By Harsha Man Maharjan
Digital technologies have become pervasive and ubiquitous. Traditional news media organisations have moved to websites and apps, with people accessing news contents in digital forms. Social media platforms have become important to express thoughts and exhibit identities. IT companies and even news media organisations are collecting, storing and analysing users’ data. These organisations are using these digital footprints to innovate. Due to the pandemic, the use of digital platforms like Zoom has increased for interaction and education. The pandemic has accelerated the digitalisation of societies. Scholars are discussing the issues related to domination, identity, representation and differences in the digital sphere.
The disciplines under social science and
humanities should be helpful to make sense of this digitalisation. These
disciplines need to make students aware of these socio-technological changes.
They have to encourage students to advance new knowledge related to this new
field through discourse and research.
Curricula
Are the curricula prepared by universities
in Nepal imparting adequate knowledge to students about the digital world? To
understand this, we can look at curricula of some disciplines such as
Journalism, Sociology and Anthropology.
We assume that the discipline focused on
media such as Journalism and Mass Communication, which Tribhuvan University
offers or Mass Communication and Journalism that Purbanchal University offers
is giving priority to digital media. However, the curricula show that these universities
have put more emphasis on digital journalism.
The curriculum of MA on Journalism and Mass Communication focuses on social
media and online journalism. Though the curriculum contains 20 papers, only one
is related to social media and online journalism. This paper aims to “enable
students to have extensive understanding of the opportunities and use of social
media”, “enable students to analyse online communication and journalism”, and
“enable students on new media research”. Its syllabus contains these ten units:
Digitalisation of News Media”, “Principles and Practices of New Media”, “Social
Media and Communication”, “Online Journalism and Traditional Media”, “Technical
Writing Techniques” and “Globalisation and Local content". This paper
indicates that the increasing use of social media and online journalism has
been considered while preparing this curriculum. However, it also clearly shows
that the curriculum contains three aspects of digital media — online
journalism, social media, and online research — that could have been divided
into three papers. Besides this paper, some aspects of digital media have been
incorporated in other papers such as “Introduction to Mass Communication
Theory”, “History and Growth of Mass Media” and “Media Law”.
The TU curricula for MPhil and PhD have
not given importance to digital media in comparison to the MA level. It is
interesting that the course does not contain a paper directly related to
digital media and neither does the PhD course contain any special paper on
digital media.
The MA curriculum offered by Pubanchal University too prioritises online
journalism that contains five papers — “Fundamentals of Information System”;
“Advanced Concepts in Electronic Publication”, “Multimedia applications”, and
“Cyber publishing.” They clearly show that the curriculum intends to impart
technical aspects of digital media/journalism. Besides, a few papers such as
“Mass Communication: Theories and Practices”, “Print Journalism”, “Public
Journalism: Theory and Practices” talk about some aspects of digital media.
This lack of attention given to digital
media in general in the above curricula give room for having the issues related
to digital media in other disciplines. Yet, the curricula of Sociology and
Anthropology that TU offers have paid less attention to digital media.
Though there is no paper focused on media,
the curriculum of Sociology in MA does include a few materials on
media. Particularly, students have to read the “ Prologue: the Net and the Self
“of Manual Castell’s book The Rise of Network Society under
the paper, “Practice of Social Change and Development in Asia”. It is
interesting that the curriculum contains papers on gender, disability/aging,
disaster, education, tourism, not on media. Likewise, the curricula of MPhil
and PhD do not include books and articles on digital media.
Even Anthropology does not contain a paper directly
related to media or digital media. It does contain the paper on “Visual
Anthropology”, which may contain more materials on media, but its syllabus is
being developed. Like the curriculum of Sociology, it contains a few materials
related to media under papers like “Anthropology of Disaster and Resilience”,
“Anthropology and Globalisation”, “Contemporary Theories in Anthropology”. Both
MPhil and PhD curricula don’t have a paper on digital media.
Revision
To help students understand the
digitalisation of societies, the courses under social science and humanities
have to include papers focused on digital media. This can be done while
revising the courses. Journalism courses can also have papers on digital media
in general. The curricula of Sociology and Anthropology too need to have papers
on media — if not — on digital media. These syllabuses should include materials
that discuss the different aspects of digital media, society and culture.
