Positioning television studies in India as a legitimate academic discipline

Abstract

This commentary evaluates the domain of television studies as an exclusive academic discipline in the Indian context. Television studies, academically, has yet not been able to establish itself as a legitimate discipline in India and finds itself located as one of the dimensions of mass communication in most university departments. Television studies, in India, has not been able to create a theoretical paradigm for itself like film studies and cultural studies, and is largely influenced by Western perspectives. The curation of scholarship in Indian television studies is very disparate and unevenly distributed. One of the major gaps is the absence of a scholarship trajectory. In a country with over 900 linear television channels, currently, this is a glaring gap. While scholarship on television had not even begun to take an independent pathway yet, the explosion of other new media technologies created more avenues of research, thus dividing the scholarly attention. This commentary traverses the scholarship in Indian television studies in chronological order and argues for the academic legitimacy of television studies.

Keywords:

• Television studies
• Indian television
• typology of television studies
• research on Indian television

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).