End Notes…

I want to end this course with a video, and a couple of resources.

This is perhaps the most entertaining statistical presentation you will ever see — and it’s about the re-emergence of Asia as a super-continent:

Hans Rosling was a young guest student in India when he first realized that Asia had all the capacities to reclaim its place as the world’s dominant economic force. At TEDIndia, he graphs global economic growth since 1858 and predicts the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US.

I will keep this blog alive until end July, so if interested, note these resources:

• PEW Research – Global Attitudes and Trends
• Project Syndicate — essays by global political and intellectual leaders on politics and economy
• The World Bank regional analysis
• Internet World Statistics
• BBC on Asia
• China Media Bulletin
• Asian Culture in The Conversation
• Open Society Foundations — Mapping Digital Media Country Reports

Once more, your final assignment:

= a 7-10-minute video or audio essay + a written (.doc) list of resources/references.

TOPIC:

Your topic should somehow relate to one the three final themes of the course — popular culture, media industries, or media and human rights — and

• Reflect them in the light of globalization and Asia/your country.
• It should also include at least one concept/idea/theory discussed during the semester, as well as at least three (3) scholarly sources.

FORMAT: Think of the video/audio as a mini lecture that could be a part of an online course like ours.

• Your video is not fiction, it is not a public service announcement, or a personal video diary. It is an eye-opener, a short documentary, of a phenomenon or concept that matters for our field. It will include some scholarly concepts we have learned throughout this course. Feel free to use examples, interviews, any kinds of visual and sound effects, and so on.
• This is not an exercise in fancy video or audio production but an assignment that utilizes other formats than a conventional scholarly paper, to convey an intelligent message.

GRADING:

• Content: How well does the content relate to one of the three big themes?  40%
• Content: How well does the content discuss a theoretical, or otherwise scholarly notion? 30%
• Form: How coherent is your video-audio essay? How easy to follow? Does it have a clear beginning, middle, and end? A clear focus? 30%
• Bonus: Innovative approach to content and/or form.
• The assignment is 30% of your total grade.

HOW TO SUBMIT:

• Due Friday 5/6 at midnight.
• If at all possible share your work as a link (upload it to YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, Google Drive, etc.).
• Today on Fri 4/29, you will receive an invitation to a Dropbox folder and you can upload your work there. Make sure you try well before 5/6 at midnight that you can access the Dropbox. Let me know if you have any problems. If you have been able to upload your audio/video to a platform, just upload your list of references and share the link within that document.
• If you are doing the GloCha assignment, please submit to the Dropbox as well. Your deadline is 5/10.
• Include your name in the name of the document.

YOU WILL HAVE ACCESS TO THE THE DROPBOX FOLDER UNTIL 5/15 TO SEE ALL THE SUBMISSIONS — BUT YOU CANNOT SUBMIT AFTER THE DEADLINE.

WHEN REVIEWING YOUR COLLEAGUES’ WORK, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU WILL NOT ACCIDENTALLY REMOVE THEM FROM THE FOLDER.

 

Week 12: Media and Human Rights in Asia

Basics: Human Rights and the Media

What do the media and communication technologies have to do with human rights?

To start with, as the Nobel Prize winner economist from India, Amartya Sen, has noted: The media is crucial for a society, especially one like India, in development: It informs people, it creates cohesion between people, it provides a platform for debates. it acts as a watchdog in monitoring those in power, and it can give voice to the underserved and disenfranchised.

It is then no wonder that already the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by the United Nations, includes at least three articles that relate to the media:

Art. 12 on PRIVACY

Art. 19 on FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION; and

ART. 27 on RIGHT TO ONE’S CREATIVE PRODUCTS (intellectual property rights/copyrights).

Cees Hamelink, the leading scholar of global media and social justice, has noted that unfortunately, the media and human rights do not often meet. The media are not interested in reporting about human rights questionsHis short essay on the theme is in your Dropbox, would you choose to work on this topic for your final project. And, as we know from the battle between Morozov and Shirky, the same tools that promote democracy can also be used to hinder dissident voices.

This is more true than ever in our digital era. The seminal book on the topic, Resistance, Liberation Technology and Human Rights in the Digital Age (free download here), lists several key points as to why our digital era warrants special consideration regarding human rights:

1. importance of the Internet in the modern age: “the Internet must be regarded as the greatest enabler for freedom of expression and other human rights since Gutenberg’s printing press”;

2. challenges and risks: the internet poses, at the same time, challenges to the protection of human rights, perhaps most notably the right to privacy, as well as the legitimate interests and values of democracy;

3. freedom, security, accessibility: ensuring a free, secure and accessible internet has therefore emerged not only as a fundamental human rights challenge, but as the key to global economic development, prosperity and development of internet itself. (It’s no wonder that the UN recognized access to internet as a basic right in 2011).

4. freedom of expression as a pivotal right in the digital age: common ground and starting point must be the reaffirmation of the fundamental right to freedom of expression and the need to protect this right from unlawful restrictions on the Internet: limitations of freedom on the internet, including security-related measures, could only be acceptable if they complied with international human rights law;

5. new forms of human rights issues and standards: it is important that existing human rights standards are upheld and strengthened, but the Internet also poses new challenges that need to be addressed on its own terms. Therefore, it is not sufficient to rely exclusively on existing norms, but there is need for clarification of the meaning and scope of human rights law in the Internet context;

6. responsibilities of the states: states have committed to, and are responsible for, the protection of human rights and therefore have the responsibility to address these issues.

In sum, we can look at the media and human rights from two basic perspectives: The media reporting about human rights questions, and the media / comm tech themselves as a human rights question.

Case Asia

Press Freedom: Asia has little to celebrate

This is, in fact, the reason I have included this section in the course. Asia is not the region respecting much of human rights in terms of the media.

The non-profit watchdog group, Reporters without Borders, just released their World Press Freedom Index 2016 on Wednesday. The first, or “best”  Asian country (Australia = Pacific excluded here) is Taiwan, with the ranking of 51 out of 180 countries. It is followed by Hong Kong (69th place), South Korea (70), and Japan (72). North Korea is second to the worst country (Eritrea). In comparison, the U.S. is number 41, while the most free country in the world is Finland.

This is the report’s summary of Asia:

With 34 countries and more than half the world’s population, the Asia-Pacific region holds all the records, with the world’s biggest prisons for journalists and bloggers, especially China and Vietnam, and the world’s deadliest countries for journalists and bloggers, above all Pakistan, Philippines and Bangladesh. The Asia-Pacific region also has the biggest number of “Predators of Press Freedom,” who run some the worst dictatorships and information “black holes,” such as North Korea and Laos.

See for yourself. The darker the color, the worse the situation:

https://rsf.org/en/

A tip: if you are still uncertain about your final project, the report offers details on many countries…

Human rights reporting features many challenges

A report on the human rights coverage in Asia (in your Dropbox) summarizes ten main challenges. Some of them may seem very familiar (the media focusing on entertainment and the spectacular) but some reflect ongoing political conflicts and social realities (e.g., class societies and linguistic biases):

1. An episodic treatment of conflict and human rights issues. There is a focus on immediate events and outcomes rather than processes and histories.

2. There is a subordination of human rights issues to so-called larger concerns such as “national interest”, “law and order” and “state security” or partisan politics.

3. There is a focus on the spectacular. In some sections of the media, the intense competition and the pressure to constantly produce ‘breaking news’ results in a construction of events as spectacle, lacking in any analysis or background information, failing to grapple with complexity and raising several ethical concerns.

4. The media shows a tendency to stick to simplistic black and white interpretation of events, leaving out the complexities in the processes.

5. The media demonstrates uncritical framing of events by using terms and labels in ways that are often reductionist, or foreground reality selectively.

6. There are clear ideological biases based on class and other power relations that determine what constitutes ‘news’ and how the actors in events are represented.

7. There are “systematic silences” and exclusions that relate to the situations and voices of marginalised groups in militarised zones of conflict.

8. There are instances of the media narratives challenging democratic values.

9. Class interests play a key role. In India, for instance, the English press tends to reach an elite readership while the vernacular press has a much wider class base.

10. Finally, there is a growing tendency for the major news media moving from a role of reporting events towards becoming interested players: whether it is in terms of events being enacted for media visibility or whether it is in terms of proactive involvement through campaigns, polls, help-lines. While this may seem like a welcome development, especially when it is favour of a beleaguered civil society, it is often a double edged sword to have the media playing the role of precipitating events.

An example of dissident voices: China

There are many, many brave journalists, citizen journalists, bloggers, and activists challenging the above conditions. Ranging from a young schoolgirl in Pakistan, to  bloggers in Bangladesh, these people’s lives are often in danger.

The global reach of digital tools can sometimes act as a shield. Perhaps the most famous Chinese contemporary artist, Ai Wei Wei, is a global cultural phenomenon. Many of you may have seen his exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Arts 2 years ago.

 

 

 

But he’s also extremely active in social media, wanting to challenge barriers to freedom of expression in China.

Much of his art, as well as his social media presence, is about sarcastic, humorous commentary on power. This 15 minute documentary, Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei Wei, highlights how his actions have real consequences. He is being surveilled by the Chinese government, but then begins to film and photograph the cameras filming him and the police following him. The difference here is: He has a global Twitter and Instagram audience to witness all this.

Ai took this now-famous photo of himself in an elevator shortly after he was hit in the head by local police in Chengdu, where he had come to support a local earthquake activist who’d been jailed by the government.

 

Your Assignment: Ask away about your final project!

About the Final Project

= a 7-10-minute video or audio essay + a written (.doc) list of resources/references.

TOPIC:

Your topic should somehow relate to one the three final themes of the course — popular culture, media industries, or media and human rights — and

• Reflect them in the light of globalization and Asia/your country.
• It should also include at least one concept/idea/theory discussed during the semester, as well as at least three (3) scholarly sources.

FORMAT: Think of the video/audio as a mini lecture that could be a part of an online course like ours.

• Your video is not fiction, it is not a public service announcement, or a personal video diary. It is an eye-opener, a short documentary, of a phenomenon or concept that matters for our field. It will include some scholarly concepts we have learned throughout this course. Feel free to use examples, interviews, any kinds of visual and sound effects, and so on.
• This is not an exercise in fancy video or audio production but an assignment that utilizes other formats than a conventional scholarly paper, to convey an intelligent message.

GRADING:

• Content: How well does the content relate to one of the three big themes?  40%
• Content: How well does the content discuss a theoretical, or otherwise scholarly notion? 30%
• Form: How coherent is your video-audio essay? How easy to follow? Does it have a clear beginning, middle, and end? A clear focus? 30%
• Bonus: Innovative approach to content and/or form.
• The assignment is 30% of your total grade.

HOW TO SUBMIT:

• Due Friday 5/6 at midnight.
• If at all possible share your work as a link (upload it to YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, Google Drive, etc.).
•  A week prior, on Fri 4/29, you will receive an invitation to a Dropbox folder and you can upload your work there. Make sure you try well before 5/6 at midnight that you can access the Dropbox. Let me know if you have any problems. If you have been able to upload your audio/video to a platform, just upload your list of references and share the link within that document.

Any questions? If so, please ask below as a comment by 4/29, midnight.

If you have a question probably a couple of your colleagues have been wondering about the same thing. That’s why we share them here. I’ll try to respond ASAP!

 

 

Week 11: Media Industries in Asia

Now we move from looking at a specific form of media culture to Asia’s role in the global markets. Asia (and here we refer to East and South East Asia, not to Central Asia) is a growing market. A recent consultancy report notes that:

Developing markets are playing an increasingly critical role in global media growth, not only because traditional media in these regions remain strong, but because these markets, from Mexico and China to India and Malaysia, anticipate healthy economic expansion and increasing household incomes—particularly in Asia Pacific (AP) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This growth will boost both advertising and content spend across the region. In fact, the media market in AP will be the largest source of absolute growth for the global industry over the next five years.

As a region, Asia dominates one specific form of entertainment industry: gaming.

Since 2007, the Asia Pacific region has dominated the global video game market with its value expected to rise to 39.74 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. Within Asia the leading markets are China, Japan and South Korea.

Some of the growth factors in Asian media markets come from increasing digitalization: better broadband, better mobile connectivity, and connectivity in general. — Here are some stats that show the challenge: almost one half of the world’s internet users are in Asia; but internet penetration varies greatly, from 14% in Laos to 92% in South Korea.

Yet, as that shows, the region is incredibly diverse. Thus, the look at the big players in Asia, by country:

Framework: World Economy and Media Governance

As Thussu (see week 9) told us, we can map media organizations into global, regional, and “contraflow” types. But we shouldn’t forget that media industries are a apart from the global economy. We shouldn’t forget that mass media systems were created as national, and still are very national.

So here are two models that help you understand media industries in the diverse region of Asia.

1. World System Theory

There are many thinkers who have influenced the theory, but a simple reiteration could be this. Countries can be classified as core, semiperiphery and peripheral countries.

The core nations include the US, Canada, the EU (except the former Eastern European new members), South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Norway, Switzerland – and Japan and South Korea.

The semiperipheral countries include the so called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, China, and India), as well as, from Asia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Pakistan. Although the BRIC are economic successes in many ways they still embed features from peripheral countries

A large part of Asia, as we have already learned, can be classified as peripheral. In terms of the media, this means lower rates of literacy, lower rates of internet access, and lack of diversity in media offerings.

2. Systems of governing the media

The media and comm platforms are a special form of business; they have plenty of influence in:

1. Information dissemination about health, education, business, entertainment…
2. Institutional role (watchdog on citizens’ behalf)
3. Mobilization and participation, especially politics
4. Understanding of other views, cultures, global realities.

That’s why most nations have created systems of media governance (e.g. rules about advertising; protecting minors; restrictions on media ownership and market concentration, etc.) As the below outline of media governance shows, a part of the governance does happen in multi-national contexts.

Yet, much of media regulation is nation-bound. National mass media systems differ from authoritarian (the government practically decides everything, including acceptable content, read, North Korea), to free market driven (self-explanatory), to public service-oriented ones (the government may have some say, e.g., some media outlets are financed by public funds, but the outlets operate relatively independently. Classic examples: the BBC in the UK, NHK in Japan, and Doordarshan in India, modeled after the BBC). Many countries are not perfect examples of any of this but mixed systems. And old mass media regulatory frameworks often influence attempts to nationally regulate the Internet and mobile communications.

 

4 Cases of Powerful Asian Players in the Global Market

We have looked at “our” and other countries from national perspectives, in the assignments and for the MT. Now I offer you overviews of the four media market power-houses that are, or are becoming global: Two core countries and two semiperiphery countries.

Core: Japan

• Major player in some aspects of media and entertainment industries
  • Anime and film
  • Advertising
• In order to expand its global reach, Japanese film production companies begun early on to collaborate with American or Asian counterparts.
  • Hollywood has also remade some Japanese hits
  • Digital distribution is expanding the opportunities
• Japanese TV has not been very marketable (Korean and Chinese memories of Japanese occupation) but this has begun to change since the late 1990s.

Here’s a very interesting recent Reddit debate on why Japan is not more active in marketing its entertainment products (and why doesn’t it want to ride the Korean Wave, so to speak). There’s certainly not only one answer – and the discussion highlights that well.

Core: South Korea

• The Korean Wave is not dissipating, even in the global economic downturn. Markets beyond Asia and the US include the Middle East and Europe.
• The beginning: Some say it started with a Korean hit in China, a TV drama called What is Love All About. One of the first markets: Taiwan, then rapidly spreading to Japan, Hong Kong, and other East and South East Asian countries. One big factor: SK offered cheaper TV products than Japan.
• The wave in music was similarly started in China in the late 1990s. (Some say Korea was not in the radar of cotemporary music before that; world music experts were looking at Indonesia and Japan. Critics note that K-pop is essentially just “foreign culture”, a mix of Japanese, Chinese, and Western cultures, produced in Korea…)
• Korean film is also riding the wave and imports are continuously increasing.
• Not only does the Korean Wave exemplify contra flows, or the rise of hybrid pop cultures, but it is due to a global trend of liberalized (de-regulated) mass media markets. The US market has always been “market-driven”, but as noted in the above model, many countries have governed their media more strictly. As a result of deregulation, in the late 1990s in Korea, cultural industries boomed. In addition, interestingly enough, the Korean government not only liberalized the market but also begun supporting imports.
• Symptomatic to the complexities of globalization (as we know): Some thinkers see the Korean Wave as revitalization of Asian values in the globalizing world. Others point out that the it enhances (Western) consumer culture. One thing is certain: the Korean Wave has boosted sales of other Korean products in the West.

Semiperiphery: China

• The so called Open Door policy since the 1970s (after Mao Zedong’s death) marks a change in the previously very authoritarian media system: The media has now become a significant field in the country’s economy. Since 1980s, all fields of media have grown exponentially.
• China is a major player also in global communication. For instance, China Radio International is now the biggest international radio service, even bypassing Voice of America. Seven channels of China Central Television (CCTV) are focused on foreign audiences and reach them in over 170 countries.
• China has become one of the world’s main film production nations. Since the beginning of the 21^st century it has invested in marketing its cinema internationally. The Open Door policy has also opened doors for foreign companies it has increased co-productions with other Asian countries, but also with, for example, the UN, the Netherlands, France and the UK.
• Chinese government’s “Going Abroad” project has focused on TV, encouraging foreign TV productions include Chinese voices and images. One success story here is Chinese animation series being exported.
• Some note that much of the opening up, and pushing for exports has to do with China’s desire to have broader political influence around the world.
• One field that hasn’t been globalized is the realm of the Internet. Many may have heard stories of internet censorship. The US considers this as a barrier to trade between the two countries. Many of you may know the back-and-forth between Google and China. At the same time, in industry terms, the online bazaar Aliba has had its IPO, the search engine Baidu is listed in the US stock markets, and so on.

Semiperiphery: India

• As we know from last week, the film industry (as the broadcasting system, and the English-language press) are all due to its colonial history. At the same time, they have served independent India (with numerous recognized religions, 26 official languages, and hundreds of dialects) as a unifying, nation-building force. The biggest dream factory is located in Mumbai, called Bollywood, produces Hindi-language films. It’s good to remember that vibrant film production exists also in other languages in other parts of India.
• But, as we have discussed, since 1990s, the Indian film industry has seen a surge of exports to North America, the UK, and a range of Arab countries – due to the diasporic communities. It is now biggest than Hollywood, a part of global economy and, some analysts say, has become a brand in and of itself. Yash Raj Films is the biggest, most successful, and global of Indian film producers.
• There are also some factors of this success, besides non-resident Indians (NRIs). The story is surprisingly similar to China and Korea in that government deregulation (allowing foreign direct investment in India; allowing film industry to financing as any other industry investments) have boosted the field – by allowing more resources and, for instance investments in modernizing production facilities and equipment.
• In addition, India has an agreement with China for collaboration and exchanges in the entertainment sector, and the film industry is engaged in co-productions all around the world.

If interested in global-local media markets, I’ve shared with you a resource (W11 in Dropbox) of a brand new book. It’s very critical of global media markets, specifically of local labour of global markets.  You’ll see — but has several articles that address Asia.

Assignment – Toward Your Final Project:

This week, your assignment is simply to share your idea for your final video/podcast project, below as a comment. Be as general or as specific you can be at this stage.

This is your final actual assignment for this course, P/F, due 4/22 at midnight.

Next week , we’ll discuss media and human rights, an issue in many Asian countries. At that point, your assignment will be to ask any questions related to the final project — if you have any. You will also receive feedback from me to your final project ideas. The final week is a recap and review of the course, plus a summary of your possible assignment queries.

 

About the Final Project

= a 7-10-minute video or audio essay + a written (.doc) list of resources/references.

• Your topic should somehow relate to one the three final themes of the course — popular culture, media industries, or media and human rights — and
• Reflect them in the light of globalization and Asia/your country.
• It should also include at least one concept/idea/theory discussed during the semester, as well as at least three (3) scholarly sources.
• Think of the video/audio as a mini lecture that could be a part of an online course like ours. Your video is not fiction, it is not a public service announcement, or a personal video diary. It is an eye-opener, a short documentary, of a phenomenon or concept that matters for our field. It will include some scholarly concepts we have learned throughout this course. Feel free to use examples, interviews, any kinds of visual and sound effects, and so on.
• This is not an exercise in fancy video or audio production but an assignment that utilizes other formats than a conventional scholarly paper, to convey an intelligent message.
• Units for grading:
  • Content: How well does the content relate to one of the three big themes?  40%
  • Content: How well does the content discuss a theoretical, or otherwise scholarly notion? 30%
  • Form: How coherent is your video-audio essay? How easy to follow? Does it have a clear beginning, middle, and end? A clear focus? 30%
  • Bonus: Innovative approach to content and/or form.
  • The assignment is 30% of your total grade.
• Practicalities:
  • Due Friday 5/6 at midnight.
  • If at all possible share your work as a link (upload it to YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, Google Drive, etc.).
  • I know this is not possible for everyone, but I also can’t risk your work not getting to me via email. Hence:
  •  A week prior, on Fri 4/29, you will receive an invitation to a Dropbox folder and you can upload your work there. Make sure you try well before 5/6 at midnight that you can access the Dropbox. If you have been able to upload your audio/video to a platform, just upload your list of references and share the link within that document.
  • I’ll repeat these instructions a few times in the weeks to come 😉

 

 

Week 10: Popular Culture – and the journey towards the final project

Last 3 Themes

This week marks the beginning of the end 🙂

We shift our gaze from globalization and its relation to (Asian) media, to forms of media themselves. In the next three sessions, we will examine:

• Popular culture;
• Media industries and journalism; and
• Grassroots use of the media, case human rights.

I will introduce some key notions of these three themes, and argue why they matter for us International Communication -Asia experts.

Steps towards your Final Project

During the next three weeks, we will also begin to think about the final project, the 7-10-minute video or audio essay:

• Your topic should somehow relate to one the three themes noted above; and
• Reflect them in the light of globalization and Asia/your country.
• It should also include at least one concept/idea/theory discussed during the semester.
• Think of the video/audio as a mini lecture that could be a part of an online course like ours. Your video is not fiction, it is not a public service announcement, or a personal video diary. It is an eye-opener, a short documentary, of a phenomenon or concept that matters for our field. Feel free to use examples, interviews, any kinds of visual and sound effects, and so on.

More details to come next week; and I will ask you to submit an outline/mind map about your project a week thereafter (4/22), for which you will get some feedback.

So take some time during these coming sessions to find out what you are especially interested in and/or what topic would be useful for you to examine.

Some examples that just came to mind: If you love sports you could discuss the growing popularity of cricket and the economics around it (sports broadcasts). If you are a marketing professional-to-be you may address internationalization  of advertising/PR campaigns in Asia. If you love gaming you may want to address the various online gaming trends of Asia. If you are passionate about human rights you may introduce some related issues and online activists/organizations solving the problems with media/comm tech.

Theme 1: Popular Culture

We all know the power of popular culture.

The entertainment industry is big business (as we noted a few weeks back):

But popular culture has also other effects. It can be a part of region- or nation-building sentiment, or driver for a subculture, or a political tool.

Regionality, Case East Asia

Here’s a new article by a scholar who has mapped developments in popular culture in East Asia for a decade (worth a read for those interested in EA!).

Given that a large number of people in East Asia spend many hours every day in front of their television screens, go to movies, listen to music, and generally spend more time than before on cultural consumption, can’t we assume that these practices have an impact on their lives and perceptions of other places? Perhaps they introduce new images and options and create new social and symbolic references? Can we think of popular culture, including practices and discourses about popular culture, as creating a sense of “we-ness”?

His overall observations about popular culture of the  region are:

1. Market forces are at the heart of the process of cross-pollination of popular culture, promoting and spurring the construction of new cultural linkages. The dissemination of popular culture in East Asia is essentially the result of bottom-up processes,  not directly guided by the states, and at times even taking place in spite of them.
2. The dissemination of popular culture is centered on cities and their middle class residents rather than encompassing the entire population as a whole. This connectivity between cities and their inhabitants is not an equal process, but a socially selective one.
3. The East Asian region is not isolated from economic and cultural developments in the wider Asian region or globally. Nevertheless, there is a concentration of certain popular culture flows and influences found most intensively in the cultural geography of urban East Asia (such as Japanese fashion magazines, Chinese pop music, and Korean idol culture).

Popular Culture and Diasporic Identities, Case Desi

Desi = A person of Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi birth or descent who lives abroad.

Popular culture also often channels construction of individual identities, and, in our globalizing era, conflicts of old and new identities that are formed in living a “cross-cultural” life.

One of the early, popular, examples of looking at a “double identity” in the West is the British movie Bend it like Beckham that specifically explores gender roles:

(The full movie here.)

A more recent example would be, for instance, the comedy series Master of None (greatly with the same themes as Bend It, just with a more, should we say, daring, presentation):

 

The diaspora is a topic of many a Bollywood film, extending its role form a nation-builder to a builder of Desi identities and connections to India. — And, of course, thus being attractive to audiences outside of India. As one researcher writes:

Popular Hindi cinema has, since the first film was made in India in 1913, played a central role in the formulation of the national identity and in the promotion of normative behaviour. So much so that film is perhaps the single strongest agency for the creation of a national mythology of heroism, consumerism, leisure, and sociality.

…

[The next] generation of [Bollywood] films made during the last fifteen years reflects the insidious change from a jus soli to a jus sanguini conception of citizenship. The migrant, promoted to the rank of blood brother, has therefore ceased to be a symbol of the ‘Other’ and has become instead the prototype of the new Indian, globalized and modern, but always a nationalist at heart.

I would claim, in addition, that the equation is not quite so simple, but that the flow of values goes both ways. The very recent years prove how Hindi films have begun to tell local, less glamorous and more realistic stories about the Indian society —  while also becoming more global, and more daring, in challenging traditional values. A prime example, already a decade old, is incidentally staged in New York (perhaps it would have been too much to stage it in India at that point) — and is the first compassionate, understanding depiction of adultery in Bollywood cinema.

 

Popular culture and borderless fandom: Case Sports

While creating nations, and regions, and plenty of $, popular culture also give birth to borderless communities, be them Filipino Manga enthusiasts, or Asian rap fans.

Sports tends to be an interesting case, as it’s both nationalistic, yet globally unifying (and BIG revenue creator re: media rights). Forms of sports travel — baseball to Japan, karate to the US. The globalization of media outlets (most notably, naturally, of ESPN — here’s the history) will just speed up the processes.  The  sports industry will continue to grow in Asia, experts claim:

The digital world is the most exciting thing to happen, and it will keep growing for the next three to five years.

The digital platform is the next big opportunity for everybody across Southeast Asia. As connectivity increases, the amount of mobile devices has increased tremendously, and the quality of the content has also increased. So the habits of viewers are changing, and they are consuming content online, want more choices, and are more active and interactive, compared to content that is consumed passively.

It’s no wonder that sports has been used as an example to explain contradictory, powerful trends of globalization, including political upheavals, diasporic identities, even racism:

 

Apart from soccer, the N.B.A. is a great example of the odd interplay of commerce and passion; of national and global, as wonderfully accounted in this article:

Sports are a vehicle for nationalism, and, despite basketball’s Canadian roots, few are more American. Yet the sport, more than American counterparts like baseball and football, can also be sold as a global game. Cricket remains the definitive bat-and-ball sport of Europe and India, which makes it hard for baseball to gain traction there. American football must compete with sports like rugby and soccer. Basketball falls into its own category; there is no game quite like it.

Some may argue that the globalization of basketball, and of the N.B.A. brand, could erode its status as a symbol of American culture. But there’s another way to see it. American culture is already becoming less dominant in the global arena: the Chinese microblogging site Weibo is one of the most popular globally; Bangkok was the world’s most visited city in 2012; and Oprah.com called the Indian actors Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan “the most famous couple in the world.” Perhaps the N.B.A. is simply adapting to this new reality better than others.

Your assignment: Celebrity culture

As a recent consultancy report attests,

The celebrity culture is widespread in Asia. In both South Korea and Japan, it is thought that as many as 70% of commercials now feature a celebrity. The phenomenon is newer in China and India, where it has gained momentum in a relatively short space of time.

In South Korea, entertainment companies work hand-in-hand with the advertising industry in a unique way. Hundreds of “K-pop” stars are trained from a young age not only to sing and perform in concerts, but also to endorse products and promote corporate brands.

China, as a collectivist society, has in the past put its trust in leaders and elders for guidance. However, under the new socialist market economy model, it is celebrities rather than military heroes who now symbolise knowledge, trust and aspiration in the eyes of consumers.

The actress Fan Bingbing is said to be the most influential celebrity in China, followed by singers Jay Chou and Andy Lau. Savvy Western businesses are also increasingly employing Chinese celebrities to help sell their products in this potentially lucrative market.

Celebrity power has also taken off in a big way in India, and companies are clamouring to secure contracts with the big Bollywood actors, such as Katrina Kaif, Shahrukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor.

We know that celebrities are essential products, as well as re-creators, of popular culture. They also reveal us a lot about:

1. The societal, value culture they exist in (why are they appealing to people? why are they famous? what attributes are projected to them?); and
2. The media culture they exist in (how are they presented in legacy and social media? how are they reported about? how do they directly interact with audiences/fans?)

Your assignment is to introduce us to one celebrity from your country. Briefly describe him/her and why you chose him/her, addressing the questions above, i.e., providing us with a mini-analysis on what we can learn about the culture from that celebrity.

Due 4/15, graded P-F.

PS:

I have included additional readings in our Dropbox that address the themes above, all with the prefix W10. They may be useful to you if you decide to work on a topic related to popular culture for  your final project video/audio

 

Feedback: TYM

Word cloud based on your reviews.

Thank you julietoddblog, yuxiao93, alyssa ford, x03377868, Adam Shively, Matthew D’Aguanno, tonydegennaro, Edina Pepic, Kara, annikamngo, Joshua “Riknas”, Ryan, holmeshigginlucy, Woorie Kim, and gypsy1995 for your reviews! Here’s a summary feedback on your interesting, sometimes even passionate, reviews:

 

The latest TYM film, about disillusioned and tired activists, struggling to find their drive again: http://theyesmenarerevolting.com/ 

PS: Saw this a day after posting the above. The same message, told by a world-famous statistician:

Week 9: Cultural Globalization

This week, after your movie screening, I’m going to introduce you to some theoretical classics of cultural globalization. (It became apparent from your Mid Term that I need to challenge you more. Also, these theories relate very much to current phenomena in the US and world-wide.)

Our course book remains at a very basic level when discussing cultural globalization – we have already covered what Lule has to offer. He discusses some (yet not all) of the same ideas of cultural globalization that we already know from Norris and that you discussed in your Mid Term.

We are going to broaden that outlook by systematically dissecting cultural globalization and the media in 3 levels: Macro (media systems); meso (individual media organizations; and micro (individuals).

Multiple models of the macro-level

Norris – whose introduction to the model I found online and now included in your Dropbox – has already proven to us that there are nuances beyond McDonalization of the entire world:

In some cases we indeed see Americanization – American coffee culture and Starbucks everywhere:

But, at the same time, in the same cultural sphere, cultures mix (thank you Joshua for the example):

Perhaps the most overarching tendency is the isolationist “Taliban” model.  (By this I mean — if a country’s tendency is to follow the Taliban model, the other models do not apply, as other cultures are not welcomed.) In some cases (or rather, regions and countries) we still see strict isolation tendencies, as many of you highlighted in the assignment on Shirky vs. Morozov (BTW: M just published an article in which he claims Western countries are now ruled by tech giants, not by governments.)

And, in many cases, it is indeed the Firewall model: we take some, keep some things away. Perhaps not only in censoring sense but also in terms of, say, localizing cultural products. (Localizing a cultural product is somewhat different, perhaps, than mixing cultures to create something entirely new.) The above example, the cartoon, re: North Korea could be an example of the Firewall model — except that it doesn’t admit the cultural reference to the American burger and claims that to be an invention of the Leader… One of my favourite examples  of the Firewall is the Colombian telenovela Ugly Betty that became a global hit as a US version and was localized all over the world. Here’s a clip from the Philippines:

An addition, at the meso-level of organizations: Contra-flows

The above examples do not specifically address the direction of cultural flows, just a country’s “reaction” to other cultures. The Indian-British scholar Daya Thussu has added to this the dynamics between the West and the Rest. He has defined different kinds of cultural flows in terms of geography, as driven by different kinds of media organizations:

• Global flows by global players. Thussu calls these dominant flows of global culture. The organizations are often US/Western-based, so the flow is from West to the Rest.
• Transnational flows. The organizations are nation-based in the non-Western sphere and their aim is to serve culturally-specific region, as well as create contra flows from Rest to West.
• Geo-cultural flows cater to linguistically specific audience that can be scattered all around the world. These, too, represent contra flows.

Thussu’s examples:

Micro: How about the individual?

The issue that we have NOT addressed yet is that of identity and cultural globalization. Many of you pointed to the richness of your identities in your introductions, and here’s another example: Meet DJ Rekha, the world-famous bhangra DJ — London-born, raised in Delhi and  Queens, created Basement Bhangra.

Many social scientists talk about national identity as civic (legal, citizenship), and ethnic (cultural belonging). Many feared that mediatized globalization will do away the latter. John Tomlinson’s text Globalization and Cultural Identity is yet another classic. He contests the notion that cultural globalization destroys national/regional identities and posits that:

Since the eighteenth century, national identity has been the most spectacularly successful modern mode of orchestrating belonging. And the fact that virtually all of the world’s six billion population today either enjoy or claim a national identity is itself testament to the power of the globalization of modernity. It is clear from this that the nation and national identity are not in danger of imminent collapse. But the very dynamism and complexity of globalization is such that the stability of this form of identification is not guaranteed indefinitely. The very dynamic which established national identity as the most powerful cultural-political binding force of modernity may now be unraveling some of the skeins that tie us in securely to our national ‘home’.

He wrote this over a decade ago – but thinking about mass migration, the lure of ISIS, or, on a positive note, the cultural groups of fandom that transcend national borders – all facilitated by online media — Tomlinson just might have had a point.

Bringing it all together: Appadurai’s Scapes

Perhaps the most famous scholar of globalization is the Indian anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (now at NYU). He brings all the above complexities together by talking about 5 scapes of globalization that are intertwined:

• Ethnoscapes= movement of people
• Technoscapes= flow of technology, mechanical goods, software goods, etc.
• Financescapes= movement of money.
• Ideoscapes= movement of political ideas from one area to another.
• Mediascape= movement of media around the world.

All of the scapes, outlined in Appadurai’s book Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, interact to create cultural globalization at the macro, meso, and micro-levels. Appadurai writes that cultural globalization is greatly about imagination – but that this global-local imagination will have real consequences:

Electronic mediation and mass migration mark the world of the present not as technically new forces but as ones that seem to impel (and sometimes compel) the work of the imagination.

The imagination has broken out of the special expressive space of art, myth, and ritual and has now become a part of the quotidian mental work of ordinary people in many societies. It has entered the logic of ordinary life from which it had largely been successfully sequestered. … [E]ven if it frequently implies homogenization or Americanization … there is still ample room for the deep study of specific geographies histories, and languages.

The challenge for this emergent order will be whether such heterogeneity is consistent with some minimal conventions of norm and value, which do not require a strict adherence to the liberal social contract of the modern West. This fateful question will be answered not by academic fiat but by the negotiations (both civil and violent) between the worlds imagined by these different interests and movements. In the short run, as we can see already, it is likely to be a world of increased incivility and violence. In the longer run, free of the constraints of the nation form, we may find that cultural freedom and sustainable justice in the world do not presuppose the uniform and general existence of the nation-state. This unsettling possibility could be the most exciting dividend of living in modernity at large.

 

Assignment:

You can choose to explore one our 3 new theorists: Thussu, Tomlinson, or Appadurai.

• Their writings are in our Dropbox, marked W9. (I uploaded the entre book “Media on the Move, edited by Thussu. If you are interested in his thoughts, please read Chapter 1 from that book.)
• Write a short reflection of 1-2 paragraphs, using a theory/concept of your chosen theorist. You can either agree or disagree with him, but do give a solid argument to make your point. Bonus for a real-life example.
• Due 4/8.
• Graded A – B – F.

Preview: This is your last “commentary assignment”.  Next week, we will begin to work towards your final projects.

Week 8: Media & Economic Globalization

This week’s theme is very much related to last week’s (voluntary) lecture on the Future of Work (and do remember: you are invited to attend the Graduate Symposium on 3/31! If you do attend, that will make up one class for this course.)

Historians note that the rapid, true, globalization started with the telegraph: the imperial powers could easily keep “their” countries on check. Today, rapid, instant, ways of communication facilitate global money markets and work force, even in the fields like law and journalism.

So how does the field of international communication respond to economic globalization? Lule (Chapter 5, your reading for the week) talks about three kinds of relationships between the media and economic globalization: The media promoting globalization; the media as global business; and the media omitting some stories of the globalized world.

1. Media and comm tech promoting globalization

• Those using the framework of classic  critical theory  would study the first aspect: How do globalized media promote consumerism and Western capitalism — certain products, but also life styles, and values? This phenomenon is not as such good or bad; but especially in the 1970s thru 90s many scholars of this strand were discussing the concept of “American Cultural Imperialism” and considered mass media to be a main vehicle to promote Western values, and to make money, in the rest of the world.

Critical Theorists argue, permits their enterprise to be practical in a distinctively moral (rather than instrumental) sense. They do not merely seek to provide the means to achieve some independent goal, but rather seek “human emancipation” in circumstances of domination and oppression.

These scholars would highlight the cases like Nestle’s (as also described in Lule).

They would also be interested in, and concerned about the loss of local cultures to transnational trends.

 

 

2. Media and comm tech as big global business

• Those in media economics would be interested in media organizations as corporate players in local, national, and global economies.

Media corporations have bigger budgets than some nation states. As agents and moderators of globalization they have economic and opinion-shaping power. They deal with the contemporary challenge of combining business segments belonging to the ‘Old Economy’ with those of the “New Economy” by restructuring measures, cooperation or mergers with advertising agencies or social media platforms.

It is technological progress and growing competition that force media corporations to expand their businesses on a national as well as an international level. To successfully compete, some media companies establish partnerships with financial investors, which in some cases have garnered considerable influence.

— Media Data Base

The US is clearly a world leader if measured with revenues (note 1 euro =1.12 $ on 3/24/16):

(See the remaining 90 corporations, here.)

In business terms, we are witnessing both vertical (e.g. Apple) and horizontal concentration (e.g. Murdoch’s — FOX etc. — media empire) of media companies. In other words, the former means that a company owns many/all parts of of the production and distribution chain of a product, the latter that a company owns many (if not all=monopoly) similar kinds of companies.

Combine the power of American corporations with their prospective markets:

As you can see, China, India, Japan, SK, and SG are amongst the best markets for US imports (think of the populations of these countries that makes them especially attractive). Just to give you a taste of how the US government sees two of these major markets:

3. Media and comm tech shaping our lives and realities

• Finally, those engaged in cultural studies would most likely focus on the “truths” we don’t get to know in the globalized media environment, and how those shape our lives. (CS is very much related to Critical Theory, and uses it principles, but  broadened the idea of economic power to issues of race/ethnicity, gender, identity, and so on.)

Cultural studies is an innovative interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the ways in which “culture” creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social relations and power.

Cultural life is not only concerned with symbolic communication, it is also the domain in which we set collective tasks for ourselves and begin to grapple with them as changing communities. Cultural studies is devoted to understanding the processes through which societies and the diverse groups within them come to terms with history, community life, and the challenges of the future.

A very current example could be the story of omission regarding the Brussels terrorist attack and its aftermath. As one writer asked,

Why Aren’t We Talking About Turkey & Other Cities Recently Hit With Violence?

One explanation is that mainstream, international news media cover the West (and is not so interested in the rest) because the money, and POWER,  are concentrated in the Global North. The above mentioned author adds to the equation the power of platforms: our social media algorithms create so called “filter bubbles” so that we are offered content from our peers, from those that we know.

Assignment: Movie Review

For this week of a long Easter weekend, your assignment is about a big, complex topic, but in a somewhat lighthearted format.

This week, your task is to screen the movie The Yes Men Fix the World. It’s a tragic, and comical, story that talks about economic globalization and about how the media plays into the equation… It also has a specific Asia connection. It also addresses all the three dimensions described above!

(TIP: If pressed with time, screen at least the first 46 min.)

Note that the documentary has a very clear point-of-view — one which you may agree with, or not. Imagine you are writing a blurb about the documentary for your peers for a popular online platform, student newspaper, or equivalent.

Please write a movie review, a paragraph (or max. 2), below as a comment. Why should someone see this movie (or not)? Finish your review with “stars” (with the scale 0-5). P/F.

Extra Credit: The Future of Work

http://www.hubud.org/event/coworking-unconference-asia-cuasia-2016/

The Future of Work is one of the most important themes of our times.

Because the nature of work has changed so drastically due to technologies, countries, governments and international organizations (macro level), companies, foundations, labour unions (meso level), and we all as individuals are trying to come to terms with what to expect.

You may wonder why this is a topic for Int Comm – Asia. Here’s why:

1. Changes in the way we work are real — and one of those is globalization. That’s why this course is a requirement for all Mass Comm majors.
2. Asia has played, and continues to play, a major role in the global economy; whether we discuss new markets, or outsourcing, or tech innovations.
3. The way we work in this course is quite literally a new way of working. We will soon explore some more collaborative platforms. In the future, many of you may work with colleagues whom you’ll never meet face-to-face.
4. And yes — we got invited to the high-level graduate symposium. I want to offer you the chance to take part, and earn credit for this course.

To reiterate: This “lecture” is voluntary.

You can either participate online or in person (see below). It means there is no lecture this week and we return to the pre-assigned topics next week. All these changes are reflected in the updated syllabus.

A Commentary: Look at the margins, for the margins are the future

[This is a short text I wrote for a book on the future of work, to be published shortly.]

The future of work is a conversation filled with hopes but also with great anxieties, especially for those who are about to enter the labor market right now.

I teach topics around the media, communication technologies, globalization, and human rights, to university students from around the world, studying in Europe and in the United States. One of the first comments, and most positive predictions by the students, is that they, too, can potentially become entrepreneurs, influencers, and advocates in the borderless networked society, and live a creative life with flexible working arrangements.

Then, they quickly continue to the but of the situation: globalization means increased competition, especially from developing countries and emerging economies, signifying less rather than more work opportunities for them.

It is understandable that the 20-somethings located in the Global North view the world based on their own challenges. They need support in envisioning the globe, and their role in its workforce, in a new way. The biggest opportunity for them to survive, and thrive, is to embrace global collaboration, not competition. The regions, communities, and people that, for their parents’ generation, were in the margins of their worldview are now crucial in developing prosperity and jobs, for all of us.

Currently, my students have but few mentors in this line of thinking. Innovation progresses quicker than government regulation. Education has not (yet) responded adequately to the new demands and challenges. Few technologists are devoting time in understanding global structural inequalities, and building tools together with different communities, to ensure applicability and effectiveness of new technologies.

And there are many challenges to overcome. While mobile leapfrogging and great innovations especially in banking and health care are making a difference in lesser developed regions in the world, there exists a hidden digital divide, comprised of things like the speed of internet connection, or the rapid development of hard and software in the developed countries that the rest of the world cannot match. The predicted disruption in the nature and markets for work in the next decades will most likely hit the most vulnerable populations the hardest.

But, according to the new report by the Foresight Alliance, one the key solutions to the challenges is that higher-income and lower-income countries learn from one another about best practices in policies, flexible institutions (including education), and formal-informal work. In essence, this knowledge exchange is not between countries but between people. And those entering the job market must get ready to learn.

“Look at the margins, for the margins are the future”. That is what the world-famous cultural scholar John Fiske used to say to us graduate students of the media and technology in the 1990s. This is why Google and others are now investing heavily on Artificial Intelligence, a phenomenon still relatively marginal for our everyday lives.

But this is also why a small crowdmapping project, started by a Kenyan blogger and developed into the open source platform Ushahidi, is now used everywhere in the world to monitor elections, natural disaster relief, and more.

“Center the experiences of those at the margins of the economy”, concludes the Open Society Foundations in its recent report on the Future of Work. Look at the margins, care about those experiences, and collaborate. Without the margins there might be no future.

Assignment:

We have included this topic into our course at this point because of this unique opportunity:

The International Communication Master’s Progamme is hosting a high-level event on the Future of Work

on Thursday 3/31, 5:30pm, Moot Auditorium, SJU Law School.

Keynote: Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Worldwide Education at Microsoft.

You can choose from 2 options:

1. Participate in the symposium — just sign in on location with Dr. Basilio Monteiro. You will recognize him (if you don’t know him) because he will be introducing the speaker. That’s all; no other assignment. OR
2. Choose one of these recent reports or other commentary on the Future of Work and write a short commentary as a comment below on how, based on your readings but reflecting with what we have discussed, you see as one of the key issues around the FoW.
   1. The Futures of Work (download the Report Overview here) OR
   2. Technology and the Future of Work — a summary of the debates.

DUE in 2 WEEKS, Fri 4/1 at midnight or anytime before that!

Week 7: Media & Political Globalization

Thank you for your MT submissions! I received the last ones today; the survey is now closed.

Here’s a selection of good answers (note that there were many, many more — this is just an example of an A-worthy exam, compiled from your responses).

Please allow me some 7 days for personalized feedback, together with your grade update.

Now to Media and Political Globalization (Lule Chapter 6).

As we have learned, it is often said that globalization has 3 faces: Political, Economic, and Cultural,  (Dropbox, Snarr, Chapter 1). Each of them has both positive and negative consequences.

A classic example: Coca Cola’s presence in the world creates a global culture of consumption (culture) and jobs — but also, some activists attest, disparate access to resources (economy). And so on. It’s tough trying to assess the + / – of globalization — unless we look at a specific case.

However, one thing we know. International Communication — whether global mass media corporations, or digital borderless platforms — facilitates globalization. For the next 3 sessions, we will examine the broad aspects of globalization and the media.

Communication is Power. That Power is intertwined with political power in a multitude of ways. Lule (read chapter 6) discusses the three levels: MACRO (governments, nations); MESO (organizations, such as news providers), and MICRO (everyday actions of ordinary citizens:

Language (in all levels)

The power of metaphors, slogans, and insinuations is potentially immense. They circulate in the media, via the media — that then become political axioms. The  claim by the U.S. about the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq is a classic case of the role of mass media in creating a “truth”, well-described in this short article by the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

Platforms (in all levels)

Similarly, social media platforms feature more spontaneous political reactions and protests, such as the infamous YouTube Muhammad video and its tragic aftermath— and the related Twitter response #MuslimRage that followed, as a protest to a mainstream media story  (a condensed account with a great discussion and a slideshow on HuffPost). Another powerful example is the

Both old and ‘new’ media are being used by nations in something called public diplomacy — a sort of branding and communication by countries to the citizens of other countries… Tweeting included, notes the Economist.

At the same time, as Lule also illustrates, the Internet and social media are changing the ways in which politics are made, and who can participate in the processes. Here’s an insightful account by Rasha A. Abdulla, associate professor in the department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Cairo about the Arab Spring: ‘The Revolution Will Be Tweeted‘.   And Local-Global political grassroots movements such as the Occupy movements, from Wall Street to Hong Kong, can be built and fortified because of (digital) media.

Old Players (meso-level organizations)

But the relationship between the media and politics also has severe implications to the legacy media, the meso-level of professional journalism, as Lule notes. For example, the recent Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders highlights how most Asian countries are red or even black = faring very badly in terms of journalistic freedoms. The related report notes:

Many governments and non-state actors used control and manipulation of media coverage as a weapon of war in 2014. Ranging from over-coverage to complete news blackout, it creates a hostile climate for journalists and has disastrous consequences for media pluralism.

As the Committee to Protect Journalists writes:

The world is an increasingly dangerous place for journalists. On average, more than 30 journalists are murdered every year, and the murderers go unpunished in nearly nine of 10 cases. Hundreds of journalists each year are attacked, threatened, or harassed. Many are followed or have their phone calls and Internet communications intercepted. More than 150 are behind bars at any given time, some without being charged with a crime. The whereabouts of at least 35 journalists are unknown. Throughout the profession, journalists face emotional stress whenever they cover stories involving pain or loss of life, from the sexual abuse of children to terrorist attacks against civilians.

[If you are interested in becoming a journalist, take a look at CPJ’s Journalist Security Guide.]

New Players (at the micro-level)

So the media have a role in the macro-level of nations and politics, as well as in the micro-level of ordinary citizens — who begin to change the world as bloggers and citizen-journalists.  The case of Bangladesh has recently been in the news, but for sad reasons:

Until he was stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife and forced to flee to Europe two years ago, Asif Mohiuddin was a leading member of Bangladesh’s ‘‘freethinker’’ movement and the country’s best-known secular provocateur. We met last June at a cafe on a pedestrian promenade around the corner from his apartment, a sunlit space in a shabby-­chic neighborhood in northern Germany. (…) Shortly after he secured a fellowship at a German institute and left Bangladesh, extremists serially murdered four of his friends — all secular bloggers who had criticized fundamentalist Islam and whose names appeared on ‘‘hit lists’’ assembled by hard-­liners and disseminated on social media. ‘‘Everybody is wondering who will be next’’…

Oppression and witch hunts like above have prompted organizations like Witness (based in Brooklyn, in case you want to get involved) teach ordinary citizens in crisis areas how to communicate securely; in the case of Witness, how to film human rights violations in a safe, effective way, and how to report misuses of political power.

 

Macro-level Power

And finally, the same channels and networks that allow citizen’s ordinary voices to be heard, can also be restricted, as well as used for surveillance of those who are politically in the opposition. From the Reporters without Borders report:

You might have thought that the world’s most despotic and closed states would be satisfied with keeping news and information under control. Instead, they have continued to reinforce and improve their methods of censorship and repression. Despite apparently stagnating at the bottom of the press freedom index, 15 of the 20 worst-ranked countries have actually seen their scores fall in the past year.

And sometimes there is a component of international business involved, as in the case of the U.S. owned Uniview surveillance company supplying equipment for the Chinese government. Or, as the Reporters without Borders report notes, non-state actors such as corporations may want to exercise their power over journalists as well:

Besides pressure from governments, journalists also faced violent threats from non-state groups in 2014. Far from being a homogenous whole, these groups pursue various goals including expansionist, political or financial and criminal aims.

In sum, the joint venture ‘political globalization/media’ doesn’t produce only good or bad results — often the ethical and practical consequences are difficult to assess.

A Case in Point: A Battle of the Giants

This example is not specifically “Asian” but certainly relates to many contexts in Asia. It also poignantly illustrates how media, comm tech, and politics are a complex and contested issue.

Shirky

Morozov

 

Clay Shirky, a tech guru and professor, has written several wonderful books about the positive power of technology and global connectivity. (Here’s his famous TEDTalk about how social media have unleashed “Cognitive Surplus” in us; how that surplus facilitates good deeds — and changes the world.)

vs.

Evgeny Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion and a fierce critic of techno-utopianism. (Here’s his famous TEDTalk about how the Net aids dictatorships.)

Assignment: Their debate

If your LAST name begins with A-K, you represent Shirky’s ideas = BENEFITS. Read his views, here:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-net-advantage

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-twitter-revolution-more-than-just-a-slogan

If your LAST name begins with L-Z, you take Morozov’s side = DANGERS. Readings:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/how-dictators-watch-us-on-the-web

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/why-the-internet-is-failing-irans-activists

Without repeating  the exact examples above, do some research and give an argument with a concrete example either about the BENEFITS of comm tech, or about the DANGERS, in the framework of globalization and politics. Bonus points if your example pertains to Asia.

(As we know, neither side is 100% right. We are here to highlight how both sides are somewhat correct; that this is a complex question.)

Post as a comment below. Start your comment with  [BENEFITS]  of [DANGERS] so that it’s easier for all of us to scope which side you’re on. Due 3/18.

 

 

 

Mid Term Survey

Please find the link to your Mid Term, here.

Here’s a short video explaining the exam.

Deadline: Tuesday 3/8 at midnight.

Let me know if you have any questions! Please feel free to schedule a Skype session, email, or post a comment below.