An Interdisciplinary Thought to Media Education in India

Abstract

Media is an integral component of the social and cultural set up. One cannot isolate it as mere technology, but it is always understood in relation to the society in which it exists. It has been observed in relation to the culture, that at times it tries to influence it and sometimes it gets influenced by it. Media in this sense inherits interdisciplinary nature and majorly relies on socio political, psychological, and cultural forces. Media research has significantly borrowed knowledge from Law, Economics, Sociology, Psychology and Commerce. In fact, the basic model of communication is borrowed from Aristotle’s rhetoric in Philosophy. Media is a constantly evolving field. While educating students in the field of media, we cannot merely train them in the technical art. For just and equitable algorithms, engineers need to look at gender studies. Similarly, for building better artificial intelligence models, journalists need to closely work with engineers. Media students ought to aspire to become critical thinkers and problem solvers. “Interdisciplinary approach is multifaceted, rich and diverse in terms of perspective, helps respond to large scale societal issues, is skill oriented and helps in expansion of knowledge horizons” (Butler,2011) The objective of this paper is to rethink media education in terms of interdisciplinarity by understanding how media educators look at their pedagogy through the lens of cross disciplinary approach. The research starts with an assumption that interdisciplinarity is the requirement for media education.