mediaharsha

Introduction This research brief summarizes the findings of a review of policies related to Universal Connectivity (UC) in Nepal. Here UC means connectivity of the internet using different devices such as mobile, computer, and other internet-based technologies (IBTs). The brief shows that Nepal’s UC-related policies envisage both general and specific roles for the technologies related to IBTs in realizing the country as a well-connected, knowledge-based society. The policy phraseology has enabled both the state and the private sector to mobilize huge resources to create new institutions, burgeoning market spaces, and influential discourses in the last two decades. The review undertaken, however, suggests interventions are needed and there are opportunities for much more grounded policies to ensure that existing inequalities are not reproduced in both providing access and the use of digital technologies. This brief introduces, in the first section, the UC policy landscap...

Harsha Man Maharjan INTRODUCTION This chapter demonstrates the limitations in existing schemes of periodization in Nepali journalism historiography that are based mainly on political-constitutional changes. These schemes take regime changes (Poudyal 2027 v.s.; Devkota 2033 v.s.; Nepal 2055 v.s.; Dahal 2070 v.s.; Pokharel 1994; Regmi and Kharel 2002) and new constitutional provisions (Acharya 2070 v.s.; Onta 2001, 2002) as triggers which set significant alternations in organization and practices of journalism in Nepal. While some of the organizational changes in media were shaped by these external factors, existing literature lacks concrete evidence relating these factors to the changes in everyday journalistic practices. The essay examines genealogies of the specific orientation of the journalists and of their characterization of the powerful across the sharp regime changes of the 1990s. It shows that professional journalism that conventional historiography sees as the effect of...