Exploring Interdisciplinarity in Indian Media Education and Research: An Analysis

The discipline of media and communication studies has demonstrated its ability to borrow and integrate knowledge from various theoretical strands in political science, sociology, economics, psychology, cultural studies and anthropology. The inter-disciplinary nature of media studies has enabled its growth, expansion and stature as a discipline and field of academic inquiry in its own right. The inter-disciplinary thrust of media education owes much to the media's basic nature and need of being reliant on social, political, economic and cultural forces in its surrounding environment. The core argument of the paper favours an inter-disciplinary approach to media studies and media research for the discipline to flourish. In this paper the authors examined four key areas of inter-disciplinary research and education i.e., political communication, media economics, sociology of communication, and cultural communication that have contributed to furthering the scope of media studies. To substantiate this line of thinking, the authors examined course curriculums of media studies offered by universities in Gujarat.