The Swedish independent research institute V-Dem, which measures democracy around the world, declared in their most recent report on the issue that India was no longer classified as a democracy, but an electoral autocracy. Amongst other things, V-Dem draws the conclusion that the election of the Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi in 2014 has been a strong contributor to the decline in democracy in India. At the same time, The U.S. Department of State declares that the U.S.-India partnership is founded on a shared commitment to freedom and democratic principles. With India as a close ally, friction could arise. This thesis aims to explore how India is portrayed in American media, to get a broader understanding of how Americans view India and Narendra Modi. Many scholars believe policy is based on people’s opinions, and people’s opinions are largely based on how the media portrays certain issues. The author also draws a comparison between American right-leaning media outlets and left-leaning media outlets to examine if there are any differences regarding the depiction of India between them. By performing a quantitative content analysis, the author aims to examine how American media portrays India, its leaders, and democracy. The layout of the study is based on exanimating 175 published articles about India and coding them via a codebook designed to measure democratic values and the depiction of Narendra Modi, his government, and party BJP. The findings suggest that when democratic values are depicted in articles about India, it is mostly in negative terms. On the other hand, the portrayal of Narendra Modi, his government, and his party are more balanced. The findings also suggest that right-leaning and left-leaning media have a very similar way of portraying India, its democracy, and Narendra Modi.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-445770 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Ram, Alfred |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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