Unbearable lightness? Maybe because of the irrelevance/incommensurability of Western theories? An enigma of Indian Media Research

Abstract

This article hypothesizes that irrelevance/incommensurability of Western theories to the media studies on the side of global East and South, especially India, is one of the primary reasons for the growing unbearable lightness in communication research. While the study points out to the existing divergent views on the declining rigor in the communication research—especially with respect to methodologies—in the West, it also suggests that the six parameters that Servaes (2015) together with Anderson and Middleton (2014, 2015) offered as an agenda to help improve the current paradigms of communication research is quite ideal for the pursuing de-westernizing media research in India. In the process, the study traverses through various conflicts between different methodologies in communication research and how new paradigms, prompted by the rapid emergence of new technologies, have come to play key role in re-defining the current methodologies in communication research.