India on the Western Screen: Imaging a Country in Film, TV, and Digital Media - Tapa dura

Ananda Mitra is a Professor of Communication at Wake Forest University, teaching courses on new media, India, and research methodology. His publications include a 10-volume series on digital technology and its social impact, a critical examination of the Indian TV series Mahabharat, an examination of the portrayal of India in the Western cinema, a book about the ways in which new digital technologies are increasingly alienated from the users, a book on the cultural issues surrounding the use of social media, and two books on research methodology. Some of these include Digital DNA: Social Networking and You (2014), India through the Western Lens: Creating National Images in Film (SAGE 1999), Alien Technology: Coping with Modern Mysteries (SAGE 2010), and Television and Popular Culture in India: A Study of the Mahabharat (SAGE 1993).

He has consulted with many different industries and is the inventor of the concept of “narbs” that allows for a careful and systematic narrative analysis of the unstructured component of big data that has become available with the growth of social media. He is considered a specialist in analyzing the way in which narratives produce images of people and places, with a special emphasis on representation of Indians across the globe.