme which was
announced by the Dharam Jagran Samiti in the neighbouring town,
where Christmas was to be celebrated by bringing 4,000 Christians and
1,000 Muslims back into the folds of Hinduism. Mass media has helped
create awareness amongst masses about such proselytising actions of
certain parties or groups.
Religion and mass media are two extremely influential dimensions of
popular culture. Sometimes, mass communication researchers lack an
accurate sense of religiosity and religious folks often have a jaundiced
view of the media. Consequently, dialogue about the interrelationship of
religion and mass media, all too often, has been heated but not well
informed. Sometimes the media trivialize or even undermine religion but
on the other hand, often religious people appreciate and take advantage
of the provision of news and entertainment by the mass media. Mass
media is capable of facilitating short-term, intermediate-term or longterm effects on the audiences. Often religious communities exploit this
facility to bring their set of ideologies into the limelight. Moreover, the
naked exposures to sensuality, the criminal items, drinking, smoking and
unfair bossism by anti-social elements of the society have hurt the
sentiments of many religious groups. Many of the scenes or themes

shown on television in films or advertisements often run down the

religious values and ideals and cultural themes, for which our traditional
national culture stood. Marketing and branding of religions by the media
have also made a great impact.
Van Morrison once rightly said, These days politics, religion, and
media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a
long time back and the media has taken over.Television is becoming
increasingly important as an Institution for socialising the younger
members of the Indian society. The role of television in moulding their
minds and teaching them Indian values and Indian way of life is growing
at a startling rate.
It is necessary to discuss the implications of the growing interest in the
relationship between religion and mass media. It is essential to get
beyond the superficial and anecdotal assessments of this relationship
through high standards on scholarship. We need to generate a theory
about the nature and behavior of religious audiences and also explore
more thoroughly the social and cultural impacts of religious involvement
in public discourse about media. It is, hence, very important to maintain
a balance between mass media and religion because they form the two
major pillars of the society and have a huge impact on the way the
society functions. Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher and sociologist,
once said, Mass media provides the essential link between the beliefs of
an individual and the demands of the technological society.