Mobile Media Democratising Journalism in India: A Case Study of Chhattisgarh

The current media model is failing to deliver the full promise of democracy. As it focuses on the pre-occupations of urban society, rural India is excluded and marginalised. This has adverse effects particularly on Adivasi communities who speak the Gondi language in the forests of central and eastern India. Facing isolation from the state, and rarely addressed by mainstream media, they have little agency in a long-running conflict driven by Maoists. This chapter looks at an experiment in participatory citizen journalism in the forest area by CGnet Swara, employing the innovative use of mobile phones to develop a different media model.