Looking towards Future of Communication: Research, Journalism, Jobs

Prof. Daya Thussu, Professor, International Communication at the Department of Journalism, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong delivered his keynote address on ‘Rethinking media and communication research’.

The talk covered the theme of international communication and research from the lens of ‘the historical baggage’ that is derived from the ‘the colonial legacies and leverages’. He cited various examples from different contexts.
He discussed the Information ‘imbalances’ and the importance of NWICO debates. The existence of US-UK media duopoly and intellectual hegemony that exists in the world was also highlighted. Prof Thussu underlined the resulting digital dividends in the current landscape that needed to be understood in order to understand how the future of communication was shaping.

He noted that Internet was becoming more Asian, considering the growing number of users and also the rate of penetration by contextualising the global statistics.

The talk also included how ‘De-Americanizing the internet?’ was being visualized and this ‘De-Westernizing’, was part of ‘a growing reaction against the self-absorption and parochialism of much Western media theory’ (Curran and Park, 2000). He included mentions from famous and relevant works in this domain including his own that have discussed the imperatives for internationalizing media studies by broadening its remit, warranted by unprecedented growth of media in non-Western world (Thussu, 2009).

Prof. Thussu emphasized the salience of undertaking Comparative research especially for the South Asian scholars and that was going to assist in Rethinking media and communication research, by way of: