East,west, communication,and theory: Searching for the meaning of searching for Asian communication theories

This paper begins with a discussion of the concept of ‘Asia’, the cultural differences and similarities between Asia and the West, and what constructing an ‘Asian communication theory’ means. It then examines the background against which the current stage is set for Asian commication research, and the intricate changes in approaching theory building in the community.     

The business of international broadcasting cultural bridges and barriers

The advent of international satellite television broadcasting, including the satellite‐to‐cable services which are now proliferating in several countries of the world, represents a qualitative leap in the nature of broadcasting. Satellite distribution is a literally ‘international’ medium in which signals can not only spill across neighbouring borders, but reach audiences spread over entire world regions and even link diasporic communities on different continents. The concerns raised by various countries about national sovereignty and their attempts to control reception are well‐known, but dishes and cable systems have flourished, and international and regional services are leasing new transponder capacity faster than operators can get their satellites into orbit. In this new satellite business, language and culture are emerging as powerful forces in making and breaking world‐regional markets. Thus, in contrast to the large degree of regional integration in Latin America, thanks to its linguistic and cultural similarities, service providers in Asia have soon found that they have to take account of linguistic and other cultural differences in establishing their markets, which therefore have more of a national than a regional character. This article reviews these trends and outlines how the technological potential to integrate regional markets via satellite broadcasting across borders has been attenuated at least as much by cultural as political resistance. Evidence of the effectiveness of such resistance, it is argued, raises questions about the validity of the rhetoric of ‘cultural imperialism’ now being heard again in Asia.     

Talking to Listeners: Clandestine Audiences in the Early Cold War

As ‘classical’ radio monitoring was—due to massive censorship—only of limited value for gathering uncensored information on Central and Eastern Europe, Radio Free Europe (RFE) relied in the early Cold War extensively on uncensored information brought out by émigrés. RFE interviewed fresh escapees not only to gain knowledge on everyday life but to also collect information on the practice and persecution of clandestine radio listening behind the Iron Curtain. Through the lens of RFE listeners’ testimonies and audience reports from the early 1950s, this article explores interviewing as an unorthodox method for gathering information about its own clandestine audiences in the target countries. It uses the Western gaze of individual defectors to better understand how highly subjective stories of clandestine listening were captured, narratively framed and employed in the ideological battle between East and West.     

Diasporas and Audience Studies: A Fruitful Match? Reflections From a Media Ethnographic Study on Turkish and Moroccan Film Audiences

Diasporic communities, especially in urban multicultural settings in the West, have emerged as one of the major sites for innovative audience research. This growing body of research connects media sociological questions with the study of global and transnational media flows. In this contribution, some of the main studies on diasporic audiences are revisited, exploring in which ways diaspora studies and audience studies have turned out to be a fruitful match. This is linked to and further exemplified by the discussion of a media ethnographic study of film reception among the Turkish and Moroccan communities in Antwerp, Belgium. It is demonstrated how the ‘diasporic turn’ reformulates traditional boundaries in audience research, proposing banal yet meaningful engagements with media texts. Finally, it is argued that a focus on diasporic audiences has revealed that ethnicity and nationality intersect with other social and cultural determinants such as gender, generation and religion, putting the diasporic proposition itself into perspective.     

Double media distortions for science communication – an analysis of ‘compiled science news’ transforming in Taiwan

Scientific news is one of the major resources that help the public to understand new scientific knowledge. The latest technology in research and development primarily utilizes English as the language of communication in academic journals and scientific communities. Compiled science news therefore has become a major agent for many non-Western societies to understand the latest technological developments. For this reason, this study aimed to investigate the meaningful change among transforming processes of imported science news from ‘original scientific research’ and ‘overseas news reports,’ to ‘domestic compiled science news.’ The research findings showed that scientific knowledge categories of compiled science news in Taiwan appeared to be apparently unbalanced, and the compiled skills present obvious weaknesses. Furthermore, more seriously compiled science news in Taiwan has continually suffered from the ‘double media distortion’ syndrome. The first distortion appeared from the ‘original scientific research’ to the ‘overseas news reports,’ and the second was from the ‘overseas news reports’ to the ‘domestic compiled science news.’ Such situations are very different from the Western world and could also be a common problem for all non-Western societies.     

Paradoxes of Press Freedom in Colonial West Africa

This article describes the shifts and contradictions in British approaches to the control of print media in colonial West Africa between the 1920s and 1940s. Well before the Colonial Office's post-war interventions to create an ‘enlightened and educated’ West African citizenry through mass education, decades of independent newspaper production in the region helped to shape independent and critical readerships. For the British, however, an upsurge in African nationalist journalism in the mid-1930s coincided with a perceived Communist infiltration of ‘British West Africa’ to make censorship and surveillance more palatable than before to colonial officials in London, in spite of the new emphasis on public relations.     

DD and PTV as victims of media globalisation

Mainstream discourses on the globalisation of media that delineate the emergence of privately owned television channels in the periphery country as evening out metropolitan domination are belied by concrete evidence. This essay argues that the rise of southern players has undermined state broadcasting rather than dismantling ‘media imperialism’. Based on two case studies, Pakistan Television (PTV) and Doordarshan (DD), this study demonstrates that the actual, if inadvertent, victim of globalisation has been state broadcasting and an associated developmentist model of television. As a result the decline of state-led television channels has radically transformed television systems in India and Pakistan. While DD and PTV view their audiences as citizens, the globalisation of media has resulted in a commodification of television audiences. Instead of public interest, audience maximisation has become the dominant logic of television systems in both these countries. In the process, developmentist television systems have been replaced by the commercially driven systems.     

Notes on reconstructing “the popular”

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Stuart Hall’s influential “Notes on deconstructing ‘the popular’” [Hall, S. (1981). In R. Samuel (Eds.), People’s history and socialist theory (pp. 227–240). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.], this essay maps out some of the major shifts in cultural studies’ relationship to popular culture over the past several decades. It concludes with a call for cultural studies to find ways to work from the terrain of the popular, rather than merely studying that terrain, or trying to “translate” its scholarly analyses for popular audiences. This is a necessary path to fulfilling its mission as a political project.     

Memories of Manga: Impact and Nostalgic Recollections of Visiting a Manga Museum

This study investigated the impact of a visit to a Manga museum in Japan through nostalgic recollections. Twenty‐five adult visitors were interviewed about their childhood memories of experiencing manga from reading books as well as watching anime on television following a visit to the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka, Japan. From 76 episodic and autobiographical memories, five themes of impact emerged which speak powerfully to the significant influence and power of Osamu Tezuka's manga and anime on the visitors’ lives as children, and of the power of the museum experience to unlock distant latent memories and reconnect with their own sense of self‐identity. Moreover, the visitors’ own testimony of the impact of manga continued to manifest positively in their lives to the present day as life lessons of enjoyment, morality, and intergenerational learning.     

The Influences of Sports Viewing Conditions on Enjoyment from Watching Televised Sports: An Analysis of the FIFA World Cup Audiences in Theater vs. Home

This study investigates how experiences of viewing sports content in a movie theater differ from typical television viewing conditions in a home. The results of analyses showed that the viewing condition (theater vs. home) influenced audiences’ sense of presence when watching mediated sports, which, combined with the attractiveness of the game, would determine the suspenseful nature of the media experience, as well as the subsequent enjoyment.     

Young people and mass media in China

This paper discusses the establishment of overseas editions by some Hong Kong newspapers under the context of the upcoming political transition of Hong Kong in 1997. These overseas editions are viewed as econo‐cultural spin‐off to tap the ‘yacht immigrants’ outflowing from Hong Kong. Various factors involved in the establishment of these overseas editions, as well as their effects and implications are also explored. The Ming Pao's recently established Canada editions are chosen as a case to contrast with the earlier established Sing Tao and World Journal.     

A Preliminary Study of Racialized Brawn and Brain Framing Effects

Extant research has established that racially based brawn and brain frames are common within sports media. Framing theory suggests that these brawn and brain frames should influence audience members’ behaviors and attitudes, but little empirical evidence to support this notion exists. This study used a quasi-experimental design (Frame x Athlete Race) to understand how exposure to sports news articles that emphasize the physical or mental attributes of White and Black athletes may result in audiences’ subsequent observable behaviors or character judgments toward athletes. Results indicated that frames influenced audiences’ behaviors in a simulated environment and attitudes regarding athletes’ mental abilities, whereas athlete race influenced audiences’ attitudes of athletes’ physical abilities. These findings support sports scholars’ assertions about framing effects and underscore the potential dangers of current sports media trends.     

东南亚华文报刊的文化传播与编辑特色

本文通过阐述华文报刊用南洋人的眼光审视和关照中华文化、以承传中华文化为已任、在维护当地国的社会稳定的基础上争取华族权益等内容 ,论述了东南亚华文报刊的文化影响与编辑特色 ,评论了他们在承传中华文化方面所作出的卓越贡献。由于东南亚各国吸收越来越多的西方文化 ,以及当地国政府设置的不利华文报刊的生存环境 ,华文报刊在坚持原来的编辑办报特色的过程中 ,不得不采取种种应变措施。     

新闻教育培养什么样的记者?

如果受众对新闻失去信任,记者将失去在社会文化中的核心地位。而这种信任正在被侵蚀。随着煽情主义替代了客观报道,西方民主社会的受众正在逐步悖离新闻媒介。如果西方社会的媒体要重拾大众的信任,并在新增市场中被推进,新闻业就必须在内容和形式间求得平衡,而此平衡的取得须从新闻教育内部开始。     

Airtime for Newcomers

This article explores the British and West German public service radio’s abilities to reflect on and to address the specific needs and expectations of migrant groups in their programmes between the 1960s and 1980s. Mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion alike can be investigated here. Empirically, it is based on comparisons of radio broadcasts on and for different immigrant communities, produced by BBC Radio Leicester on/for the post-war Asian migrants in England and by West German public service broadcasting on/for ‘Gastarbeiter’ (foreign workers) as well as for ‘Spätaussiedler’ (German repatriates from East Europe). Radio is studied as an agent of identity management and citizenship education. Not only did radio talk about migrants and migration to introduce these topics and the newcomers to the local population. It also offered airtime to selected migrant communities to cater for their needs and interests as well as to facilitate their difficulties of adjusting to an unfamiliar environment.     

Back to the Future: Allegheny Mountain Radio and Localism in West Virginia Community Radio

Community radio is a form of noncommercial broadcasting designed to serve audiences in a specific geographic area. In recent years, community radio has become a viable alternative to both commercial and public radio, which produce nationally oriented programming designed to attract mass audiences. The value and impact of community radio can be seen through the work of Allegheny Mountain Radio, a three-station network serving a rural and geographically isolated region of southern West Virginia and Virginia.     

How three Southeast‐Asian newspapers framed the haze’ of 1997–98

‘Framing’ refers to the journalistic act of reporting the news through core and secondary themes. Computer‐aided content analysis was used to study three newspapers’ framing of the Southeast Asian smoke‐cloud ‘haze’ of 1997–98. The newspapers tended to emphasize generally non‐confrontational frames and to downplay those that potentially were politically sensitive. They also favoured frames that were largely specific to their home countries. This finding tends to support the argument that journalism in Asia is unique, likely because of the influence of regional and national ideologies. But the findings also suggest that some aspects of the newspapers’ ‘haze’ coverage were consistent with US‐Western journalistic routines.