The Gatekeepers: Media, Power, and Indian Dissent

Who decides which protests matter? Which movements become history, and which ones vanish into silence?

Written By: Aleena Sebastian

Edited By: Malaika Noorani

Graphic Design By: Makkanthra Aditi

In India, dissent can be seen everywhere. Streets overflowing with protesters, artists creating urgent resistance and digital networks mobilising millions overnight. Yet not all dissent achieves visibility. Some movements dominate headlines for weeks while others persist for years in near-invisibility. This difference is not accidental at all.Between protest and public awareness, there is a gatekeeping mechanism consisting of media, editing, censorship, and other tools that shape and filters messages that can get through. This is why it is important to understand how the medium works,  in order to realize one’s potential impact on the world, one must know how to navigate the system that decides who hears whom.

The Architecture of Silence:

Gatekeeping operates through multiple mechanisms, often invisible to those excluded. First, there is editorial choice, i.e., which stories newsrooms decide to cover. A protest in Delhi with 10,000 people might lead the news, but an Indigenous land resistance in rural Odisha affecting 50,000 people might receive only three paragraphs in a regional publication. This isn't always about explicit bias but rather a reflection of resource allocation, geographic proximity to media centers, and assumptions about what audiences "care about." Journalists and editors are not neutral observers and they filter reality through institutional priorities.

Secondly, there is the issue of “framing” the same set of events – the 2012 Nirbhaya protests were framed as “grassroots anger” and a “democratic uprising”, whereas a farmer’s strike would be depicted as “hampering trade” and “radical”. Framing does not mean lying- it just means the selection of specific tropes to highlight certain facets of the action while ignoring others. A movement may be presented as a single-minded “people’s crusade” or as an “unanxious mob”, according to the preferred imagery. By emphasizing one component of a movement, say,  the “ethical” position of protestors, over their tactical role as “obstructors of commerce”, media outlets can shape public perception. A strike, depending on the framing, can be both “a justified response to anti-labour policies” or an “irresponsible sabotage of the economy” depending on who controls the narrative.

Thirdly, censorship works not only from above by banning, suppressing or arresting dissidents-  but also presents “invisibility” as a form of repression. The nationwide shutdowns of the internet during the CAA-NRC protests in 2019-2020 did little to stop the protests but ensured that they happened outside the gaze of social media. The Emergency of 1975-77 acted in pretty much the same way- while censorship initially stifled dissent, it drove dissenters underground and turned them to seek out onto other forms of distribution, such as samizdat printing. Lack of official coverage meant that the protests were effectively “unseen” by the public, and could not accumulate the same sort of momentum or support. The suppression of dissent is often a ‘prelude’ to its renewal in newer forms.

Lastly, the suppression of dissent takes a new form in the age of social media known as  “algorithmic invisibility”. The removal of posts, shadow-banning hashtags, and the subtle manipulation of recommendation algorithms all combine to make dissent appear “small” and “inconsequential”. A given hashtag may be popular amongst a niche group of 100,000 users, but have virtually no reach elsewhere. State-backed accounts may be outright deleted, while dissident hashtags may be quietly buried. This is what happened to the 2024 NEET protests, since the entire campaign was held up on social media, it was diligently pruned by the authorities. However, it appears that the efforts of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) to promote the hashtag have succeeded in overcoming the algorithmic repression.

When Dissent Disappears: Historical Erasures:

India’s own historical amnesia provides ample evidence of this – the nationwide agitations against the enforcement of Hindi in Tamil Nadu in the 1960s and 1970s, which claimed hundreds if not thousands of fatalities through self-immolations, has barely left any legacy in either popular or official discourse. This can partly be explained by the fact that Tamil magazines and newspapers at the time actively dismissed agitations as “unfortunate but understandable” and did not present the Hindi enforcement as an existential threat to Tamil culture – in contrast to the universal acclaim of the Salt March or the independence struggle in general.

The Mandal Commission protests of 1989-90 offer another case. Upper-caste students protested for OBC reservations with self-immolations and mass demonstrations and received significant coverage, partly because they involved Delhi-based elite students and partly because they aligned with the media ownership interests who were skeptical of the reservation policies. Simultaneously, Dalit counter-movements challenging the same policies received less coverage. Which dissent "mattered" depended partly on who controlled the means of narration.

The Emergency (1975-77) was a period during which state censorship took the form of “gatekeeping”. Even though there was internal dissent and underground publications, posters and networks, the fact that it existed was hidden from the people. Because of  press censorship, mass arrests, and the general isolation of the country from the outside world, citizens were not aware of the kind of unrest that was brewing within the country and across nations. In other words, the Indian government at that time did not suppress dissent, it ‘isolated’ it. After democracy was restored and censorship was lifted, the repressed anger had to find an outlet, but it was already channeled in certain directions, thus making it easier for the government to control.

Contemporary Struggles: Who Gets Heard Now?:

The 2019-2020 CAA-NRC protests are a prime example of gatekeeping, which continues to develop and evolve. Notably, the international press covered the protests in Shaheen Bagh and thus, women’s attempts to document and report police atrocities were shared with people all over the world and it became hard for the government to repress the demonstrators since their actions were now under the international media’s scrutiny. In contrast, the protests in Uttar Pradesh (UP) were not covered by the press due to internet censorship, and the police were easily able to hurt t protestors without facing any repercussions. Thus, it can be inferred that the Shaheen Bagh protests received greater international attention and was not as successfully gatekept as the gatherings in UP.

Still, the farmers’ protests of 2020-2021 were one of the most significant and extensive movements in India of the past decade, involving over 250 million participants and lasting for 13 months. Yet  the Indian press only slightly covered the protests, despite their considerable influence on the nation’s governmental structure. In contrast, foreign media outlets and journalists actively raised the issue of the farmers and their struggles, both through traditional news sources and social media. Not only did international newspapers report on the farmers’ protests, but they also increased the pressure on Prime Minister Modi’s administration to resolve the standoff. In fact, it is widely regarded that the involvement of foreign media was one of the gatekeeping factors that amplified Indian journalists’ interest in the issue.

Finally, the 2024 protests regarding the NEET examination leak can be considered as a representation of  “digital gatekeeping”. The entire movement, fueled by the emergence of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and organization through social media, was viral with the corresponding hashtags. However, the media did not cover it, and the authorities seemed to dismiss it until the Education Minister resigned after almost a month of the protests. Hence, the protesters  attempts to gain national attention by storming Jantar Mantar was only somewhat effective, as gatekeeping in the digital era remains highly influential.

Resistance and Counter-Narratives:

Dissent almost always finds ways to overcome invisibility. One common way is the use of “international solidarity”. The farmers’ protests was helped by international unions’, media personalities’, and the governments’ attention to the cause, which was not available to the domestic keepers of the gate. In other words, international visibility was used to bypass the domestic gatekeepers.

Another way of bypassing is by using alternative media. Protests against CAA-NRC used social media to document the atrocities committed by the police, which the traditional newspaper gatekeepers did not want to report. Protests against NEET also used alternative media, like social media platforms X and Instagram to get their message across. They are not perfect, since they are also forms of media with their own limitations and gatekeepers, but having bypassed the traditional ones, activists have used alternative media to get their message out.

A third way is to ensure that there is visibility in what there is to see. In other words, protesters should prolong their actions to such an extent that they become visible despite the gatekeeping attempts. For instance, the protestors in Shaheen Bagh were visible for 101 days, and this long-standing protest attracted international media coverage. Similarly, farmers occupied the border for 13 months, and this prolonged action spoke louder than any media statements about the issues that the protesters had.

Last but not least, protesters should focus on the fact that visibility is their goal. As shown by the recent NEET protests, activists can make it explicitly clear that they demand media coverage. On the other hand, those protesting against CAA-NRC were also able to use media-friendly actions, such as poetry and art, to get their message across. In fact, protesters have understood various gatekeeping mechanisms well and are able to bypass them by making visibility their main goal.

Towards Democratic Visibility:

Gatekeeping mechanisms are unlikely to disappear, with media institutions, state power, and algorithms shaping which dissidents’ voices are amplified for public consumption. However, as social movements demonstrate throughout India, their combined ability to drown out suppression at a larger scale, circumvent national levels of control, appeal to international opinion, and rely on alternative media and digital platforms to mobilise beyond the reach of even the most sophisticated surveillance and censorship technologies are invaluable assets to consider. In the context of dissent, gatekeeping is a vital mechanism to understand, both due to its importance in how society consumes information and debates political change at a local level and its intimate ties to larger questions of power.  When put simply, a dissenting voice will only resonate if it is given ‘oxygen’ by those positioned to distribute it to the relevant audiences, which speaks to gatekeeping being a mechanism through which power is distributed, and the question of who can effectively communicate their message to society is a fundamentally political one.