Topical Seminar on BRICS Media on February 21

22.02.2023

Topical Feb 23 2.pngTopical Feb 23.pngNew topical seminar, themed around BRICS media, was held on February 21. Dr. Uma Shankar Pandey from University of Calcutta (India) shared the podium with the researcher from the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Dr. Gelia Filatkina.

Dr. Pandey provided first-hand insights into the Indian media system, briefing the audience on the specifics of its key segments and mapping out trends.
Indian media is highly multilingual with the vast majority of media being launched in one of the Indian languages. Unless many other countries, India still sees a spectacular growth in print media parallel to the ongoing increase in population’s literacy rate. Indian media landscape is continuously evolving in the face of other rapid developments too, such as growth in the overall number of media and digital media in particular, recovery of advertising rates from the pandemic crisis, and increase in paid subscriptions notably by mobile-first audience.

Dr. Filatkina adopted a more zoomed-out approach by giving the picture in broader strokes and elaborating on the general media trends in BRICS and importance of collaborative efforts.

Though each BRICS country witnesses its own country-specific developments, briefly introduced by the scholar, a number of similar processes runs in all of them. There have been shifts in traditional paradigms of media-state-politics relationships followed by the emergence of hybrid business models and mixed regulatory approaches. Television remains at the core of media systems, though there is an apparent growth in digital media, accompanied by the shift of screen culture to online.

Big thanks to the scholars for giving a profound picture of media industries in the BRICS countries that are incredibly unique in many ways! And thanks to the audience for their questions, thought-provoking as always!