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Professor Bella Mody of the Journalism and Mass Communication Program will present our next Luncheon Series event where she will discuss newspapers and citizen education in the context of the Maoist insurgency, considered by the government to be India's "greatest internal security threat" in a talk entitled "Mao in India: Comparing Representations in India's Thriving Regional, Hindi and English Language Dailies."

While profits have been declining in newspapers in North America and Europe, India and China are two countries where newspapers are still growing in circulation, advertising and profits. Given that there is no alternative to news media for voter education in democracies, and the multi-ethnic complexion of the Indian polity, this presentation will compare coverage by newspapers targeted at distinct linguistic markets, voters who live in different regions of the country. Representations of the ongoing Maoist insurgency will be compared to investigate differences in the comprehensiveness of citizen education. Concerns will be raised about the contribution of news media to this unique young 66-year old democracy straining at its regional-linguistic seams.

Professor Bella Mody is the James E. deCastro Chair in Global Media in the Journalism and Mass Communication program at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Mody specializes in the political economy of media in developing countries and in design research on public service applications of communication. The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News: Explaining Darfur Sudan (Lexington Press, Rowman and Littlefield, 2010) won the from the Global Communication and Social Change Division of the International Communication Association, and it showcases the collaboration of eighteen students, staff and professors.

Mody has worked with UN agencies, national governments and humanitarian organizations on media applications for agriculture, health and education in her native India, and in Malaysia, Singapore, Nepal, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Barbados, Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Kenya and South Africa.

This Luncheon Series event will be on Thursday, February 20, at 12:00 p.m., in the CAS Conference Room, located at 1424 Broadway in Boulder, two buildings down from the Starbucks at Broadway and University.