Focus Asia in Lund

Media Cultures and Politics in Asia and Beyond

This 10th Focus Asia event brings together leading media scholars who will discuss media in Asia and beyond. The media in Asia are a relatively new field of academic research that offers important new perspectives on central questions in the study of the media. But media developments in Asia are not only of academic interest as they increasingly are influencing both media consumption and public debate globally. The relationship between media, democracy and the public sphere has been the subject of intensive debates for many years.

Several of the lectures at this Focus Asia address different aspects of this relationship in different national and regional contexts. What is the relationship between political systems and media structures in different Asian societies? How are political transitions influenced by or represented in the media? What voices are heard in the Asian media and whom do they represent? Whether new media such as the Internet will strengthen civil society and the public sphere is a hotly debated issue. The rapidly expanding use of the Internet and its impact for public debate and citizenship in societies as different as China and the Middle East is worth paying close attention to and compare with developments in Europe. But one shouldn't forget that television is still the media that reach the largest and broadest groups of people in many countries in Asia and it therefore deserves close scrutiny as to format and content.