CAS is excited to announce the results of hard work and collaboration among many individuals in recent years. We would like to publicize recent work from Director Professor Tim Oakes: "Mediating Asia: Information, Democracy, and the State In and Before the Digital Age," a special section from the International Journal of Communication. This publication is the product of the CAS Annual 2014-15 Symposium: Mediating Asia. Our symposium was designed to workshop these publications. Please see below for contributions to this special edition:
"This section explores the changing relationships between Asian states and Asia-based media institutions and industries as the nature and role of media in Asian society undergoes profound change. With the increasing visibility and power of Indian film, Korean television, and Japanese animation industries, and of Asian broadcasting networks such as Star TV and Aljazeera, there has been no shortage of scholarly attention devoted to the rise of Asian media. This collection, however, focuses less on the meteoric rise and power of Asian media itself and more on how that rise has been negotiated by Asian states, with a particular focus on China and Indonesia. As digital media technologies become ubiquitous, both formal and informal media platforms push beyond state boundaries, challenging state efforts to control the content of and access to information and entertainment. This challenge is addressed in commentaries by three journalists with extensive Asian experience, and three academics exploring the spatial and historical contexts of an increasingly mediated Asia." Read More.
Summary of Mediating Asia Symposium:
"A great deal of our current knowledge about Asia comes to us via traditional media channels (such as print & broadcast journalism, feature films, and documentaries) and, increasingly, via less formal online channels such as blogs and social media networking sites. While Asian scholars based outside of Asia have, for some time, been engaged in critical readings of these ‘mediated’ representations of Asia, the rapid rise of Asian media industries within Asia has resulted in more diffuse representations of Asia than ever before. With ‘Mediating Asia’, the Center for Asian Studies seeks to explore the implications of these increasingly diffuse, multi-mediated representations of Asia. We take a broad definition of media to include not only print, broadcast, film, and internet formats, but also arts and literature, insofar as they might also be viewed as representations of Asia. How does Asia represent itself through Asian media? How is the idea of ‘Asia’ as a coherent identity reimagined and represented through Asian media? What sorts of tensions, dialogues, contradictions, and collaborations exist between Asian and non-Asian media? In what ways do Asian media ‘respond’ to non-Asian representations of Asia? How are different Asian peoples, places, or histories imagined, marketed, consumed through new Asian media channels? ‘Mediating Asia’ will explore questions like this, and many others, in a year of programming, events, and outreach, culminating in our annual Spring Symposium."
For more on past events, visit our page: CAS Symposium 2014-15: Mediating Asia