Re-Evaluation of Nepali Media, Social Networking Spaces, and Democratic Practices in Media

Abstract

This chapter first analyzes the Nepali mainstream media and social media's effect upon its relationships with audiences or news-receivers. Then, it explores how social media is a virtual space for creating democratic forums in order to generate news, share among Networked Knowledge Communities (NKCs), and disseminate across the globe. It further examines how social media can embody a collective voice of indigenous and marginalized people, how it can better democratize mainstream media, and how it works as an alternative media. As a result of the impact of the Internet upon the Nepali society and the Nepali mainstream media, the traditional class stratifications in Nepal have been changed, and the previously marginalized and disadvantaged indigenous peoples have also begun to be empowered in the new ways brought about by digital technology. Social networking spaces engage the common people—those who are not in power, marginalized and disadvantaged, dominated, and excluded from opportunities, mainstream media, and state mechanisms—democratically in emic interactions in order to produce first-hand news about themselves from their own perspectives. Moreover, Nepali journalists frequently visit social media as a reliable source of information. The majority of common people in Nepal use social networking sites as a forum to express their collective voice and also as a tool or medium to correct any misrepresentation in the mainstream media. Social media and the Nepali mainstream media converge on the greater issues of national interest, whereas the marginalized and/or indigenous peoples of Nepal use the former as a space that embodies their denial of discriminatory news in the latter.