Thursday, September 30th, 2010 Electronic Publication and the Critical Intellectual in the Post-Print Era: An Asia-Pacific Perspective

Description

The future of independent critical publishing is at risk. To begin with political economy: book, newspaper, television, radio and film ownership is everywhere concentrated in the hands of a small number of mega-corporations. Two other intertwined phenomena herald the decline, and perhaps ultimately the disappearance of the newspaper, the journal, and the book, certainly as we know them. First is the fact that the new technologies that gave rise to the internet and multiple electronic publications and new forms of communication such as blogs and social communication networks, have transformed both the economics of publishing and the nature, quantity and quality of readership. Notable trends include the radical decline in newspaper, magazine and journal readership and subscribers, and the shift from print to predominantly on-line publication and reading. This, together with declining advertising revenue for print journals and magazines, is one of many harbingers of the permanent decline of print publication. More important, the readership of journals is shifting to online readership, while personal paid subscriptions plummet. While some lament the imminent demise of print publication, and perhaps even the decline in literacy, it is worth noting that electronic publication offers new opportunities that print cannot match. For example, electronic publishing permits far greater versatility in the use of images and sound, including color, music, voice, and moving images, as well as interactive texts and comment functions that have the potential to redefine the relationship between author and text and to expand the scope of media. Third, over the last decade, coinciding with the centralization of ownership and control of print newspapers and magazines, there has been a proliferation of electronic sources, including some notable for their independent and critical spirit across the political, social and cultural spectrum. Yet these new initiatives face formidable problems in competing with centralized corporate media in a David and Goliath battle. We consider these themes with particular respect to the question: how do we gain command of developments historical and contemporary in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium?

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Mark Selden is a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and History at Binghamton University, and a Coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal at http://www.japanfocus.org which provides in-depth critical analysis of the forces shaping the Asia-Pacific and the world. A specialist on the modern and contemporary geopolitics and political economy of the Asia Pacific, his books include China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited, Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, Chinese Village: Socialist State, War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century, Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, China and the United States, China, East Asia and the Global Economy, The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 Year Perspectives. He is the editor of book series at Rowman & Littlefield, Routledge, and M.E. Sharpe publishers.