The Election Fever

This article summarizes media coverage for Indian general elections - National, International and local coverage. So, what is the media saying? Modi wave? Well we won't get into that but rather more of an overview of how they are talking about Indian elections.

National Newspapers and Print Media

Indian Express Elections have sections on politicians, parties, polls, quotes, videos and social media. Times of India presents dance of elections it has sections on schedule, social sentiment analysis. The Hindu has constituency watch and splits the coverage by geographic regions (north, south, east, west and central). Outlook covered elections in a non-chalant way.

The national newspaper coverage of election seems fairly mundane - they go after day to day new and not any over-aching themes. I wish they started doing more data driven and issue driven election coverage and research!

International Media

The Guardian covers the Indian elections with great rigor. My favorite is the interactive guide to Indian elections, in addition to being very informative it has great infographics.

The New York Times and Al Jazeera have also interesting continued coverage of these elections. Especially Al Jazeera has a great articles on election manifestos by various national parties.

Local Media

Some local newspapers like Maharashtra Times are just translating national news in a local language. Some local only publications like LokMat cover celebrities and local twists to the national elections.

Internet/ Social & TV Media

Google has setup election center, which helps voters lookup candidates, and Twitter has become lifeblood of polls and controversies :).

There is a tonne move to write about TV media, NDTV, TimesNow, India TV and the likes have extensive up to the minute coverage but again not as much data and issue driven. Its surprising to me that none of the channel did any detailed research and comparative analysis of various election manifestos and put them on their web-sites for general public to digest the information!

Overall

It's great to see thoughtful coverage of Indian elections in international Media. Indian TV channels and social media have definitely contributed positively to move the democracy needle. However, its disheartening to see the traditional press-coverage to be fairly lack lustre and at times largely entertainment driven. Personally, I think the fourth pillar of democracy needs to adopt a lot more data and issue driven approach so that opinions can be kept in check and a elements of an institutionalized honesty can surface.

References

  1. Indian Express Elections
  2. Times of India
  3. The Hindu
  4. The Guardian
  5. The New York Times
  6. Al Jazeera
  7. Maharastra Times
  8. Lok Mat
  9. Google
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