Mohan Dutta

Mohan J. Dutta is a media expert, author and academic. He is the Dean's Chair Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) at Massey University in New Zealand.^[1]

Dutta is most known for developing the Culture-Centered approach, addressing unequal health policies through culturally-based participatory strategies of radical democracy. The culture-centered approach offers a framework for organizing health as social justice, co-creating voice infrastructures for transformative social change in partnership with communities at the global margins. His research explores community-led advocacy for universal health, activism around structural transformation, poverty's impact on health, global health policies' political economy, cultural tropes in neo-colonial health projects, and participatory culture-centered processes for global social change.^[2] He has authored over 250 journal articles and book chapters, and 10+ books including Communicating Health, Communicating Social Change, Voices of Resistance, and Neoliberal Health Organizing, in addition to serving as the co-editor of Emerging Perspectives in Health Communication, Reducing Health Disparities: Communication Interventions, and Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic. His contributions towards research and academia have earned him many awards including the Charles Redding Award for Excellence in Teaching,^[3] Gerald M Phillips Award for Distinguished Applied Communication Scholarship,^[4] Lewis Donohew Outstanding Scholar in Health Communication Award,^[5] Applied/Public Policy Communication Researcher Award,^[6] Charles H. Woolbert Award,^[7] and Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award.^[8]

Dutta is a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association,^[9] Fellow of the International Communication Association^[10] and has held editorial roles such as Editor for the Journal of Applied Communication Research,^[11] and Senior Editor at Health Communication. He acts as a Series Editor for the Critical Cultural Studies in Global Health Communication book series at Routledge Press, and serves as a Specialty Chief Editor for Frontiers in Communication.^[12]

Dutta earned his bachelor's degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1995.^[13] At IIT, he was the editor of the campus magazine Alankar in his fourth (senior) year and received the institute's Order of Merit in Literary Activities and Dramatics. He won the Alumni Cup, given to the best allrounder, in his second and third years, over twenty Institute medals in Debate and Dramatics, and the Medury Bhanumurthy Memorial Prize awarded to a graduating student adjudged to be the best in extra-curricular activities. He later pursued a master's degree in communication from North Dakota State University and graduated with a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota.^[14]

Dutta worked at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota from 1998 to 2001. He held the position of assistant professor, followed by an appointment as associate professor, and later took the appointment of Professor in the Department of Communication at Purdue University.^[15] Concurrently, he assumed the role of Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Education at the College of Liberal Arts, where he served from 2010 to 2012. He served as a Visiting associate professor in Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, Professor between 2012 and 2018, and was titled as its Provost's Chair Professor in 2014.^[16] He accepted the position of Dean's Chair Professor in the School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing at Massey University in 2018.^[17]

In 2012, he became the Head of the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore,^[18] where he chaired the Communication Management Curriculum Revision Committee. As of 2012, he has also been serving as a Director of the Center for the Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation first at the National University of Singapore and then at Massey University.^[19][20]

Dutta is the host of the International Communication Association podcast, Interventions from the Global South.^[21] His white paper on the Hindutva ideology became a subject of controversy that led to significant backlash, including hate comments and trolling from right-wing Hindu nationalists. The New Zealand Herald covered this, highlighting the abusive comments flooding his social media accounts.^[22] The Hindu Youth Council New Zealand criticized the white paper, claiming it included accusatory and unsubstantiated assertions against Hindus and the Hindu community in Aotearoa.^[23] In response, the Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians published an article dismissing the attempt to equate Hindutva and Hindu Nationalism with Hinduism and Hindus as a "nugatory exercise".^[24] The Media Council in New Zealand upheld a complaint he raised about the right-wing platform The Indian News based on lack of accuracy, balance, and fairness.^[25] His research on Hindutva has been covered by Radio New Zealand, Time, South China Morning Post, and The Wire.^[26]

His writings on the whiteness of communication studies has been a critical part of the #CommSoWhite movement. For his role in the movement that has brought about significant changes in how the discipline of Communication Studies is organized and in building spaces for the inclusion of scholars from diverse backgrounds, Dutta has been recognized with the National Communication Association Presidential Citation.^[27] On his blog site, Dutta writes about the communicative practices of social change, the role of communication in challenging powerful structures, and strategies of sustenance when facing backlash from powerful structures. He has written over 700 blog entries on whiteness, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, Hindutva, far-right Zionism and interconnected systems of oppression, outlining strategies of resistance through communication. He has written over 75 opinion pieces on diverse platforms across the globe on the topics of power, control, and resistance. His most recent opinion pieces have explored the far-right disinformation infrastructure in New Zealand and its connections with the global rise of the far-right.^[28][27]

Dutta was featured in an article by The Guardian showcasing his study on the challenges faced by low-wage migrant workers in Singapore.^[29] His research on the poor living conditions and food insecurity experienced by migrant workers in Singapore was covered in Time Magazine,^[30] National Public Radio,^[31] and South China Morning Post.^[32]

Dutta has researched poverty, health, development communication, social justice, labor rights, democracy, and academic freedom in Asia, conducting studies in India, Singapore, Nepal, Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China. His work also includes an examination of threats to academic freedom in authoritarian regimes and democracies, as well as strategies for resisting the threats to academic freedom.^[33][34]

Dutta has published books on the intersections of culture, communication, and social change. He presented a culture-centered communication approach, emphasizing contextual embedding and co-construction in health communication with cultural voices in his book Communicating Health: A Culture-centered Approach. In the book, Dutta offers a theoretical framework for locating community agency as the basis for building theories of health and communication, and partnering with communities to draw on these theories and enact social change. Yogita Sharma in her review for the Journal of Health Communication stated that the book makes an important contribution by arguing for a reconsideration of the dominant health paradigm from the perspective of the marginalized.^[35] The book was awarded the Outstanding Book Award from the Health Communication division of the National Communication Association.^[36]

In 2011, Dutta published Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency which delved into communication's role in reshaping power structures amid contemporary globalization politics. The book offers a culture-centered framework of social change, developing a methodology for building what he describes as voice infrastructures in communities, mobilized in resistance to settler colonialism, extractive racial capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism. Dane Lane commented that the book is the most comprehensive manifestation of the author's theoretical model of social change.^[37] The book forms the basis for his ongoing experimental collaborations with activists, shaping the activist-in-residence program housed at CARE.^[38]

Dutta's subsequent work, Neoliberal Health Organizing: Communication, Meaning, and Politics focused on communicative forms shaping neoliberal governance, relevant to critical communication. Alexander Sabine wrote in his review that "Despite the apparent synchronicity, I was still left wishing that I had been able to heed the warnings in this book a decade ago."^[39] In Imagining India in Discourse: Meaning, Power, Structure, he explored the impact of India's economic liberalization on discourses envisioning the country's future.^[40]

Dutta also co-edited the book Emerging Perspectives in Health Communication: Meaning, Culture, and Power which addressed praxis-driven research on interpretive, critical, and cultural approaches to health communication. Elaine Hsieh reviewed this work and regarded it as a "valuable addition to the current literature in health communication".^[41] He alongside Satveer Kaur-Gill, co-edited the book Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Communication, Inequality, and Transformation which investigated communication's role in addressing the health crisis faced by migrants during the pandemic.^[42]

Dutta has analyzed various strategies aimed at enhancing the effective application of communication within the domain of public health. In his analysis of the 1999 HealthStyles data, he explored consumer health, highlighting the significance of active channels for health-conscious individuals.^[43] His examination of three central theories in health communication campaigns aimed to propose new directions for theory, methodology, and application.^[44] Furthermore, he delved into the analysis of health communication in cultural settings and provided a conceptual framework for understanding the application of culture in health communication.^[45] The culture-centered approach offers a framework for understanding the interplays of erasure of voices of marginalized communities and health disparities. It then proposes community-led processes for building resources where communities can advocate for their health needs and seek structural transformation. At the Center for the Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation, he created the activist-in-residence program that houses activists for week-length dialogues on communication strategies.^[37] In collaboration with Graham D. Bodie, he addressed the widening health-related disparities in America and advocated for incorporating health literacy into an Integrative Model of eHealth Use.^[46]

Dutta has conducted various studies on the interconnectedness of media consumption and the role of communication in fostering social change. He introduced the concept of media complementarity, suggesting a congruence in the consumption of online and traditional media within specific content domains.^[47] By utilizing the theory of channel complementarity, he explored how individuals responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in terms of their communicative choices.^[48] Additionally, he examined the role of communication in planned social change and investigated how marginalized communities resist neoliberal interventions by actively participating in popular politics.^[49]

Dutta's research on the mechanisms of marginalization has dealt with interplay between global processes of whiteness and local racial dynamics. His paper on racism within communication studies examined how the status quo utilizes racial, ideological, and epistemological dynamics to marginalize minority groups.^[50] In 2019, he analyzed the Christchurch terror attack as a manifestation of global Islamophobia, investigating the dissemination of racist hatred through media, think tanks and grassroots groups.^[51] In the context of the genocide in Gaza being carried out by Israel, he highlighted the work of building voice infrastructures that listen to Palestinian accounts of settler colonial violence and apartheid.^[52]

• 2005 – Charles Redding Award for Excellence in Teaching, Purdue University^[3]
• 2006 – Lewis Donohew Outstanding Scholar in Health Communication Award, Kentucky Conference on Health Communication^[5]
• 2016 – Applied/Public Policy Communication Researcher Award, International Communication Association^[6]
• 2020 – Charles H. Woolbert Award, National Communication Association^[7]
• 2022 - Bridge Award, International Risk and Crisis Communication Conference
• 2022 – Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award, International Communications Association.^[8]
• 2023 – Charles Atkin Translational Health Communication Scholar Award
• 2023 – Gerald M Phillips Award for Distinguished Applied Communication Scholarship

• Emerging Perspectives in Health Communication: Meaning, Culture, and Power (2008) ISBN 978–1410615503
• Communicating Health: A Culture-centered Approach (2008) ISBN 978–0745634920
• Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency (2011) ISBN 978–0415878746
• Voices of Resistance: Communication and Social Change (2012) ISBN 978–1557536273
• Neoliberal Health Organizing: Communication, Meaning, and Politics (2015) ISBN 978–1629580487
• Imagining India in Discourse: Meaning, Power, Structure (2017) ISBN 978–9811030499
• Communication, Culture and Social Change: Meaning, Co-option and Resistance (2020) ISBN 978–3030264697
• Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Communication, Inequality, and Transformation (2023) ISBN 978–9811973833

• Dutta, M. J. (2004). Primary sources of health information: Comparisons in the domain of health attitudes, health cognitions, and health behaviors. Health communication, 16(3), 273–288.
• Dutta, M. J. (2004). Complementarity in consumption of news types across traditional and new media. Journal of broadcasting & electronic media, 48(1), 41–60.
• Dutta, M. J. (2005). Theory and practice in health communication campaigns: A critical interrogation. Health communication, 18(2), 103–122.
• Dutta, M. J. (2006). Community participation and Internet use after September 11: Complementarity in channel consumption. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 11(2), 469–484.
• Dutta, M. J. (2007). Communicating about culture and health: Theorizing culture-centered and cultural sensitivity approaches. Communication Theory, 17(3), 304–328.
• Bodie, G. D., & Dutta, M. J. (2008). Understanding health literacy for strategic health marketing: eHealth literacy, health disparities, and the digital divide. Health marketing quarterly, 25(1–2), 175–203.
• Basu, A., & Dutta, M. J. (2009). Sex workers and HIV/AIDS: Analyzing participatory culture-centered health communication strategies. Human Communication Research, 35(1), 86–114.
• Dutta, M., & Pal, M. (2010). Dialog theory in marginalized settings: A subaltern studies approach. Communication Theory, 20(4), 363–386.
• Dutta, M. J. (2014). A culture-centered approach to listening: Voices of social change. International Journal of Listening, 28(2), 67–81.
• Dutta, M. J. (2018). Culture-centered approach in addressing health disparities: Communication infrastructures for subaltern voices. Communication Methods and Measures, 12(4), 239–259.
• Dutta, M. J., & Pal, M. (2020). Theorizing from the global south: Dismantling, resisting, and transforming communication theory. Communication Theory, 30(4), 349–369.
• Dutta, M., Ramasubramanian, S., Barrett, M., Elers, C., Sarwatay, D., Raghunath, P., ... & Zapata, D. (2021). Decolonizing Open Science: Southern Interventions. Journal of Communication, 71(5), 803–826.
• Mika, J. P., Dell, K., Elers, C., Dutta, M., & Tong, Q. (2022). Indigenous environmental defenders in Aotearoa New Zealand: Ihumātao and Ōroua River. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 18(2).
• Elers, C. H., & Dutta, M. (2024). Local government engagement practices and Indigenous interventions: Learning to listen to Indigenous voices. Human Communication Research, 50(1), 39–52.