A Media Anthropology of India

The book introduces media anthropology as a distinct sub-discipline in India, presenting a sustained trajectory of research and media practice that has contributed to its growth over the years. Across 5 thematic parts and 18 chapters, the book presents wide-ranging research on various strands of media anthropology as a field, including ethnographic and engaged studies of visual and digital forms of media. The chapters present anthropological research exploring vibrantly diverse spatial settings and subjectivities, allowing readers to grasp the ways in which media practices emerge and come alive.

This book will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of media and communication studies, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and South Asian studies.

Preeti Raghunath is Lecturer in Digital Media and Society at the School of Sociological Studies, Politics and IR, University of Sheffield, UK. Over the last 15 years, her interdisciplinary research has focused on communication technology policies and practices, by taking a long view and centring lived experiences. Her current research is on lived experiences of AI-data policies, infrastructures, and practices. Preeti is the author of Community Radio Policies in South Asia: A Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach (2020), which was a policy ethnography of media policymaking across India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Her research has been published in the International Journal of Communication, Journal of Communication, Global Media and Communication, among others. She has edited Critical Political Economy of AI: Southern Experiences (2026) and special issues on media policies in South and Southeast Asia.

Haripriya Narasimhan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad, India. Her research interests are in two areas: anthropology of the media, and medical anthropology. She has worked on projects focused on issues of caste, class, gender, kinship, globalization, and migration, in rural and urban India, and among the Indian diaspora. Her current research interests include digital health, social aspects of medical technologies, and anthropology of aging.