'South Asian Media Cultures' is a collection of essays that pulls together field-based audience and textual research in areas such as the politics of new media, contemporary television and film in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and their audiences. Through a careful analysis of the various media cultures and practices from across South Asia, this collection addresses pertinent issues such as how discourses on gender, nationalism, ethnicity and class are being expressed by mainstream media texts across South Asia, and how different groups within the public discern meanings from such discourses.

With this collection, Banaji aims to reduce the reliance on commercial Hindi cinema ('Bollywood') for reference on the politics and history of South Asian Media. Instead, key current research and theoretical debate are presented in an accessible manner. They are organised around three clear themes: 'Audiences, meanings and social contexts', which focuses on the responses of particular social groups to specific media formats, ideas or genres; 'Media Discourse, Identity and Politics', which discusses the complex links between media representations and socio-political identities; and 'Alternative Producers: New Media, Politics and Civic Participation', which describes and assesses the various civic practices and possibilities opened up in South Asia by digital and mobile communications.

Shakuntala Banaji is an Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the London School of Economics (LSE).

'South Asian Media Cultures' examines a wide range of media cultures and practices from across South Asia, using a common set of historical, political and theoretical engagements. In the context of such pressing issues as peace, conflict, democracy, politics, religion, class, ethnicity and gender, these essays explore the ways different groups of South Asians produce, understand and critique the media available to them.

Introduction; Talking Back to 'Bollywood': Hindi Commercial Cinema in North-East India; 'Adverts Make Me Want to Break the Television': Indian Children and their Audiovisual Media Environment in Three Contrasting Locations; Urdu for Image: Understanding Bangladeshi Cinema through its Theatres; Musical Media and Cosmopolitanism in Nepal's Popular Music, 1950-2006; Private Satellite Television and the Geo-Politics of Moderation in Pakistan; Forgetting to Remember: The Privatisation of the Public, the Economisation of Hindutva, and the Medialisation of Genocide; Myth - The National Form: Mission Istanbul and Muslim Representation in Hindi Popular Cinema; A Peace of Soap: Representations of Peace and Conflict in Popular Teledramas in Sri Lanka; Destigmatising Star Texts - Honour and Shame among Muslim Women in Pakistani Cinema; Through the Lens of a 'Branded Criminal': The Politics of Marginal Cinema in India; Pakistani Students' Uses of New Media to Construct a Narrative of Dissent; Expanding the Art of the Possible: Leveraging Citizen Journalism and User Generated Content (USG) for Peace in Sri Lanka; Conclusion; List of Contributors