留學生dissertation：亞洲國家的媒介發展史
01-01, 2013
很多亞洲國家的一直存在變幻莫測的歷史，政治征服，經濟剝削和殖民遺產，這新成立的獨立國家紛紛拋出各民族和種信仰。后殖民的國家的政府所面臨的一項主要任務是
制定政策和戰略，結合眾多的民族，語言和文化社區，來匯集成一個單一的國家。
The story of very many Asian nations has been the result of the vagaries of
history; political conquest, economic exploitation and a colonial legacy, which
have thrown various peoples and races into newly formed independent nation
states. A principal task faced by governments of post-colonial nations was to
formulate policies and strategies to bind the numerous ethnic, linguistic and
cultural communities that had been brought together into the ambit of a single
nation. In this context, Mutalib argued: ‘Since a common identity defines the
basis of membership within a political community and since social resilience
and a sense of belonging are critical to the nation-building process of a state,
the search for such a national identity must surely be one of the most fundamental
or basic tasks confronting any government’ (1992: 69).
This task was however complicated by the extreme diversity and heterogeneity
that characterized nations such as Singapore and Malaysia. Moreover,
this diversity permeated every aspect of the existence and experience of these
newly formed national entities. The colonial legacy had left countries such as
Malaysia and Singapore with populations drawn from a variety of geographical
origins, faiths, races and cultural traditions. Upon attaining their independence,
these two nations were not only confronted with a great racial or ethnic
diversity characterized by the coexistence of thehttp://www.400190.com/dissertation_sample/ Malays, the Chinese and the
Indians, but these races were also divided by a wide range of religious faiths
and practices including Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism
and others. The linguistic composition of these populations too
reflected a profound diversity with the Malays speaking their own native
language Bahasa Melayu, the Chinese populations using Mandarin as well as a
range of Chinese dialects and the Indians bringing with them several ancestral
languages.
The creation of what Anderson (1983) called an ‘imagined community’
from these disparate constituent cultural populations was thus one of the single
most important tasks faced by the governments of Malaysia and Singapore. The
task at hand was not only the constitution of a symbolic collective identity,
which could reconcile the profound diversity that characterized these societies,
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but the very production and construction of a nation. Chua and Kuo (1995: 69)
aptly summarize this cultural dilemma and challenge: ‘These structural changes
are all the more radical and their effects more impressive when one considers
that Singapore as an independent nation-state was first and foremost a political
reality foisted on a population under conditions beyond their control. Once this
was a fait accompli, a “nation” had to be constructed’.
This then is the paradox and challenge of many nations which emerged
after long periods of colonial rule, and which have been characterized by
profound cultural diversity and complexity: a national and collective identity
had to be produced after the political constitution of independent nation states.
Once independent political entities known as nations came into being, the
question of collective identity (who are we?) became central to the nationbuilding
process and nationalist intellectuals and governments had to attempt
to transform the symbolic framework through which people experienced social
reality and, to the extent that life is what we make of it, reality itself. Geertz
highlights the terms of this cultural challenge when he says: ‘Generalized, the
“who are we” question asks what cultural forms – what systems of meaningful
symbols – to employ to give value and significance to the activities of the state,
and by extension to the civil life of its citizens’ (1973: 242).
Although one of the justifications for government control and monopoly of
broadcasting in Asia was spectrum scarcity, more important political and
cultural concerns and arguments were also used. Television, because of its
capacity to create a common symbolic reference system across large and diverse
nations, was seen as a powerful tool, which could be used for the cultural production
of a national identity. A common national framework and a common
symbolic and shared social experience had to be fostered and television contributes
significantly to this task. Therefore, under the banner of development
communication and national integration, most governments maintained a tight
grip on broadcasting.
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在新加坡，馬來西亞等國家以及其他亞洲國家政府已經采用了幾種方式來控制廣播。無論是新加坡和馬來西亞廣播景觀提供了有趣的例子來進行控制和調節。
Governments in countries like Singapore and Malaysia as well as other
Asian nations have employed several means to control broadcasting. Both the
Singaporean and Malaysian broadcasting landscapes offer interesting examples
of these forms of control and regulation. The key mechanism of control over
broadcasting has been direct government ownership and operation of the media
as experienced in Malaysia and Singapore. While Radio Television Malaysia
(RTM), the state owned and run broadcasting institution functioned as a public
service monopoly, which survived from its independence all the way up to 1984,
in Singapore, it was first known as Radio Television Singapore (RTS) and since
1980 the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), which had complete
control over all broadcasting in the country.
The large majority that the ruling political parties in these countries have
enjoyed since their independence and constitution into nations further reinforced
this control of broadcasting. In Malaysia, the ruling Barisan National
coalition with the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) at its head
and in Singapore the People’s Action Party (PAP) have enjoyed an overwhelming
majority support in successive elections. As Hukill (2000) states, this has
allowed ruling parties to take authoritative control of all government apparatus
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including the control of the manner and nature of nation-building activities and
the media’s role in the process.
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