Forms, Patterns, Trends in the Twenty-first Century
Mirza Asmer Beg
POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA: LOCATING DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE by Edited by Yatindra Singh Sisodia and Pratip Chattopadhyay Routledge, 2023, 174 pp., INR 1295.00
October 2024, volume 48, No 10

Political communication has multiple layers and a varied audience. Since Independence, democracy and governance have been the core themes of political communication in India. Focusing upon contemporary times, this book explores the structure, outline and development in political communication, and highlights the importance of perspective in political messaging by uncovering its multifaceted, overlapping and versatile patterns. It essentially aims at providing the background of the ‘agency-structure’ connection in investigating the political substance of communication in India. It gives us a sense of how intricate and complex political communication analysis can become. The volume tries to understand the degree of self-sufficiency of audience-public in appreciating, investigating and participating in the political communication process. It focuses on a central enquiry about the result of the political communication process in today’s India. In the present times, one of the main contestations is taking place between the BJP at the Centre and the Government of West Bengal ruled by the Trinamool Congress in the cultural and electoral space. The book centres attention on such contested communication and unpacks it to underline the importance of political communication.

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