Construction of Prime Time Television News Discussions
Studies in the western context have shown consistent observations of Television News being one of their prime modes of news and current affairs in the past. In India, watching the news has been an age-old requirement, for many reasons. English news in a non-native English-speaking country like India has encouraged citizens to learn the language, engage in focused viewership and rely on Television news for stories, news, views, and the episodic reality. Ever since news reception was transitioned to the realm of social media and new media, Television prime time news strived to be in the limelight. To understand the existence of prime time news, the study focused on two objectives : to identify constituents of communicative techniques framed in prime time news discussions of Indian English Television News Channels and to establish the role of prime time News Discussions as creators of complex news narratives. With the help of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the umbrella theory, Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA), and Stuart Hall s Encoding and Decoding, the research progressed to understand the ways and means to analyse news. Each of the episodic news presentations from 5 December 2017 to 13 December 2017 pertaining to prime-time news debates of Republic TV and Times Now were used. were analysed using a qualitative method of textual analysis. The manifestation of all cues on the screen were deconstructed to comprehend their existence. Each episode was connotatively derived to understand conversations and use of graphics. There are multiple findings under each of the units. On understanding the manifestation and intermingling of various units of analysis with each other, it was unanimously concluded that polarization of opinions is the key to engage a concise news narrative of the day. Whilst important news is not the source, political debates, underestimation, and complex visualization enhance the brand name of the news channel.