Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia

World Association for Triple Helix and Future Strategy Studies (세계트리플헬릭스미래전략학회)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Our Scholarly 'Pivot To Asia'

  • Xu, Weiai Wayne (Department of Communication, Computational Social Science Institute, University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
  • Published : 2019.07.22
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

During the Obama administration, America made a shift in its foreign policies to re-focus on Asia. The strategy, known as 'Pivot to Asia', was used to contain a rising China. In this editorial note, I appropriate the geopolitical term to call for a scholarly refocus on Asia (and the broader Asia Pacific region). JCEA started as an area journal. While it has become more technology-focused and less geographically-bounded in its coverage of topics, the journal recognizes the centrality of the region's political economy and technological forces in setting (and upsetting) global norms and rules. The Asia Pacific contains the world's freest economies as well as the most oppressive regimes. It breeds both technology giants and laggards. As new geopolitical tensions loom, it is where the digital iron curtain is drawn, and where the vice and virtue of innovations debated. Social scientists in the English world, who lend extensively on European and American cases, can benefit from studying the Asia Pacific by testing whether and how local experience conforms to or confronts with universal theories. Very likely, western-centric norms and models become morphed and entangled in the grounded local particularity, reflecting many shades of this diverse place. In my arguments below, I highlight the Asia Pacific as a site of contradiction, as well as a site of contention and negotiation. My emphasis is that regional particularity holds the key to answer concurrent debates in the West concerning governance and accountability in the digital age.

Keywords

References

  1. Arora, P. (2019). Decolonizing privacy studies. Television & New Media, 20(4), 366-378. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476418806092
  2. Creemers, R. (2018). China's social credit system: an evolving practice of control. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3175792 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3175792 (accessed 9 Sept 2018).
  3. Cui, D., & Wu, F. (2016). Moral goodness and social orderliness: An analysis of the official media discourse about Internet governance in China. Telecommunications Policy, 40(2-3), 265-276. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.11.010
  4. Eubanks, V. (2017). Automating inequality: How high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor. St. Martin's Press.
  5. Griffiths, J. (2019). The great firewall of China: How to build and control an alternative version of the internet. Zed.
  6. Guo, S. (2018). “Occupying” the Internet: State media and the reinvention of official culture online. Communication and the Public, 3(1), 19-33. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047318755166
  7. Li, X. (2016). The danger of Chinese exceptionalism. Management and Organization Review, 12(4), 815-816. https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2016.41
  8. Li, Y. (2009). Women de fanghuoqiang (Our great firewall). Nanning, China: Guangxi Normal University Press.
  9. Jia, Z., Liu, M., & Shao, G. (2019). Linking government social media usage to public perceptions of government performance: an empirical study from China. Chinese Journal of Communication, 12(1), 84-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2018.1523802
  10. Jia, H., Miao, W., Zhang, Z. A., & Cao, Y. (2017). Road to international publications: an empirical study of Chinese communication scholars. Asian Journal of Communication, 27(2), 172-192. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2016.1242020
  11. Jiang, F. (2013). On the three waves of China's communication studies: A commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Schramm's visit to China & China's communication studies in post-Schramm times. Studies in Communication Sciences, 13(2), 107-116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scoms.2013.11.005
  12. Kostka, G. (2019). China's social credit systems and public opinion: Explaining high levels of approval. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819826402.
  13. Miao, W., & Lei, W. (2016). Policy review: The Cyberspace Administration of China. Global Media and Communication, 12(3), 337-340. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742766516680879
  14. Miike, Y. (2006). Non-Western theory in Western research? An Asiacentric agenda for Asian communication studies. The Review of Communication, 6(1-2), 4-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358590600763243
  15. Sustein, C. R. (2009). Republic. com 2.0. Nova Jersey: Princeton University Press.
  16. van Geenhuizen, M. (2016). Living Labs as boundary-spanners between Triple Helix actors. Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, 15(1).
  17. Welles, B. F. (2014). On minorities and outliers: The case for making Big Data small. Big Data & Society, 1(1), 2053951714540613.
  18. Woolley, S. C., & Howard, P. N. (2019). Computational propaganda: Political parties, politicians, and political manipulation on social media. Oxford University Press.
  19. Yang, F. (2016). Rethinking China’s Internet censorship: The practice of recoding and the politics of visibility. New Media & Society, 18(7), 1364-1381. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814555951