When Silence Is Engineered: Mediatron 2.0 and the Politics of Visibility
The Auditorium at Jyoti Nivas College (Autonomous), Bengaluru, hummed with quiet anticipation as students, academics, journalists, and media professionals gathered for Mediatron 2.0, the National Media Symposium organised by the Department of Journalism, Centre for Media Studies. What unfolded was not merely an academic event, but an unsettling exploration of how dissent is managed, muted, and made invisible in the digital age. The keynote address by Dr. Madri Kakoti, Associate Professor at the University of Lucknow, set the tone for the evening. Rejecting the safety of a conventional lecture, she chose instead to speak through experience, reflection, and metaphor. Her voice carried both restraint and urgency as she recalled an FIR filed against her in April 2020 under sedition charges for questioning injustice. Quoting a mentor, she said, “Ladaai bahut lambi hai aur dushman bahut bada hai,” reminding the audience that resistance is not always loud it is often ca...
