Political Communication in Asia, edited by Lars Willnat and Annette Aw. New York: Routledge, 2009. ISBN 978-0-415-96285-8. 240 pp.

No scholars interested in public life and civil societies doubt the significance of research on the impact of news media on political systems and peoples’ lives. The bulk of literature on this topic has been accumulated in the Western societies, particularly the US. Little has been done to bring to international academia how news media politically function in the massive area outside Western culture. Many scholars’ understanding of the political role of the news media in non-Western societies, especially where English is not a lingua franca, is more often not much beyond wild guesses. This book gathers seventeen scholars who systematically examine the political communication dynamics and research in East and South Asia. It is a valuable attempt and greatly contributes to our understanding the mass media and the political systems in this area, home of 48% of the world’s population.

The greatest contribution of the book is that it introduces the non-English media literature growing in this area into the English-speaking international community of communication studies. Each chapter comprehensively reviews media research and/or political communication systems in one country or district. The editors provide thoughtful introduction and conclusion chapters. Although the editors are somewhat disappointed by the failure to achieve their original goal of finding out theories unique to the Asia societies under investigation, the book does help us to interpret and explain the political phenomena that we see in this area. It is a wonderful reference for Asian media researchers and valuable textbook for courses on Asian political communication studies.　

Both the editors and the authors of this book are aware that most Asian communication scholars are still examining the Asian societies within the theoretical frameworks developed in the Western cultural context, looking at Eastern societies through the Western lens. They find several reasons why this is the case. The most prominent one, of course, is that communication studies as a field, arguably, originated from the United States. When studying Asian issues from the communication perspective, knowledge and methods that have been incremented in this field must be used as foundation (p. 220). Second, a large amount of the Asia communication researchers have been trained in the Western and particularly U.S. communication programs. Western media theories and research methods have been an indispensible part of them. The authors mentioned that in South Korea and Taiwan the proportions of U.S.-trained communication scholars are respectively 65% (p.184) and 82% (p.88). Furthermore, those Western-trained Asian communication scholars set standards for their local colleagues, for they are thought of as standing at a higher level. Third, since many Asian societies experienced heavier political pressure in 1960s to 1980s, Asian communication scholars were forced to conduct studies on the foreign press rather than the press in their own countries, as in Indonesia under Suharto (p.116). The fourth reason, which the editors and authors might not realize, is that since all of them are Western-trained researchers, they could have ignored some non-Western style media research in their reviewing.

Western-trained non-Western scholars study their own societies within the theoretical frameworks developed in Western societies and using research methods that they have learned from the West is not absolutely negative. First of all, some media theories, although developed in the Western cultural setting, may be generalized to other societies. For example, agenda-setting, priming, framing, and spiral of silence all have found supporting evidence in most of those Asian societies and are useful for people to understand things happened in those societies. Second, every academic field has its own sphere, infrastructure, and tools; it will be difficult for Asian communication scholars to abandon all Western communication concepts and reinvent the wheel. Third, even if Asian communication scholars could have established their own investigative systems based on their social cultures, which they may already have, it would be hard for them to share their studies with their international counterparts, because academic communication is difficult without a same or similar research mindset.

I strongly agree with the editors and some other scholars that simply replicating established media theories in Asian societies helps little in advancing the theories and understanding of the Asian societies. All theories have assumptions. Some theories’ assumption could be the cultural setting or the way of understanding the mass media in the cultural setting, in which the theories have been developed. The editors’ argument that whether the culture encourages outspokenness or not should be a variable in the spiral of silence theory makes much sense (p. 224). Chinese scholars, for instance, find that in the scenario of Internet chat the reverse spiral of silence will happen and those in the minority will speak out to garner support (p 67). Meanwhile, and perhaps only culture can help to explain why, in Malaysia the minority Chinese and Indian voters’ agendas are set by the Chinese and Indian newspapers, whereas the agendas of the indigenous Malay voters, the majority, are not set by the Malay newspapers (p. 147).

Probably the best way is that after building the foundation for Asian communication studies with Western communication theoretical frameworks and methods, Asian scholars need to develop theories taking their own cultural factors into consideration, as adamantly argued by one of the authors, Chingching Chang (p. 88). Several interesting theories discussed in the book, which apparently have greater explaining power in the specific Asian societies, are developed this way. Zhou He’s Dualistic Discourse Universe Theory, which might be inspired by the public sphere concept and Festiger’s cognitive dissonance theory and is probably still in its preliminary form, examines how Chinese journalists and communication researchers deal with the conflict between their private ideology and the public ideology in an authoritarian society (p. 47), a phenomenon few other theories can explain. A Japanese scholar’s Kukki (climate of opinion or mood) model, which describes the dynamics among the government, the press, and the public, was also developed based on the spiral of silence theory but works much better than the original theory in Japan (p. 168).

Consequently, also intriguing in the book is the editors’ discussion of the need for an Asian media theory. Whereas some scholars call for a rejection of Western media theories which, they believe, ignore Asian social structures, others argue that Asian media scholars need to connect their research with the existing body of knowledge and enrich it. As shown in this book review, current Asian media study has been squarely located on the Western theoretical foundation. Now it is probably time to pay more attention to the unique social and cultural contexts in the Asian societies. Otherwise, Asian cultural factors, such as how Confucian values like "face," "loyalty," and "social harmony" influence the formation of political message and the function of the media, a topic that has been ignored by researchers viewing the East from the Western perspective, will be continually ignored. Without examining these values, it is not possible to understand Chinese journalists’ mainstream tradition of criticizing the government on small issues but helping it on the big ones. After all, theory’s first task probably should be to help understand and provide predictions of and better solutions to the political communication issues in the area. Moreover, developing native Asian media theories is not a deviation from the established media research track. To the contrary, it can serve as a challenge that drives us to examine the cultural assumptions of the existing theories, which has been tested and updated ceaselessly, and make them really applicable to the international community.

As a great attempt, the book certainly has its limitations, some of which have been mentioned by the editors and discussed above. A conspicuous one is that despite its title, the book misses some countries in Southeast Asia, not to mention the huge Muslim areas in West Asia and Central Asia. For example, Asian scholars have been wondering why democracy has not been working smoothly and effectively in Philippines. This book, however, does not review the Philippines. I am hoping the editors will update their book in the coming years and cover more countries in East Asia and South Asia and provide more in-depth discussion as Asian political communication research itself also grows up.