JRE Book Launch 2022

Message by Ramon R. Tuazon
Secretary General, Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC)

In our continuing war against disinformation, journalism education is our best defense.

Today, we launch nine journalism and communication books which will be part of our truth defense tools.

Journalism education is our best defense because it will develop an inter-generation of truth seekers and truth tellers. Journalism education is not only for today’s journalists but more important, for future journalists who must imbibe the culture of truth-telling.

If we lose the war against disinformation today, we will be staring at a generation which is unmindful of deceit and celebrates calumny and idiocy.

The books we are launching today present an array of subjects which will complete our defense mechanisms – media theories, research methods, journalism skills, political economy (media ownership), convergence and digitization, and alternative and indigenous media.

Another distinguishing quality of these books is that the authors and contributors come not only from the West but also from all the continents including Asia which I am proud to represent today.  In this regard, AMIC is committed to work with IAMCR in producing more publications written by Asian journalism and communication professionals but not from a myopic perspective.

While we recognize the diversity of the topics and origins of these books, we are reminded that the journalism community, including journalism educators, must be united in their adherence to the Paris Declaration on Freedom of Journalism Education and their commitment to the defense for truth.

I end by congratulating, in behalf of AMIC, the Journalism Research and Education Section of IAMCR led by Dr. Sadia Jamil for providing us today’s platform to celebrate the accomplishments of our colleagues.

I’m cheering the authors and contributors and encouraging them to publish more in the near future as this will make us better understand the endangered, lied upon, and challenged world we live in today, and hopefully enable us to survive tomorrow.

Let us work together in our defense for truth, as ONLY TRUTH MATTERS.

AMIC partners with JRE-IAMCR and AIJC in book launch

Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in partnership with the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC) and the University of Pretoria sponsored the launching of the books produced by the Journalism Research and Education Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), on June 20, 2022.

Moderated by Dr. Sadia Jamil (Chair, JRE Section), with Bruce Mutsvairo (Associate Professor, Utrecht University) as discussant, the online event presented 10 books.

Special guests were Tawana Kupe (Vice Chancellor, University of Pretoria), Olivia Celeste Villafuerte (President, AIJC), and Ramon Guillermo Tuazon (Secretary General, AMIC).

In his message at the launching, AMIC Secretary-General Tuazon said:

“Today, we launch nine journalism and communication books which will be part of our truth defense tools.

“Journalism education is our best defense because it will develop an inter-generation of truth seekers and truth tellers. Journalism education is not only for today’s journalists but more important, for future journalists who must imbibe the culture of truth-telling.

“If we lose the war against disinformation today, we will be staring at a generation which is unmindful of deceit and celebrates calumny and idiocy.

“The books we are launching today present an array of subjects which will complete our defense mechanisms – media theories, research methods, journalism skills, political economy (media ownership), convergence and digitization, and alternative and indigenous media.

“Another distinguishing quality of these books is that the authors and contributors come not only from the West but also from all the continents including Asia which I am proud to represent today.  In this regard, AMIC is committed to work with IAMCR in producing more publications written by Asian journalism and communication professionals…” (It was an online the event  where scholars in journalism research and education from all over the world presented their latest works and interacted with the participants and colleagues in the field.

(click here for full text of Tuazon’s speech)

The books presented are the following:

1. McQuail’s Media and Mass Communication Theory – Denis McQuail and Mark Deuze
2. Global Journalism: Understanding World Media Systems – Daniela V. Dimitrova (Editor)
3. Qualitative Research Methods for Media Studies – Bonnie S. Brennen
4. Insights on Peace and Conflict Reporting – Kristin Skare Orgeret (Editor)
5. Public Television in Poland: Political Pressure and Public Service Media in a Post-communist Country – Agnieszka Węglińska.
6. Indigenous African Popular Music, Volume 1: Prophets and Philosophers – Abiodun Salawu and Israel Fadipe (Editors.)
7. Indigenous African Popular Music, Volume 2: Social Crusades and the Future – Abiodun Salawu and Israel Fadipe (Editors)
8. The Transformation of the Media System in Turkey: Citizenship, Communication, and Convergence – Eylem Yanardağoğlu
9. The House that Zee Built – Surbhi Dahiya
10. Indian Media Giants: Unveiling the Business Dynamics of Print Legacies – Surbhi Dahiya

Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective 2022 edition launched

The 2022 edition of COMMUNICATION THEORY THE ASIAN PERSPECTIVE was launched on 04 December 2021, the last day of the 28^th AMIC Annual Conference. This authoritative reference on the foundations of Asian communication scholarship is published by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) as it celebrates its 50^th founding Anniversary. A revised edition of the 1988 original, it contains old and new articles written by Asia’s leaders in communication and journalism theory and research. 

When AMIC was founded in 1971, its founders’ vision was to establish a regional organization which would commit themselves to enrich and expand the global communication setting with Asian communication theories, perspectives, paradigms, values, and practices.

AMIC celebrated the first publication of Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective in 1988 as a resource for rediscovering Asian communication theories and how to go about such rediscovery.

Fifty years later, the book’s 1988 and 2022 editor, Dr. Wimal Dissanayake, says,  “We are beginning to observe the emergence of a sub-field of Asian communication theory studies…”

In this new version, Dr. Wimal Dissanayake asks and answers five key questions related to the exploration of Asian theories of communication: 1) Why is it important to direct our attention to Asian approaches to communication research and theory? 2) In what ways does research into Asian communication theories offer challenges to the ruling intellectual cartography of communication studies? 3) What progress have we made so far in Asian communication research and theory and what is its significance and impact? 4) What are some of the obstacles and challenges we still are likely to encounter? and 5) In what ways can we productively overcome these challenges?

Table of Contents

Foreword — Ramon R. Tuazon
Foreword — Vijay Menon
Introduction to the Previous Edition – Wimal Dissanayake
Introduction to the New Edition – Wimal Dissanayake
1. The Need for Asian Approaches to Communication – Wimal Dissanayake
2. Deep Structure and Communication – Lawrence Davis
3. Foundations of Indian Verbal Communication and Phenomenology – Wimal Dissanayake
4. The I Ching as a Symbolic System of Integrated Communication – Chung Ying Cheng
5. Taoism and the Chinese View of Literary Communication – Kwok-Kan Tam
6. Mass Communication Theory: A Chinese Perspective — Leonard L. Chu
7. The Individual in Japanese Discourse: The Artist as Speaker – Linda C. Ehrlich and Naomi Tonooka
8. Japanese and American Modes of Communication
and Implications for Managerial and Organizational Behavior – Muneo Jay Yoshikawa
9. Communication Theory and Islamic Perspectives – Majid Tehranian
10. In Search of An Asian Perspective of Communication Theory – Godwin Chu
11. Go East young ‘man’: seek wisdom from Laozi and Buddha
on how to metatheorize mediatization – Shelton Gunaratne
12. Communication Theory-Building at the Periphery: The Broken Chain in Dialectic Discourse
– Georgette Wang
13. An Anatomy of Eurocentrism in Communication Scholarship:
The Role of Asiacentricity in De-Westernizing Theory and Research – Yoshitaka Miike
14. DevCom Los Baños Style – Nora C. Quebral

2021 AMIC Conference Book of Abstracts now Online

The 28^th AMIC Annual Conference Science Communication: Managing the Now and the Future Book of Abstracts (2021) is now online.  Please visit the AMIC Website to view and download a copy of the Book of Abstracts, available at Book of Abstracts 2021. 

In their foreword to the book, AMIC Board Chair Crispin Maslog and Secretary-General Ramon Tuazon  wrote: “It is not by accident that the two outstanding issues of our time—Climate Crisis and Covid-19—involve science.

“Our insanity has led the world to where it is today at the crossroads of history. Do we survive as a species, or do we go down the dustbin of history?

“We need Science and Scientists to shepherd us through these twin crises. And we need Science Research and Science Communication to help the people understand and mobilize them to act ASAP.

“AMIC  recognizes the urgency of enabling science journalists and communicators to contribute significantly to addressing current issues of human survival… Thus AMIC adopted ‘Science Communication: Managing the Now and the Future’ as the theme of its 28th Annual Conference” on November 20 and 27 and December 04, 2021.

The event, co-hosted by the Academy of Journalism and Communication (AJC) based in Hanoi, Vietnam, was the first virtual annual conference convened by AMIC.

The Book of Abstracts contains 124 abstracts of 167 papers presented by 224 presenters (inclusive of authors and co-authors) during the conference’s 18 parallel sessions. Fifteen countries were represented.

The book contains summaries of a  variety of research by Asian scholars, covering such topics as science communication theories, online education, ICT ecosystem as the new public sphere, framing the Covid-19 narrative, disinformation, media literacy, disaster risk and preparedness, health, and agriculture, among many others.

The book will be useful for communication educators, researchers and students as reference for ongoing research or as leads to future research studies.

AMIC History Book Launched

AMIC@50: A History of the Asian Media Information Centre was launched last December on the occasion of AMIC’s golden jubilee. It is a 200-page story of the organization founded and registered in Singapore in 1971 and now based in Manila since 2015.

The book is edited by Crispin C. Maslog, a participant in the unique travelling seminar in 1971 that took 13 Asian mass communication educators on a 25-day trip to 11 cities in Asia from Singapore to Seoul and led to its founding.

Most of the chapters are written by the former AMIC secretaries-general—Vijay Menon, Jose Ma. Carlos, Sundeep Muppidi, Martin Hadlow, Ramon Tuazon and Maria Fajardo Robles. Some chapters are written by proxies—Sankaran Ramanathan, Eddie Kuo, John Lent and Crispin C. Maslog.

AMIC is proprietor of the Asian Journal of Communication (AJC) and Media Asia. AJC comes out bi-monthly with scholarly articles preferably dealing with Asian research topics and methodologies. , Media Asia is a peer reviewed journal that focuses on practices in journalism, advertising, public relations, and other aspects of media in Asia. 

The traveling seminar was followed by the Communication Teaching and Training Conference in Seoul in 1972 which recommended the First Reading Material Workshop in October 1974. The workshop urged three priority subject areas for anthologies– a history of mass communication in Asia, Asian broadcasting, and Asian journalism. This led in 1978 to the research and writing of the first AMIC book, A Brief History of Asian Mass Communication, edited by Sir Charles Moses and Crispin C. Maslog.