My Final Year Topic

It has only been 3 weeks since I finished my exams and already I am itching to do research on my final year topic.

NERD MUCH?

Yeah, well, I really want to try my best with this paper; since I can choose any topic I want. So what did I choose?

The Impact of Policy-making: Globalization for Mass Media in India

Why this?

Well, my main interest is how globalization has affected the media in a developing country and whether governments of these nations had to change policies around globalization...or not? Initially, I wanted to do a comparative study of India, China and Malaysia. However, my prof told me it would be way too much for a 12,000 word essay and that it was better to be more specific in a topic when writing a thesis as oppose to being too general.

So I decided on India.

Why India?

Well, I recently watched a segment on Aljazeera where in order to encourage the youth to vote, India's contesting parties had Bollywood celebrities in television and print advertisements making it seem 'cool' to vote. It was really interesting to me because I wondered when did political parties endorse in celebrities? Is this a new thing around the world?

I mean, the recent US Presidential elections CLEARLY showed its usage of celebrities. There was a sudden surge of actors and singers showing that they were politically concerned with their country. Concerts after concerts, talkshows after talkshows; I seriously do not remember this many celebrities involved in its US Presidential elections. It is undoubtedly clever; the US used its most powerful entity (the entertainment industry) to get people to be interested in politics. Now I am not against that. I mean hey, if they are really doing something, then great!

But back to India, was this something they were trying to copy from the US? Or had it always been like this in India? When did the Indian government decide that it was okay to use celebrities as a helping hand to campaign a party? Will other developing nations follow suit?

More importantly, is this a positive or negative impact for policy making in a country? Are we ultimately now saying that if this policy works for the media in other countries, it is okay for other governments to alter its policies too? Or is it only for specific countries like India and US (where Bollywood is in fact bigger than Hollywood)?

I am so excited to find out!

So much research to do though. I need to clearly define globalization and the media as well as know the history of India's policy making and whether much has changed. Yikes. Its funny when the school year was going on I hated the idea of writing essays. It seemed like it never ended. But to be fair, I had specific topics I had to write on. But this! This should be fascinating! And I welcome any help if anyone know what books to read or websites to look at.

Wish me luck!