Globalization, East Asian media cultures and their publics

Abstract

In the last two decades, media and cultural globalization has reached another level of development and penetration. While various (national) media markets have been penetrated and integrated by the powerful missionaries of global media culture such as News Corporation, Disney and Time Warner, the development of East Asian media cultural production and inter-Asian media co-production, circulation and consumption has become no less conspicuous. On the one hand, these developments have highlighted the de-Westernized patterns of cultural production, circulation and connection in, from and within the region. However, on the other, it is still questionable if these developments have eventually challenged uneven transnational media cultural flows and have truthfully promoted dialogic connections among people of various places, as they reproduce hierarchy, unevenness and marginalization. This article will critically review how the rise of Asian media culture production and inter-Asian connections fails to serve wider public interests locally, nationally and transnationally, especially in terms of the promotion of uneven globalization process in which the logic of market has deeply governed the production, circulation and consumption of media culture. Given that the states are supporting the activities of transnational media culture industries, it is imperative for researchers to examine more rigorously the unevenness, inequality and marginalization in the inter-Asian mass culture network, and to collaborate transnationally with various social actors so as to advance inter-Asian media culture connections in more democratic and dialogic ways.