With 900 million telecom subscribers, India is a mobile nation. Telecom is revolutionising the entire sphere of human society, and India is not an exception to this revolution. With 700 million Internet users, India commands the second-highest number of online users in the world. Nearly half of Indian internet users are connected through different modes of social media platforms.

A highly interactive online medium helps individual users to retrieve the required information as per their interests. Similarly, it allows every user to communicate with one another or with many people with a simple click. Importantly, it transcends the geographical boundaries to reach a global audience. The digital medium helps institutions, particularly government sectors, facilitate its services to ordinary citizens without hassle. E-governance streamlines the many administrative services and other services that have changed the entire system, particularly eLearning and eCommerce services. Though there is a digital inequality in the Indian context, public and private initiatives significantly reduce the gap between the haves and have nots. The current programme aims to address the interrelationship between digital media and society from the Indian context and the emergence of social media, Information and Communication Technology for Development, and issues of digital inequality. Besides these conceptual frameworks, the programme aims to facilitate digital journalism practices and internet research techniques.

The programme will be useful for those who intend to make a full-time career in digital media - like an online journalist, digital media manager, social media coordinator, online researcher and in academic fields. It will be equally relevant for those already employed in any media and communication areas and would like to upgrade their skills and knowledge. Equally, this programme would be an added advantage for master degree students as well as PhD scholars.

The media have grown exponentially during the past few decades. The press is flourishing in terms of circulation and readership in a variety of languages. Radio has shown considerable resurgence and the expansion of television in the recent past is unrivalled. While Public Relations and advertising continue to thrive, the Internet and digital media have taken great strides facilitating easier and faster information dissemination. The spread of literacy and the advent of information technology have given greater thrust to the rapid growth of media.

IGNOU with its vast network of regional centres and study centres and the strength of developing exhaustive learning materials is uniquely placed to bridge this gap and provide practical training through collaborative arrangements with partner institutions.