• New Media, Space and Marginality:Control and Regulation of Cybercafe Use in Small and Medium Cities in Asia

    Author(s):
    TT SREEKUMAR MILAGROS RIVERA-SÁNCHEZ
    Editor(s):
    Jyotirmaya Patnaik (see profile)
    Date:
    2016
    Group(s):
    Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, Digital Humanists, Feminist Humanities, Information Ecosystems
    Subject(s):
    Journalism, Communication, Social media, Digital media, Asia, Civilization, Modern
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Heterotopias, youth, cybercafés, moral transgressions, New media, Modernity
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/x4av-5j03
    Abstract:
    This paper is about how cybercafés in small and medium Asian towns highlight new aspects of modernity. Especially in the context of Asian modernity, the introduction of ICT-shaped social spaces in the form of cybercafés leads to multiple conflicting rhetoric of empowerment and progress on the one hand, and risk and moral degeneration on the other. Through an ethnographic study carried out in twelve small or medium towns in six Asian countries, the research explores how new media technologies influence the contexts of reimagining Asia’s encounter with modernity. The paper is based on a study drawing from secondary materials and primary information gathered through extensive field work in six developing countries in Asia: Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines in South East Asia, and India and Bangladesh in South Asia. In this paper we set out to argue that the continuities, ruptures and innovations that constitute the Asian modernity, as well as their social impacts, are mirrored in the discourses surrounding the various technologies that embody this modernity, negotiating a new phase in its mediation and legitimization in Asia. In particular, new media technologies and social media are involved in multiple discourses of risk, opportunity and adaptation. In the case of the cybercafés in Asia, we argue that the situated nature of technological access gives rise to new dimensions of adaptation at individual and collective levels. Discourses emanating from representatives of civil society, State and various other stakeholders converge on cybercafés, and their attention on this particular space emerges as an indication of its complexity as a zone of mediated access to the worlds—both desired and undesired—that computers make possible. The complexity of defining an essential set of Asian values and a regionally unique trajectory of modernity notwithstanding,
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.15655/mw/2016/v7i2/98737
    Publisher:
    Media Watch
    Pub. Date:
    2016-5-5
    Journal:
    Media Watch
    Volume:
    7
    Issue:
    2
    Page Range:
    133 - 149
    ISSN:
    2249-8818,0976-0911
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    2 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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