This issue of SubVersions brings together work done by early career researchers in media and cultural studies, exploring how institutions, practices, technologies, and spaces, in varying contexts, attempt to form and shape publics around specific agendas. From an ethnographic study of Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, to a close exploration of the Hornbill Festival as an articulation of Naga cultural identity, the researchers focus on the ways in which plural and fluid identities are being increasingly fixed and reified. The papers in the issue also take a look at new media, community media and regional television from the perspectives of gender, ecology and caste, and offer critical insights into their promise, vitality, and hegemonic orientations.
On the editorial front, this issue took a long time to produce because of the limited time and resources at hand. Going ahead, we seek to put the publishing timeline back on track at the earliest.