“But casual complaining does not address the issue,” explains an Insight UK volunteer, from Insight UK. “Data, on the other hand, can.”
Insight UK is a British Indian organisation which leads campaigns, advocates, and raises awareness on matters of interest to the British Indian community in the UK. As part of their latest initiative Insight UK hope to gather data on how India, Hinduism and British Indians are represented by the mainstream British media and how Indians in the UK feel about this.
The survey also wants to know about whether or not media representation affects British Indians in their day-to-day lives and whether or not they have ever faced any sort of discrimination because of it.
The recently published Census 2021 data shows that British Indians make up over 1.8 million of Britain’s population – a significant percentage. When asked about the importance of this survey, the Insight volunteer explained: “If we do indeed find that Indians in the UK feel like they are misrepresented in mainstream media, then it becomes an irrefutable statistic. It is no longer an idle opinion of a few individuals but rather a collective feeling of an entire community.”
The volunteer also told iGlobal that the survey findings will be sent to various media houses such as BBC and The Office of Communications (Ofcom) which is the regulatory authority on TV and radio in the UK.
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“We are hoping that concrete data on the matter would encourage all or at least most mainstream media to tone themselves down.” the volunteer said about what they hope to achieve with this survey.
“If we are being optimistic, it could also perhaps help with the under-representation of British Hindu and Indian voices by arousing interest in our communities. At the very least, however, we are hoping it will discredit their coverage of Hindu and Indian issues to some extent. Any of these would be tangible effects of the survey,” he concluded.
*Info: Survey here
