About

Me & Myself!

I knew I had a long way to go; but didn’t know it would be so curvy and at times, topsy and turvy too. Still here I am – Raja or call me “Raj”.
The best way to define yourself is to retell the life you have lived so far…

I am a PhD student and Scripps Howard Teaching Fellow at E.W. Scripps School of Journalism in Ohio University (OU), USA.

My research area is media, law, and politics. More particularly, I take interest in looking at the political speeches, especially the legal aspects of Hate Speech and its contest with the Free Speech rights initially in the United States and India. At present, I am working on a proposal to study how US and Indian media represents the legal aspects of hate speech incidents and how journalists play the role in shaping legal consciousness of the public while covering hate speech incidents. In this broader context, I have already presented two conference paper in the AEJMC 2023 so far which are titled as “Criminalization of Hate Speech: Exploring “incitement” in history utilizing two recent incidents in the US and India” and “A qualitative analysis of Hindutva Hate Speech using Diffusion of Innovation Theory”.

With the discussants Prof. Vannessa de Macedo Higgins Joyce of Texas State University and Prof. Serajul Bhuiyan of Savannah State University in AEJMC 2023 Mid-Winter Conference at Washington DC

Presenting my research in AEJMC 2023 Annual Conference. Prof. Neelam Sharma from Idaho State University was the discussant of my session.

There is an exponential growth of incitement to hatred and violence in the political environment (United Nations, 2021; OHCHR, 2019; Kleinfeld, 2022; Tiwari, 2020). Both the United States and India in recent times witnessed several instances of political violence in the name of strengthening free speech. This is a complex situation given the two very different context in which the free speech rights has been defined. Several historical precedents in both the countries have continued expanding the boundary of free speech and set various categories of speech including the “incitement”.

I am an Instructor of Record in E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. I taught “Fundamentals of Online Journalism” and “News & Information Literacy” undergraduate course in the last one and half years of my PhD course.

With Journalism Undergraduate students at the end of the Fall semester 2023

It is important to learn the speech variants, especially the “incitement” which according to the Article 19 of the Human Rights Organization refers to the statements about national, racial, or religious groups which create an imminent risk of discrimination, hostility or violence against persons belonging to those groups. Despite this, we have witnessed incitements spearheading the political agendas today including the repercussions of Israel-Hamas war, etc. The big question is to understand how such categories further our speech rights and where does the uniform baseline lie to categorize a speech as protected and unprotected.