Centre for Media Studies

 

Under the XIth Plan the School of Social Sciences had been mandated to establish a Centre focusing on study of the media. Prof. Deepak Kumar was nominated by the Vice-Chancellor to coordinate the activities relating to the planning and creation of the Centre.

Vision
The Centre for Media Research aims to emerge as a prime academic location for the development of critical understanding about media and its engagement with society, polity and economy in India.

Objectives
The Centre for Media Studies (CMS) shall promote inter-disciplinary approaches to study and assess the evolution, role, relevance and impact of media in India.

It will enquire into media's functioning, and its influence and impact on contemporary society, polity, economy and culture shall be the primary areas of research concern.

The CMS would also engage itself with the constituting and determining factors of media: such as its social, regional and language base, commercialization and profit motive, institutionalization and organizational scale, media institutions and media houses, infotainment content, and search for alternative niches through new media etc.

The broad mandate of the Centre would be to study all aspects of the media in an interdisciplinary framework. Though located at the School of Social Sciences, the Centre would engage with experts from disciplines outside the Social Sciences with an interest in the media and their functioning. However, its location in the School would require it to emphasise themes and issues that interface with the various Social Sciences and draw on expertise available within the School. Its curriculum would draw on theories that have emerged in the social sciences. In turn the work undertaken at the Centre will enrich our understanding of the contemporary discourses.

The Centre would not seek to replicate the role of institutions engaged in training personnel for the media, but serve as a location for academic studies aimed at developing a critical understanding of the role and state of the media, its structure, and its relationship with the nature and development of the society, polity and economy in India.

The Centre is envisaged primarily as a centre for research and academic study. It would concentrate on developing a critical understanding of the role of the media in the contemporary mould. For this purpose it will engage with the experts working in this field in the sister schools and other institutions.

To establish the identity of the Centre and to provide some focus to the activities of its inevitably limited faculty in the initial phases, and maximize its impact, it would be useful to identify an initial set of areas of interest on which the Centre may concentrate. Taking account of the roles that the structure of the media and the ways in which it is embedded in society play in defining its functions of legitimation and critique, the areas with which the Centre should engage in its research and teaching activities must include:

1) Structures, ownerships and corporatization.
2) Interface between media, politics, society and technology.
3) Linguistic and regional diversities.
4) Media and democratization.
5) Media, law and regulation.
6) Internet and social media.
7) Media and the creation of social values.
8) Media and popular culture.

While at each point in time the activities of the Centre would be influenced by the resources at hand and the size, interests and strengths of its faculty, the above-mentioned would be the areas into which the Centre would hopefully foray over time. The Centre will start the Direct Ph.D. programme from the Monsoon Semester 2013 ( application forms to be available in Jan.-Feb. 2013) and will announce the M.Phil/Ph.D. programme (session 2014-15) in Feb. 2014.