SN

Shashidhar Nanjundaiah

Mahindra University, Southern Illinois University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Radford University, Contractual work, University of Mysore

ORCID iD 0009-0009-9954-1379
Follow

About

My current interests are invested in aesthetics and media illiteracy; their ideological relationships with hypervisibility and invisibility; and the relationships between new technology, conflict, and (self-)invisibilization. Deep down, I'm questioning the stability of such concepts as truth and beauty, and arguing that it is in fact trust that is stable because, like matter, it needs a nest. I therefore uphold the centricity of narration as fundamental to understanding, one that can only be demystified, not resolved; reopened, not closed.

In a less abstract world, as a multicultural educator and media practitioner, I've established and run private institutes of media and communication. I am an award-winning researcher and a national honoree in strategic communication.

I find myself continuing to be deeply concerned with (and about) the current media practices. My interests lie in the linkages between communication technology, democracy, policy, institutional production, and public prosumption; My own approach is critical, which speaks to my view of systems as open. That is the approach in my 2024 book, News Aesthetics and Myth: The Making of Media Illiteracy in India (London: Routledge, whose editors insisted on geo-centricizing my otherwise theory-building work!), a work that attracted two full-length journal reviews by known scholars, who, shockingly, wrote that they really liked the book.

I'm particularly gearing up to investigate the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of media in the context of AI and political governance in democracy, as well as visibility and conflict, and aesthetics in the digital environment. I am particularly interested in ideological processes of the production of information and misinformation, as well as the strategic communication that underpins self-invisibilization among marginalized societies in conflict.

My practice of media and education spans U.S. and Indian environments. I have spent a decade teaching, training, developing, and designing new academic programs across the spectrum, from news writing to news analysis, media literacy to strategic storytelling. In addition, I carry a decade’s experience in digital, TV, and print news and non-fiction media production. I observe and comment on public policies related to the confluence of practice, ecology, and technology of emerging media.

Employment

  • Mahindra University Professor and Founding Dean
    2023 - Present
  • Southern Illinois University Instructor of Record, Teaching Assistant, teaching 200-level Media and Information Literacy; 100-level Data Communications, assisting in Intro to Research and Understanding Audiences courses
    2021 - 2023
  • Contractual work Consultant
    2017 - 2021
  • Southern Illinois University System Teaching Assistant, assisting in teaching and grading courses in Electronic Media, Media Business
    2016 - 2017
  • India Today Group Dean
    2014 - 2016
  • ASAPP Media Pvt. Ltd. Group Executive Editor
    2009 - 2014
  • The Indian Express North American Edition
    2006 - 2009
  • Indira Group of Institutes Founding Director
    2003 - 2006
  • Symbiosis Society Director
    2001 - 2003
  • Zee Network Manager (Information and Research)
    1999 - 2000

Education

  • Southern Illinois University Carbondale Ph.D. (4.0/4.0)
    2016 - 2023
  • Radford University M.S. (4.0/4.0)
    1994 - 1995
  • University of Mysore M.A. (4th rank)
    1988 - 1990

Projects & Funding

Projects & funding information is unavailable.

Publications (28)