Reconceptualising News and Redefining its Values: Postmodern Perspective

Abstract

News media as a forum for public discourse not only tries to reflect and represent society out there but also signifies, constructs and constitutes society it. Discourses through news media influence the creation and modification of social identities. They not only construct social identities, but also contribute to processes of cultural change, in which social identities are rearticulated, reconstructed and redefined. Under the traditional mass media set-up journalists used to give emphasis on how they see the world rather than what they see in it; News media organizations stressed to maintain ‘objectivity’ in reporting news and made a clear demarcation between news and views. However, with the contemporary cultural shift, the audiences now want to have real experience and feeling about the events around them and therefore news needs to be reconceptualised and its measurement criteria need to be revisited. In this paper, some of the important developments have been briefly outlined that demonstrate the emergence of postmodern condition. Then discuss in detail the areas of confrontation between the traditional mass mediated conception of news based on liberal, modern, linear transmission based model and the emerging demassified conception based on people centred, participatory model.