The Centre for Media Studies (CMS) aims to emerge as a prime academic location for the development of a critical understanding of media and its engagement with society, polity, and the economy in India.
Envisaged primarily as a center for research and academic study, it concentrates on developing a critical understanding of the role of the media in contemporary times. The media's functioning, and its intersections with contemporary society, polity, economy, and culture are primary areas of its research concerns. The Centre also engages itself with the constituting and determining factors of media such as its social, regional, and language base, commercialization and the profit motive, institutionalization, and organizational scale, media institutions and media houses, infotainment content, and search for alternative niches through new media, etc..
CMS promotes interdisciplinary approaches to study and assess the evolution, role, relevance, and impact of media in India. Towards this purpose, it engages closely with scholars working in this field in allied schools and institutions. Taking cognizance of the roles that media structures as well as how these structures are embedded in society, play in defining its functions of legitimation and critique, the areas with which the Centre will engage in research and teaching activities include:
► Structure, ownerships and corporatization
► Interface between media, politics, society and technology
► Linguistic and regional diversities
► Media and democratization
► Media, law and regulation
► Internet and social media
► Media and the creation of social values
► Media and popular culture