Nimmagadda Bhargav
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Dr. Nimmagadda Bhargav is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Area at the Indian Institute of Management Indore. His research investigates how communication both shapes and is shaped by institutions, professions, and public life, with particular attention to journalism, media organisations, democratic institutions, and public communication in India and the Global South.
Drawing on praxeological and ethnographic approaches, he explores journalistic labour, media autonomy and capture, communication inequalities, climate communication, digital inclusion, and the politics of social and spatial marginality. Bringing together insights from media sociology and critical communication studies, he examines how media institutions negotiate questions of legitimacy, citizenship, governance, and social justice. His research has been published in leading international journals, including Journalism, Journalism Studies, Environmental Communication, and Economic and Political Weekly.
Bhargav is the author of Stringers and the Journalistic Field: Marginalities and Precarious News Labour in Small-town India (Routledge, 2023), a decade-long ethnographic study of India’s peripheral news ecology.
Before joining IIM Indore, Bhargav taught at the Manipal Institute of Communication in Manipal and worked as a journalist for national English-language newspapers. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and an M.Phil. in Regional Studies from the University of Hyderabad and previously served as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)-funded project “Framing the Nation: Citizenship, Conflict, and the Media in Contemporary India”, led by Loughborough University, United Kingdom.
He teaches managerial communication, academic writing, media studies, critical reading and analytical writing, and communication research methodology across IPM, PGP, DPM, EDPM, and executive programmes, with an emphasis on critical inquiry, evidence-based reasoning, and flipped-classroom andragogy.
Publications
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Bhargav, N., & Thaker, J. (2026). Shifting the Dial: Does Exposure to Climate Change Efficacy Messages Boost Individual and Collective Political Activism Intentions? Journalism and Media, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia7020112
Ravikumar, M., Bhargav, N., Downey, J., Dasgupta, R. K., & Pavarala, V. (2026). Between media capture and journalistic autonomy: The lived experience of Indian journalists. Journalism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849261456793
Thaker, J., & Bhargav, N. (2025). Exploring the Association Between Emotions and Policy Support Across Diverse Audience Segments of Climate Change. Environmental Communication, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2025.2590037
Bhargav, N., & Downey, J. (2024). Survival Games: Understanding Journalistic and Extra-Journalistic Practices and Pursuits of Small-Town Stringers in South India. Journalism Studies, 25(7), 759–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2024.2340572
Ravikumar, M., Downey, J., Bhargav, N., Deb, D., Dasgupta, R. K., & Pavarala, V. (2024). Media and Citizenship in India: Heteronomy and Autonomy in the Indian Journalistic Field. Journalism Studies, 25(15), 1813–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2024.2397679
Bhargav, N. (2024). Navigating insider–outsider dilemmas in the ethnography of journalistic practices. Economic and Political Weekly, 59(26–27).
Research Monograph
Bhargav, N. (2023). Stringers and the Journalistic Field: Marginalities and Precarious News Labour in Small-town India, London: Routledge.
Book Chapter
Elavarthi, SP & Bhargav, N. (2024). Digital Platforms and Minority Language Media: Exploring the Content Generation Strategies of Banjara Language Media in India in Rimscha, M., Rohn, U., and Raats, T (Eds.) Handbook of Media Economics. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Popular Writing
Jena, A., & Bhargav, N. (2026, March 13). India’s AI mela: Spectacle, power and dependence. The South First. https://thesouthfirst.com/opinion/indias-ai-mela-spectacle-power-and-dependence/
Bhargav, N., & Jena, A. (2025, June 28). The work of art(ists) in the age of GenAI. Economic Times Prime.
Bhargav, N. (2023). Why women stringers are missing from Telugu media in small towns, BehanBox (a women-led digital media platform).
Bhargav, N. (2020). తెలుగు సాహిత్యంలో పత్రికా విలువల చిత్రీకరణ (Understanding journalism ethics and standards in Telugu literature), Bhavaveena (Telugu literary journal).