 Today, we are happy Professor K. V. Nagaraja. He is the head of the department of Assam University, Silture, Department of Mass Communication and Journalism. Welcome, sir. So, sir, would you just tell us, give us an idea about what are the research methods? Like, research is quite a, you know, the students, either from all the groups, be it mass communication or from other social sciences subjects or undergoing researches. But what is the actual research method? Still, you know, the idea is still quite vague one. So, could you please just give us an idea? I must confess that communication research is such a vast subject. It becomes really difficult to say many things about communication research in one go. Yet, I can give you a bird's eye view of what communication research, its status in India is. See, communication research basically had its roots in sociology and psychology. And people started trying to understand the impact of media on the audience. Actually, we call it as effects theory and impact studies. And when we started doing research, we started doing research about the impact of different media, especially during the First World War and the Second World War, particularly during the Second World War, I should say, when radio was used as a medium of propaganda by the Nazis, it started thinking among certain people that messages are very powerful, mediated messages, and people are passive. They accept the information given by the media. That is how we started talking about all powerful media. We meant a powerful institution, powerful tool, powerful weapon, and we decided that people simply accept whatever that is given by the media. As a result, we had the magic bullet theory. You must understand whatever research we do leads to the emergence of certain theories. And out of those theories, we again get research ideas for further research. And this is an ongoing process in most of the social sciences. And now, after the Second World War, when media education became important all over the world, we started identifying different areas of research. And when television came, television also brought in new issues, for example, television and violence. And in the U.S., you know, violence and children, it became synonymous, and people started talking about the impact of television. And then we started talking about newspapers, radio, cinema, and now we are talking about new media, the internet and other allied sectors. What we were trying to find out is... Number one is the effect aspect. Number two is the cause aspect. We call it as causal studies. And we are going beyond that. You know, new areas are emerging, and from media habits to media effects, we are moving towards other areas. For example, nowadays, people from linguistics and literature, they have started showing interest in media studies. You know, in 1940s, we had a school called Frankfurt School. Most of the social scientists there had leftist ideas. When the Nazis came to power, all these people ran away to different countries because of the fear of persecution. Okay? Then, you know, we had the school of Birmingham School. Then we had another school, Toronto School, Chicago School, like that, because these people went there and started doing research. And this particular stream was known as cultural studies stream or critical studies school. Culture and media became one area of research. Then politics became another area of research. If you take agenda-sitting theory, it emanated from political campaigns in American presidential elections. Similarly, there were many other issues. And people from other disciplines, whether it was Walter Lippmann, or whether it was Jurgen Hammerbanger, people started talking about the place of media in the society. Now, we are moving towards other areas. Where, you know, you can make experiments. For example, discourse analysis, textual analysis, phenomenology, media aesthetics. You know, I'm talking media literacy. These are the emerging areas of research currently. That is one aspect. And in the West, they have been doing a huge amount of research, which is of good quality. At least they have the methodological rigor, which I mentioned earlier. But in India, unfortunately, there has been no grooming in communication research. And communication research methodology has not been given proper focus, no proper training. As a result, we are getting low quality production. And as I told you, many of the doctoral thesis are not up to the mark. There is an urgent need for us to revamp the whole research system, the research area. And I think we have to take a very strong step. And the second thing which I should like to mention is, in the West, the industry takes interest in financing research projects. But here in India, we are dependent upon the public institutions like the UGC, or the ICSSR, or any other agency, you know, funded by the government. There, the private companies are investing huge sums of money in media research. I can tell you one more thing. You know, we have a distinction between research for the market, research for academics. Academic research aims at certain formal degrees. Whereas, market research bothers about what the ratings are, what the circulation is, what do people accept, and how to reach out to them. The TRPs are a fine example of market research. Now you understand the difference. Can we breed the gap between the two? It becomes very difficult. And in the West, every teacher gets funding from private institutions every year to do research. In India, we don't have that kind of facility and also opportunity. And everybody who applies for funding may not be able to get. Only a few privileged and the fortunate will get. Now, how to improve the standards? The first thing is, you know, I must tell you, we have to send some teachers abroad to be trained in media research. That is one step. The second step is, if we can't send everybody abroad or at least few people abroad, bring some people from abroad, take international funding agencies, take their collaboration, and bring them here, ask them to teach the methods, and then the most important aspect is re-oriented towards local conditions. Because everything Western cannot be adopted to the Indian conditions. In other words, localization of research method is also important. And that way, we will have to think of. And, you know, quality, I know it is very subjective. But all of us know that there is something called as quality. And we have to develop certain parameters of quality so that everything will become acceptable at the international level. It is a very sad reflection that our higher education system, even though we are the third largest manpower in terms of science and technology, unfortunately, our standards are falling. And our people are not acceptable unmasked. Of course, there is always a minority of students who perform globally well. But how to make the standards, the quality on a larger scale, on a national scale, that is important. I went to China. I have seen how China is progressing in higher education. I think we have to have that kind of commitment to change the system. And, you know, it requires not one person's involvement. It is a collective involvement. And that's what I have been telling. There is an organization in the U.S. of media educators, SIGMA TAPACHI. And they meet every year. Thousands of teachers and media persons gather and they discuss the problems, standardization aspects and it is a satisfying experience for everybody. And all this comes from one factor called accountability. Make teachers accountable for research and try to put them on the track. Then I think things will be happen. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. It was a great experience talking to you and I hope not only me but all the learners will be benefited through this great talk. And thank you, sir, for being here. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. It was an experience for me also to know certain problems, the issues that always, you know, crop up in the young minds. I hope they will be benefited. Thanks a lot.