Hong Kong and Media

Cultural Connections Between Asian and Western Media Akif, Osman, and Subhani state that media portrays the current age, recognizing and communicating negative and positive occurrences transpiring around us. Besides functioning as a means for exposing and dealing with a number of problems from diverse angles, it also produces positive representations and impressions as well as considers communities' ingrained history. Its contribution to the production and economic sectors is considerable. Assortment and transparency, the primary level, promotes and cultivates overall media, offering the economic and political domains sound authority or control.

This represents a bottom-up and top-down strategy as media channels' scope covers both the destitute and the wealthy, the strong and the weak. Media protects specific populations' interests, fosters receptiveness and ensures administrative and governmental accountability when it comes to saving and protecting the environment. The worldwide advertising cost occurs due to the media's capability of influencing and modifying behavior. Considerable funds are expended towards persuading people, companies and groups across the globe and producing change within them.

The media enjoys variable efficacy when it comes to altering views and inspiring change (Sinclair). In Rohn's opinion, just as in all other cases, place and time have perpetual significance even in case of media. Media content variations have arisen on account of cultural obstacles. From the point of view of organizations, culturally-dependent audiences' requirements pose obstacles to entry into overseas markets. The growing international individual and goods movement implies an entry into 'imagined domains' in which social networks are forged without any national interest, boundary or flag.

Global audiences are not cognizant of symbols and signs. A second disparity between nations is linguistic obstacles. While media channels translate content into local languages, its success is impacted by linguistic obstacles. Literature Review Facts about our world are communicated to developing nations from the industrialized ones. Of late, media channels in Asia have attempted at challenging and surpassing their rivals in the West, who dominate the international media market.

While industrialized and Asian nations constitute around 14% of the global population, they are in control of approximately 66% of overall information movement. Further, the Asian media has attempted at more fairness, objectivity and thoroughness of coverage as compared to its Western counterpart. Media companies in Asia, especially those based in developing countries, currently engage actively in global events and cooperate better with one another in the reporting of regional news.

One will no longer witness a monopoly when it comes to reporting major regional events and news in the continent, as media channels now share, edit, and exchange reports and facts for offering improved content to audiences. The Asian media sector is now studying novel technologies for transmitting information via cellphones and the World Wide Web. Beginning from the sixties, it has been growing and improving, contesting the unfair monopoly of the industrialized countries and acquiring global dominance (Chan & Suen).

Information movement and media content differences between the unindustrialized and industrialized countries hasn't experienced much change since several decades, owing to Western media channels' misconceptions and prejudiced views of Asian and developing societies. The Asians have learnt the skill of self-investment and relocating their resources for acquiring control and supporting improved communication. An example of current developments is groups and communication meetings in which nations such as Japan, China, Sri Lanka and Korea have formally agreed to make themselves heard over all other nations (People's Daily Online).

Rudolph indicates that Asian media challenges have an association with cultural politics. Competition in the area of producing culture and disagreements with regard to its meaning constitute the foremost challenge; the contemporary world pursues individual value and identity that can be evident by means of media. It promotes station, money and authority circulation. Another challenge is: the main interest of media is the simultaneous generation of public culture and encouragement of socio-economic advancement. The media's capability of concealing and exposing social realities is both an opportunity and a challenge.

Media can symbolically and non-symbolically deal with and convey societal realism, romanticism, idealism, symbolism, and classism. It expands culture via globalization and global idea/information interchange. However, at times, the reporting of conflicting opinions with regard to diverse sovereigns may exacerbate hostilities between countries. Iwabuchi elucidates that during the past twenty years, the world has seen extraordinary media culture production advancements and their international dissemination across the globe.

Among the major areas wherein such cultural expression alternatives have thrived is East Asia which has witnessed growing cultural blending and organizational collaborations, besides a trend of intraregional consumption. These cultural dynamics illustrate novel forms of cultural relationships and innovation, and advance them across national boundaries. Cultural and media globalization has achieved a whole new level of diffusion and growth. Listening to pop songs produced by Chinese musicians, watching Korean soap operas and Asian movies coproduced internationally, and reading Japanese comics have now become commonplace practices in urban East Asia.

Although media culture links between Asian countries have been in place for much longer, very dramatic growths and transformations have been seen beginning from the early nineties. This post-Cold War era has been characterized by major globalization process development. International goods, individual and capital movement has increased further by neoliberalism marketization diffusion and the strengthening of global migrant, vacationer and labor ethno-flow. Just as significant is the advancement of cultural and media globalization.

Digital communication technology growth has personalized and decentered media usage besides lending itself to global media market integration and permeation by Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation and other dominant international media culture advocates (Iwabuchi). Globalization of culture doesn't simply imply the dissemination of Western (largely US origin) products worldwide via media companies. Moreover, the growth of extra-American media culture generation capability has become prominent and a highly dynamic example of this is East Asia.

Advanced media culture generation capability like East Asian movies, pop music and television has triggered regional coproduction, and intraregional media culture dissemination and use. The region has been recognizing media cultures belonging to other East Asian areas at a remarkable rate, resulting in the development of novel relationships between media culture businesses and individuals (Iwabuchi). Analysis Media represents the strongest and most important means of expression within the current globalization era. The Asian continent has understood media's capacity of maneuvering and manipulating current agendas.

While it enjoys a certain degree of Western influence, the continent's media setting differs from that of other areas across the globe. The above disparity becomes apparent if one sees its operation and performance. America has contributed significantly to the creation, sharing and understanding of cultural norms which forms the foundation of the major part of media flow. A few scholars explain the Asian-American consumer culture overlap assisted by American media.

Right from fashion and furnishings to fast food, consumer culture trends (linguistic, lifestyle, and aesthetic themes) are directed from America via mediascapes to the rest of the world. Media enables individuals to converse through diverse sources. Asian nations resemble global standards in media practice as well as law. Governmental media control (linked to a smaller amount of press freedom) is larger in nations having dictatorial political institutions. Media in Asia is democratic and open (by and for the people).

Government and public interest guides Asian media channels for societal advancement (Osman, Subhani & Hasan). Since long, media cultures of East Asia have amalgamated local components whilst grasping US cultural influences. However, cultural fusion has also been produced in the media culture of the region. Frequent remakes of popular movies and television soaps from other East Asian areas have been seen, particularly between Hong Kong, Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean media texts. Further, Japanese comics have frequently been adapted for movies and television soaps in East Asian countries besides Japan.

Here, the resultant texts ingeniously unify various local components, far from simply imitating original works. Among the leading examples is Liuxing Huayuan (translation: Meteor Garden), a Taiwanese television soap based on Hana yori dango (a Japanese comic on the life of high school-goers) that displays Japanese media culture's creative localization in Taiwan together with the resulting fascinating transnational journey. In that day, the Japanese were yet to make a soap based on it. However, Taiwanese producers proficiently adapted it in drama form in the year 2001.

This show has garnered phenomenal popularity across East Asia, including Japan. A television station from Japan created a Japanese adaptation of it from 2005 to 2007 and this also garnered popularity outside of Japan. Lastly, in the following year, the Koreans created their own adaptation of the series (Ching). In cultural globalization research, the Western and the non-Western are typically associated with the international and local, respectively.

Additionally, even in cultural hybridization deliberations, the latter is simply expected to copy, adopt or hybridize the former, irrespective of how actively local media cultures are produced here. The media culture of East Asia is unable to free itself from Western influence, however, this fascinating dynamic inter-textual adaptation and cultural fusion between Asian nations encourages one to move beyond the standpoint of global Americanization or Westernization (Iwabuchi).

Chua goes on to say that a major problem relating to the dissemination of media culture between Asian nations is connected with the way individuals in several East Asian areas are related via media culture use. Whereas one contends that this may create an East Asian identity, others address how East Asia efficiently mediates between the international and the domestic with regard to capital operation. A second key question is the way inter-Asian media culture dissemination fosters individuals' self-reflexive discourses and mutual understanding at an international scale.

Media culture has a substantial part to play when it comes to national public development. Numerous researches depict the way movies, television, radio, and other mass media vehicles have developed national-level public domains and imagined societies. But since different areas' media cultures routinely traverse national borders, individuals now have a significantly broader selection for contemplating sociopolitical and personal matters. However, national-level mass media channels remain the strongest in this area. The international media usage practice is best explicated by Diasporas' and immigrants' home media culture use.

Nevertheless, national viewers that never shifted countries are seen actively listening to and viewing foreign media cultures as well. Even within the East Asian region, media cultures use (e.g., movies and television soaps) from other areas in the region has been gaining increasing popularity. In case of a majority of areas, producers were earlier unfamiliar with this practice and didn't require it during production, as media cultures are largely created for national viewers.

But media cultures now go beyond national borders and reach unexpected audiences through free aired channels, satellite and cable channels, the internet, and pirated DVDs/CDs. Moreover, media cultures are increasingly produced and co-produced at the international level for targeting foreign viewers (Iwabuchi). As has been previously indicated, internationally-circulated cultural images and commodities are reworked via hybridization in individual areas.

Although the aforementioned process generates media cultural repertory diversification in several areas across the globe, such cultural diversity growth is being regulated by capital logic and is organized in a globalized setting (Campbell). The spread of globalization has facilitated the sharing, deployment and dissemination of marketing approach, genre, digitalized special effects, visual representation, narrative style, coolness, and a succession of other cultural formats whereby several differences may be adjusted by the media culture companies. Several of these are ascribed to the international diffusion of US media culture.

Therefore, one may claim that the US has grown into a basic format which controls the worldwide media culture creation process. One may then contend that what the world is now witnessing is more of late Americanization than de-Americanization. But although denying the extent of US cultural influence is incongruous, simply equating globalization with US cultural imperialism or Americanization is overly one-dimensional.

As illustrated by the pervasiveness of film remaking and the TV format business of which several examples are non-American, numerous Asian media culture companies are presently actively engaging in globalizing ventures and together taking advantage of late Americanization. Multinational media firms are pursuing profit growths by adapting internationally adoptable formats worldwide and fostering cultural diversity within all markets (Morley & Robins). Hollywood has, in more recent times, been accepting the growing Asian markets and media culture creations for making its offering more globally oriented.

It has been seen actively integrating East Asian media cultures' forte by employing actors and directors like Jackie Chan, John Woo, Zhang Ziyi, Lee Byung-hun, and Ang Lee, as well as remaking Hong Kong, Japanese, and Korean movies like The Grudge, My Sassy Girl, Shall We Dance, and Infernal Affairs. It also actively circulates and produces/coproduces East Asia-related movies (e.g., Hero, Kung Fu Hustle, Crouching Tiger, Memoirs of a Geisha, Hidden Dragon, and The Last Samurai).

Furthermore, it is now actively creating Asia's media cultures, through the process of establishing local branches within major Asian cities. One may argue that Hollywood accepting Asia reveals unequal American-Asian power relations as there is a need to alter 'Asian' contents to the Hollywood style and taste (for which markets in the West remain the most important, despite target audiences growing 'global' at record levels) and as Asian Orientalist stereotypical images continue to be represented in those movies.

But although the US continues to occupy a principal position, power relations within the international cultural economy have now become more intertwined as compared to a Manichean image of America-China or West-Asia.