Mediated Populism: Dream Weaving Popular Will or Tyrannical Sociopolitical Engineering

Mediated populism is a reality in any modern polity. Media have become a powerful public institution and grab every opportunity to reflect and promote popular movements and often arrogate contexts to such efforts. There have been popular movements in every society’s history, and their mediation has its own sociopolitical significance in the public sphere. The erstwhile princely state of Mysore had its own popular movements with shades of identity assertion, desire for a slice in native governance, and, of course, the larger participation in the national struggle for political freedom. The elitist control of media (print then) and unabashed spin doctoring by certain elements had affected these popular movements. The essay portrayed here is an effort to dissect and analyze the print media’s role vis-a-vis two identified popular movements and let the discerning readers decide whether mediated populism was, in fact, an attempt at dream weaving the popular will or a tyrannical sociopolitical engineering.