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 National E-Governance Plan.
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 E-governance, we find the aspect [E-governance in transport department] to be one of the most widely covered aspects, which covers online applications and technologies built for convenient fee payment by the stakeholders, again an aspect relevant for the middle class. This is followed by [International cooperation and collaboration w.r.t. E-governance]. Once again, this aspect is more about collaboration of MNCs and other international organizations wrt the technological front of the various facets of E-governance. In this policy too, we find a conspicuous lack of coverage provided to the issues directly connected to the poor. Similar to Digital India, most of the top aspects covered in mass media for E-governance lie on the side of technical advancement and international collaborations that the policy has brought. The focus mostly lies on the middle class and on the corporate constituency. However, there seems to be negligible focus on the issues of the poor, and the problems with policy implementation (like issues of trust, infrastructural issues, and the digital divide).
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. For eGov policy priority, we have business people like Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, and M.N. Vidyashankar among the top covered entities, who were expectedly supporters of the move.
Overall, we can again see that most of the top 20 highest covered entities are politicians, followed by businesspersons. Just like the other three policies discussed, we thus find that in case of E-governance as well, the discourse o policies constituted mainly of political debates, followed by business-persons commenting on the policy. Once again, we see a conspicuous lack of coverage given to academicians, policy experts, and civil society members, which is indicative of the media's apathy towards covering the genuine issues related to the policy implementation and the technical nuances related to the policy.
Both the ruling party and the opposition members are seen to speak mostly positively on E-Governance. Similar to Digital India, the opposition here is again not completely negative about the policy as it was ideated when they (INC) were in power. However, contrary to other policies, for E-governance, we do not find polar many statements by businesspersons for or against the policy.
An example of a statement with positive sentiment: “ We will transform governance, making it more transparent, accountable, accessible and participative, Modi said, adding that e-governance is the foundation of better governance efficient, economical and effective.”
An example of a statement with negative sentiment: “ Despite a few shortcomings, the draft telecom policy 2011 is practical and forward looking, write Ajith Athrady and Dilip Maitra. Amid the telecom sector passing through rough patches due to the 2g spectrum scam, the union telecom minister Kapil Sibal recently announced the draft of a new telecom policy (NTP) aiming to provide a fillip to the country’s fastest growing industry.”