The 2nd ASEAN Reader

29. Media in Southeast Asia

Media in Southeast Asia 141 By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville 29. MEDIA IN SOUTHEAST ASIA RUSSELL HENG HIANG-KHNG Reprinted in abridged form from Russell Heng Hiang-Khng, “Media in Southeast Asia: A Literature Review of Post-1980 Developments”, in Media Fortunes, Changing Times: ASEAN States in Transition, edited by Russell Heng Hiang-Khng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002), pp. 1–25, by permission of the author and the publisher. WHY 1980 AND AFTER? Reviewing all the available literature on media in Southeast Asia risks cramming too much (both in quantity and diversity of topics) into the limited confines of a book chapter. It is likely to produce a long list of broad categories, too summarily treated to be of any analytical value.1 Thus, scaling the exercise down to more manageable proportions would be sensible and, in that regard, dealing only with what has been published after 1980 dovetails with the theme of “transition”. Beginning in the 1980s, the region saw the start of several major new trends that continue to shape political-economic-social reality till today. They are: 1. Increased forces of democratization 2. Revising of old economic strategies 3. Significant socio-cultural changes in tandem with 1. and 2. 4. The challenges of information technology . The 1980s saw the beginnings of a democratization trend in the region. The more dramatic manifestations of this trend were “people power” uprisings in Manila (which were successful) and in Myanmar (which were aborted). In the 1990s, people power again forced the demise of unpopular regimes in Thailand and Indonesia. Even politically-placid Singapore experienced a gradual but discernible process of democratization with a changing of the guards in the top leadership in the 1980s and, with that, some relaxation of political control . At the same time, in Vietnam and Laos, authoritarian Communist governments introduced liberal reform programmes. In the 1990s, Cambodia turned from a one-party socialist state to a multi-party democracy, an outcome brought about through international negotiations. Every country in the region can sense that its political status quo cannot remain as it is, although some regimes may be putting on a front of having their power-sharing formula right. 029 AR Ch 29 22/9/03, 12:44 PM 141 142 Russell Heng Hiang-Khng By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville The changes were not just in politics. Another major trend beginning in the 1980s was economic transformation. The countries — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar — turned from socialist state planning to capitalist market economics. At the same time, the non-socialist countries implemented aggressive economic development programmes, the results of which are still pending. Meanwhile, all these developments have produced great socio-cultural changes. The middle class expanded and sought more political participation. At a more visible level, consumerism grew, hastening the impact of globalization through the import of goods and lifestyles. A greater demand for more space in private lives gave birth to a new form of culture politics. Coinciding with all of these is a revolution in information technology that began in the 1980s. The aggregate of these forces has produced situations which differ from the concerns of the region in the 1970s and earlier. As such, a review of literature dealing only with post-1980 is not out of place, particularly as the chosen theme for this collection of papers is the phenomenon of transition in the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). SOME DISTRIBUTIVE FEATURES The physical statistics of the literature show that writings on the media have grown exponentially. The titles produced from 1980 to 1989 more than triple from 36 to 118 in the period 1990–2001 (see list of references at the end of this chapter). There is an unevenness in how the literature is distributed across the countries of the region. An overwhelming proportion of the literature is about media in the five founding members of ASEAN: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand . Of the 126 titles which are countryspecific studies, only six were about new ASEAN members — Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam. No titles were found for Laos or Brunei. The reason for this disproportion is partly a legacy of the past and partly the dearth of resources available to the new ASEAN members to generate or attract media research. But this paucity of research is also a result of the political difficulties...