Publicity, Transparency, and the Circulation Engine: The Media Sting in India

Since the turn of the century, India has witnessed a growing number of entrapment events or media “stings” in which private, secret, and unknown events, relationships, acts, and structures are publicly revealed. Aided by the rapid spread of technological modernity and low-cost media gadgets such as mobile phones, the media sting has been carried out by print, TV, and new media; transparency campaigners; NGOs; political parties; social movements; and ordinary individuals. As entrapment expands from a police technique to a generalized technology of transparency, it has produced great strains in existing control systems and traumatic disruptions at all levels. The video object produced by the sting is part of a circulation engine as it attaches to multiple environments: the political spectacle, the judicial review, and the online archive. I connect debates in infrastructures, media theory, and law to reflect on the implications of these new truth strategies for contemporary thought.