Chennai:
Newspapers have been a central feature of teashops in Tamil Nadu and could act as a major factor in eliciting public opinion about an issue, according to an international expert
Delivering a lecture at the Madras University here on Wednesday, Francis Cody, assistant professor with department of anthropology, Toronto University said that it is at the teashop men are likely to get their news about the wider world by reading newspapers aloud together in groups and chatting about politics.
Cody, whose paper Echoes of the teashop in Tamil Newspaper has been published in the Elsevier journal, states that during his research in Pudukotai on two vernacular dailies states that reading the paper in groups at the teashop is different from silent reading at home.
He also states that India is undergoing a newspaper revolution resulting tremendous explosion in regional language newspaper reading and production since mid-1970s. “Between 1976 and 1996, the total circulation of daily newspapers in India increased from 9.3 million to 40.2 million. The rapid increase began from 2001-05 when the circulation of dailies increased by 33 per cent.
“There is also a reason to believe that readership – the total number of people who consume papers, as opposed to circulation figures that only measure the total number of papers -- rose even more sharply during this period. This is because a single copy of certain newspapers is likely to be read by well over 50 people on any given day at places like the teashop or the barbershop,” he said.
Cody said that newspaper which was once the domain of an educational elite has now become an everyday habit for a range of people across a wide swath of the country.
He said that among the more industrialized states with a relatively high literacy rate by Indian standards, Tamil nadu has been one of the leaders in this rapid change in media consumption habits.
“By 2000, literacy rates among men in rural Tamil Nadu has risen sharply with non-literates now forming a minority but reading the newspaper at the teashop was still primarily a matter of talk about news reported in headlines. Someone would read a headline aloud and then addressees and overhearers, ratified or not, would respond to the news item and start a conversation,” he adds.
But now this genre of reading is slowly changing with the socio-economic changes and a newspaper paper is silently being read at home on a mass scale.
He also highlighted that vernacular medium is the most effective one and major English dailies are trying to cash in by floating their own vernacular dailies.
Newspapers have been a central feature of teashops in Tamil Nadu and could act as a major factor in eliciting public opinion about an issue, according to an international expert
Delivering a lecture at the Madras University here on Wednesday, Francis Cody, assistant professor with department of anthropology, Toronto University said that it is at the teashop men are likely to get their news about the wider world by reading newspapers aloud together in groups and chatting about politics.
Cody, whose paper Echoes of the teashop in Tamil Newspaper has been published in the Elsevier journal, states that during his research in Pudukotai on two vernacular dailies states that reading the paper in groups at the teashop is different from silent reading at home.
He also states that India is undergoing a newspaper revolution resulting tremendous explosion in regional language newspaper reading and production since mid-1970s. “Between 1976 and 1996, the total circulation of daily newspapers in India increased from 9.3 million to 40.2 million. The rapid increase began from 2001-05 when the circulation of dailies increased by 33 per cent.
“There is also a reason to believe that readership – the total number of people who consume papers, as opposed to circulation figures that only measure the total number of papers -- rose even more sharply during this period. This is because a single copy of certain newspapers is likely to be read by well over 50 people on any given day at places like the teashop or the barbershop,” he said.
Cody said that newspaper which was once the domain of an educational elite has now become an everyday habit for a range of people across a wide swath of the country.
He said that among the more industrialized states with a relatively high literacy rate by Indian standards, Tamil nadu has been one of the leaders in this rapid change in media consumption habits.
“By 2000, literacy rates among men in rural Tamil Nadu has risen sharply with non-literates now forming a minority but reading the newspaper at the teashop was still primarily a matter of talk about news reported in headlines. Someone would read a headline aloud and then addressees and overhearers, ratified or not, would respond to the news item and start a conversation,” he adds.
But now this genre of reading is slowly changing with the socio-economic changes and a newspaper paper is silently being read at home on a mass scale.
He also highlighted that vernacular medium is the most effective one and major English dailies are trying to cash in by floating their own vernacular dailies.
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