Featured by gopalanravindran

Shanghai Leads Asia, as Before, in Linking with Other Countries in Matters of Communication

IMG_2905The Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) and the State Council Information Office hosted the Asian Deans’ Forum in Journalism and Communication during November 30-December 01,2006 at Shanghai. One conventional way to relate to the power of a spatial site is the size. Asia, China and Shanghai fit well in this logic to express their contemporary merits powerfully. The size matters in China when it comes to the number and categories of Universities. There are more than 2000 Universities, excluding the elite 211 institutions which are part of the 211 project. The Universities belong to 15 categories ranging from National, Normal, Comprehensive, Provincial, Municipal, Military etc.,IMG_2915.JPG

The conference was no different in terms of the scale of organisation and the vision China has for Asia in matters of Journalism and Communication education. Prof.Guo, Dean, School of Journalism and Communication, SISU led the grand event with his sincere and professional approach, without losing his cool. According to him, the objective of the Forum was to “engage leading Asian scholars in constructive dialogues to respond to the opportunities and challenges created by the new media and to bring out fresh insights into the function and development of Asian journalism and communication and the advancement of the Asian Community in the new media environment.”

The opening and closing sessions were brimming with a unique Chinese character. The opening session more than a typical conference inaugural that we are used in other parts of Asia. It had a good mix of officials and academics holding forth on the objectives of the conference. The speeches were very short and to the point. The closing session had no officials on the dais. The academics from China and other Asian countries summed up the salient points of different academic sessions.

I was fortunate to spend ample time with two senior communication scholars. Prof.Kaarle Nordenstreng from Finland and Prof.Irfan from Turkey. I managed to get their versions of history of Journalism and Communication as academic fields.IMG_2903.jpg

The first day sessions were held in a hotel and we moved to the School of Journalism and Communication,SISU, on the second day (December 01, 2016). It is a sprawling campus on the outskirts of Shanghai (60+ Kms). The size of the buildings of the individual schools was larger than any of the large main administrative or academic wing of an Indian state/central University. For instance, the building which houses the School of Journalism and Communication is larger than the main administrative building of University of Madras.

There was an interesting exhibition showcasing the equipment of the past used by the faculty and students of the School in the foyer. There was a typewriter, Pentax 1000 SLR camera and a beta recorder, among other vintage equipment. A huge television screen had a frozen image of Fidel Castro.IMG_2925.JPG

The conference was made to register itself as a landmark event by the School of Journalism and Communication, thanks to the very professional approach of nearly 100 student volunteers. We normally struggle to find good student volunteers on that scale.

Chinese conferences are about documenting the group of delegates visually through very innovative methods to enable the hosts and participants to nurture their memories with the help of calendar size prints of group photos. Prof.Kim from South Korea, one of the frequent visitors to Chinese Universities said in a lighter vein that he does not have wall space in his house to accommodate the group photo prints he has collected in China. The group photo was made possible by a drone-enabled camera.IMG_2933.jpg

IMG_1910.JPGThe most substantive highlight of the conference was the presence of a delegates from all regions of Asia – from Mongolia to Turkey. The icing on the cake was the revealing presentations on the state of affairs in Journalism and Communication education in countries small and big – from Cambodia to China. There were very articulate pleas for getting away from the Western modes of engagements and getting closer to Asian ways of engagements in Journalism and Communication research and education.IMG_2885.JPG

by gopalanravindran

No titles please!

No title please! The book titles are not their faces as we take them to be. They are more like contemporary news headlines, compressed and structured to fit a conventional style that fails to communicate the message of the whole, the medium, the content and the body of knowledge it represents. Books as well as their titles are slipping away as sites of singularities of knowledge, when they are ordered together in a disorderly, yet natural way, depending on the space available for them. The slippages in meanings are also on account of their histories and the histories of divergent relationships with the areas of interests of the person who keeps them as extensions of his/her body of existence and meanings. One is reminded of the missed opportunities in acquiring knowledge as one fixates on the faces (titles) that refuse to be faces and bodies (of books) that seem to belong everywhere, despite the artificial anchors provided by the name of the author, name of the publisher, place of the publisher etc., What is inside the singularities of these faces and bodies are nothing, to say the truth, as their insides are in fact sites of articulations, linkages, that fuse their obvious outsides and insides as one order of things, as Foucault envisioned; as one order of nature as Kaniyan Poongandran saw.

by gopalanravindran

Zizekian REAL @ Jaffna Public Library

The much awaited 4th international conference on Tamil Journalism (April 05-06 2019), ably organised by Muttram founder/president, Thevananth and the Sri Lankan chapter of Journalism for People Movement and the Dept.of Journalism and Communication, University of Madras, was an upbeat/downbeat experience for several reasons. The venue was an important reason. The venue was the historic Jaffna Public Library. It  was burned down on May 31 1981 by Sinhala mobs. No judicial enquiry was held. It had a collection of thousands of rare manuscripts and books numbering 97000. The library was rebuilt and opened to public in 2003. Continue reading →

by gopalanravindran

Communication Associations: What’s in a Name?

Coming together at the institutional level appears problematic for many in India. The same is true of other countries in Asia, barring some notable exceptions like Japan. Coming together culturally works well in Asia than in non-Asian contexts. The rise and rise of non-Asian institutions, particularly the academic associations in Communication and the relatively insipid track record of Asian associations in Communication is a case in point to introspect. There are exceptions here too.

But the nagging question before many communication scholars in a vast country like India has always been: why country level associations have always been non-starters in the field of communication. While there are noteworthy country level associations for disciplines such as history and politics, communication associations at the national and state level have always been rare entities and have always had a very short life.

The birth of the All India Communication and Media Association in 2016 wishes to change the scenario qualitatively in the sphere of communication studies in India. It is fledgling one, no doubt. But it is raring to go in terms of new benchmarks, networks and opportunities in communication studies. It seeks to connect its members across institutions in India as well as partnering associations in Asia and elsewhere.

When the Asia Pacific Alliance for Communication was born on October 25 2018 at the exotic new media lab of Tsinghua University, China, it was a moment of hope, optimism and camraderie for academics in Asia Pacific region to leverage the opportunities and challenges of our present times.

Every age begets the opportunities and challenges it deserves politically and economically. Every age also begets the communication association it deserves accordingly. When the speech communication programmes in USA were the norm during early 1900s, the National Communication Association was established in 1912. After the quick turnarounds in the field after Second World War/Cold War was born the International Communication Association in USA in 1950. The first decade of Cold War had a telling effect on the pedagogical methods in communication class rooms that got new inspiration from the activities of UNESCO and the scholars sponsored by the organisation. In this moment was born the International Association of Mass Communication Research (IAMCR). At the very ambivalent political level, the moral fabric worn by the scholars who were affiliated to these two international associations had tacit political overtones of the two blocks of the Cold War regime. At the more concrete geographical level, the two associations reflected their North American and Western Europe orientations respectively and unabashedly.

These associations have now come a long way from their original moorings and are seeking to subvert their characters with every passing annual conference. They have also become massive entities in the process. They are also seeking to pander to the regional demands.

The turn of Asia as regards similar entities within its borders is palpable. One such initiative is the Asia Pacific Communication Alliance. What’s in a name? Alliance is not the same as association. We know the meanings of these words anyway. But in a region where large scale Cold War movements such as the Non-Aligned Movement held sway for several decades, the coming together of scholars from different parts of Asia did not really take off in a big way, there may be misgivings about the coming together of communication associations of different countries in Asia in meaningful manner. The idea of an alliance, no doubt, is a throwback to the idea of alignment and its negation, non alignment. The misgivings are as true and reflective of  the historical realities that defined the earlier births of communication associations elsewhere as the current birth of the Asia Pacific Communication Alliance.

China is the numero uno economic success story of the post-Cold War age. India appears to be lagging behind China in terms of visible changes in its economic landscape and everyday contexts at least by 30-40 years. How this happened is not a moot point from their side, but may appear as one from the side of other countries. But the fact is China is where it is, leaving countries like India way behind. When a nation progresses economically, it seeks to register its presence and influence in as many domains as possible. Academia is a domain of attraction in such cases. USA did this, particularly in the domain of communication and caused the logic of development communication to counter the spread of influence of Soviet Union in the “third world” during the cold war. Development Communication gurus like Daniel Learner were working on behalf of the USA’s state dept. The imprint left by them still reverberates in the communication class rooms in India.

China can not be any different. It  appears that it too has similar/strong longings in several spheres, including communication studies, as any other economic powerhouse in any age. It has countless number of academic associations in the field of communication and it naturally becomes a natural nesting ground and the incubator for the idea of an alliance of communication associations in Asia Pacific.

The traces of geo-politics can not be wished away in any such initiatives. During the inaugural meeting which was meant to discuss the road ahead for Asia Pacific Communication Alliance, some colleagues had serious concerns about the term, Asia-Pacific. How Asian is Asia when Pacific joins it via an hyphen? There were also concerns about the contestations between the “inclusive” logic of the term “communication” and the disparate terms like “journalism”. I argued that the naming of the baby should be left to the baby when it grows. But the logic of those who favoured the tag of Asia-Pacific was already cast, I believe, in the geo-political history of the term in the region, particularly in South East Asia and North Asia. Similarly, the idea of “journalism” as something that can fit well within the “inclusive” logic of “communication” is as fractured and fragmented as the geo-political idea of an Asia that seeks to include the “other”, the Pacific.

Notwithstanding the above disconcerting notes, the birth of the Asia Pacific Communication Alliance is to be welcomed by all in our fraternity for two reasons: i) Asia ruled the domain of communication philosophy for several centuries before communication became a formal subject of learning in the North American Universities and ii) Asia will rule the realms of the production of communication technologies and the new media market in the coming years and decades.

When the draft note on the constitution of Asia Pacific Communication Alliance was found in my inbox, the first two paras of the note reminded me of almost similar paras in the constitution of the Association of Communication Teachers’ of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (ACT-TNP), which was started in March 2010. The Asia Pacific Communication Alliance wishes to promote best practices in journalism and communication studies. ACT TNP’s constitution warrants the promotion of ethical and quality teaching, research and extension activities in communication. The disparate entity, “journalism” is also missing in the nomenclature of ACT-TNP as it is in Asia Pacific Communication Alliance . But the longing for nurturing it is visibly writ large in the constitutions of both associations which are far removed from their spatio-temporal locations.

by gopalanravindran

Psychoanalysis as a reading practice?

What’s the connection between psychoanalysis and post-coloniality, and more importantly, marxism as a science of sciences? For those who are enamoured of the potential of Freudian and Lacanian approaches to psychoanalysis, Zizek provides a state of studied contemplation which helps us to critique the world and its self, in their myriad expressions of strife and  monstrosity in our everyday lives and the larger contemporary world. Continue reading →

by gopalanravindran

Indian Media Economy: Understudied?

Indian media have proliferated in numbers and kinds over the past four decades in very divergent ways. These divergent ways have their economic, social, cultural and political dimensions. The numbers and categories/kinds associated with the kind of growth that is anchored by the word, “proliferation”, have their own hidden dimensions. These are dimensions of the markets, ownership patterns, circulation and distribution platforms and consumption modes. Continue reading →