New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Open University has set up a new school studies - The School of Journalism and Media Studies - to cater the need of media and journalism. The initiative was taken up by IGNOU to be in par with the growing interest and orientation of youth towards media and journalism.
The School of Journalism and New Media Studies of IGNOU offers opportunities for the development of professional skills through research. It also emphasizes the development of skills for research in journalism and new media studies and allows students to develop their own scholarship. Moreover, they are trained to study the shared properties and functions of media more generally, both within one period of time and across generations. The course mainly focuses on the form and effects of media and journalism. Books, radio, film, television, photography and print, digital and electronic media are given more importance. The program of the school generally club into three focus areas of study: aesthetics and form; individual perception; and the history of media. The emphasis is primarily on mass-circulation prints, journals and newspapers, recorded media, communications and broadcast media and electronic modes.
The overall purpose of the program is to develop a systematic perception and evaluation of current academic thinking in journalism and new media studies. This type of program would to develop a profound knowledge of how journalism and media work across a variety of social, cultural, economic and political contexts. School of Journalism and New Media Studies opened by IGNOU lays stress on inculcating in the learners a consideration of how issues of citizenship, race, gender, ethnicity and classes are shaping contemporary forms of journalism.
