Foregrounding Digital Journalism in South Asia

The purpose of this chapter is to sketch the contours of digital journalism in the growing mediascape of South Asia. Drawing from the collective understanding across global scholarship, the chapter attempts to define digital journalism, its nature and trajectories post information technology revolution in the world. Looking through diverse frames of reference will aid in identifying various definitions and explanations of digital journalism with an endeavor to arrive at a few consensual conceptual descriptions. For the purpose, it is imperative to explore the theoretical foundations to foreground ‘what digital journalism means and includes’. Navigating the political, social and economic environment in which it operates, the chapter aims to provide understanding of the new models of news framing, media consumption and audience effects. Within the macrocosm of communication in the digital age, the author aims to establish digital journalism as a separate stream of media scholarship. Critical engagement with new media theories would help in describing the practices that exemplify it. Relevant theories in media, society and culture in web 2.0 will provide conceptual understanding of digital journalism, devoid of which, it may succumb to being just another emerging area of practice. Deepening the relationship of various types of digital journalism with old and new media will allow the discipline to find academic expansion it so deserves.