Power Games: Audience Measurement as a Mediation between Actors in India

Abstract

Human beings tend to take their currencies for granted. But currencies are not born, they are made. They are shaped by both the material realities and the disparate ideological forces of the environment in which they circulate. Currencies are not, therefore, static. Even if the physical manifestation of the currency remains unchanged, the currency itself does not remain so. It is the same for every currency — and it is especially the case for a currency that has never found uncritical acceptance even among those who use it the most. I speak, of course, of television ratings.