A social psychological investigation of “Anti-nationalism” in contemporary India – A media analysis

The paper aims to explore the consensual and dissident social representations of “anti-national” that has re-entered the media lexicon in India post an alleged “anti-national” student protest in Jawaharlal Nehru University in the capital city of Delhi, India on February 9, 2016. The Social Representation Theory (SRT) is used to analyze the selected media reports of six daily newspapers, three each in English and Hindi language for a period of one year subsequent to the event. Results of thematic anchoring and anchoring by antinomy, a methodology used by Birgitta Höijer, are reported. The results reveal how the intergroup tensions and ideological differences in the polity constitute the conflicting social thinking on the referent. The paper has global implication for opening the possibilities of negotiation and transformation of social meanings related to nationalism and anti-nationalism.