In this page, we show the aspect coverage of various ICTD policies, and the coverage and sentiment slant of various highly covered entities in mass media, related to coverage given to Digital India.
Aspects are subtopics of discussion within a given policy. We use topic modelling methods to uncover the aspects discussed in the mass media about each of the policies being investigated. We compute the mean relative aspect coverage across all of the seven news-sources that we consider. This helps us see what kind of aspects the mass media prefers to highlight or ignore.
For Digital India, we find [Development of cities as Smart Cities] to have the highest coverage, followed by [FDI and investments of multinational companies in India]. The former aspect talks about the futuristic technologies, applications, technology led change, and role of technical advancement in development (Smart Cities). The latter aspect speaks more on investments done by MNCs in India, leading to a positive effect on the Indian economy as a benefit from the policy. On the other hand, aspects like [Digitization of land records], which provide people knowledge about the actual technical nuances of the policy issue and the challenges faced in the policy implementation, are neglected. If we look at the top five aspects covered by the mass media for Digital India, we see the same trend -- the focus of the mass media is mostly on the techical advancement that the policy is supposed to bring. However, we do not find aspects related to detailed discussion of the technical nuances of the policy, or on the faults in policy implementation (like problems in accessing technical alternatives in rural areas, digital illiteracy, and so on). This shows that the media is not really keen on focusing on the grass root issues pertaining to the policy implementation or to the problems of people.
By ‘entities’, we refer to people like politicians, business persons (directors or managers of companies), judiciary members, IAS officers, social activists, etc. that are covered by mass media with respect to a policy. Two of the important aspects of understanding the political economy around policies are: (a) which entities are the most vocal on policy issues in mass media, and (b) how do these entities speak on the policies. We try to answer these two research questions in this page.
The above figure shows the coverage provided to the top 20 highest covered entities in mass media. Digital India policy contains Mukesh Ambani and Nandan Nilekani among the top covered entities. This is because Ambani brought out the Jio network, which has disrupted the telecom space by providing very low-cost 4G connectivity.
Overall, we can see that most of the top 20 highest covered entities for Digital India are politicians, with businesspersons following next. However, there is negligible coverage provided to academicians, policy experts, and civil society members. As can be seen in case of Mukesh Ambani, the involvement of prominent business-persons in the discourse on policies is a trend directly indicative of the corporate interests that are being fulfilled through the policy implementation. However, valuable feedback from social activists (who might aid in collecting citizens' feedback at a ground level) and policy experts is often neglected in mass media.
For Digital India, both the ruling party and opposition members are seen to speak positively. The opposition members are of course less positive, but are not completely negative about the policy as it was ideated when they (INC) were in power. Among business persons, Mukesh Ambani is seen to speak positively on Digital India. This is obvious as Reliance’s Jio catalysed the digital revolution in India and disrupted the digital market, especially during the formulation of the policy. Thus, the businesspersons also seem to follow the ruling politicians is praising the policy move, from the viewpoint of technological determinism, which might further their business interests in turn.
An example of a statement with positive sentiment: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said the network of about three lakh common service centres, which act as access points for delivery of digital services, have bolstered employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, thus empowering citizens.”
An example of a statement with negative sentiment: “Addressing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gandhi said: Digital India cannot become a euphemism for an Internet controlled by large remote corporations."