Media Capital: Towards the Study of Spatial

¶ … Media Capital: Towards the Study of Spatial Flows," author Michael Curtin asserts that academic study of media as it relates to Asian countries has been written with the archaic idea of these nations as developing countries. While it is still certainly true that some Asian countries are technologically disadvantaged, many of them, particularly China and Japan are equal if not surpassing the media production of western countries. In addition, the preconceived notion of these countries as socially isolated from outside culture is equally outdated.

Social media, internet usage, and telecommunications are more prevalent in Asia than a great deal of countries which are associated with a higher level of sophistication in this regard. Instead of focusing on media production within a single nation, the academic community is doing a disservice to the impact of globalization of media, particularly in major locals such as large cities in China and India because they are also involved in media production, thereby imparting their own cultural identity into the international communications.

Instead, Curtin's research indicates the identification of media capitals in terms of a single city, thereby diminishing the concept of the nation as an integral part of the location's identity and allowing focus on the contributions of the city. A broader definition should be given to the term media capital, which would allow for the academic community to see newly identified metropolises as being of major importance to spatial flow.

Some cities, Hong Kong in particular, have fought hard simply to be part of this international discussion and Curtin urges that these struggles be taken into account when determining their current role. Hong Kong's importance within the formulation of media identity in Asia is as important as Hollywood's in the formulation of identity in the west. There are many strengths in the article that Michael Curtin has written.

Despite they myriad of developments which have come from Asian countries, there is still an underlying notion in the western world that many of the nations are underdeveloped in comparison to the west. This association leads to an undermining of the importance of the contributions from these places to the international culture. Films coming out of India's movie production center or those made in China for example are often considered lesser works compared to those produced in the United States or England.

Their content is completely unrelated to the actual quality of these works, but the notion of Bollywood film or other Asian media as lesser is still subconsciously ingrained in the average person. People of the western former power majority, as a whole, need to overcome these antiquarian ideas or risk obsolescence from the world stage. The weakness that I found in this piece was the sheer denseness and a propensity to deviate from a topic in a less than logical fashion.

For example, instead of focusing on media and spatial flow, he enters into territory which has a decided political connotation.