This book observes and analyzes transnational interactions of East Asian pop culture and current cultural practices, comparing them to the production and consumption of Western popular culture and providing a theoretical discussion regarding the specific paradigm of East Asian pop culture. Drawing on innovative theoretical perspectives and grounded empirical research, an international team of authors consider the history of transnational flows within pop culture and then systematically address pop culture,digital technologies, and the media industry. Chapters cover the Hallyu—or Korean Wave—phenomenon, as well as Japanese and Chinese cultural industries. Throughout the book, the authors address the convergence of the once-separated practical, industrial, and business aspects of popular culture under the influence of digital culture. They further coherently synthesize a vast collection of research to examine the specific realities and practices of consumers that exist beyond regional boundaries, shared cultural identities, and historical constructs. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students of Asian media, media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, transcultural communication, or sociology.

This book examines the nexus of East Asian media, culture, and digital technologies in the early 21st century from a Global South perspective. Providing an empirically rich analysis of the emergence of Asian culture, histories, texts, and state policies as they relate to both Asian media and global media, the author discusses relevant theoretical frameworks as East Asian popular culture and media have shifted the contours of globalization. After overviewing Western media/cultural theories and histories, the book explores the ways in which East Asia-focused analytical frameworks are able to shift people’s understanding of globalization and media, drawing upon examples from different East Asian countries to illustrate how current cultural flows have influenced and have been influenced by a handful of dimensions. Offering an important contribution to understanding the historical trajectory and recent developments of East Asia media, this book will interest students and scholars of media, communication, popular culture, cultural studies, Asian studies, politics and sociology.

This book examines the causes of a growing wave of digital activism across developing countries, arguing that it is driven by social change, rather than technological advancement alone. Beginning with an investigation into the modernization of ‘middle-income countries’ and its ramifications for political culture, the book examines large-scale social media protest during political controversies in Indonesia. The book connects empirical evidence to classic theories of value change and political behaviour. It departs from a narrow ‘digital divide’ framing whereby Internet access produces Internet activism. It introduces the concepts of ‘digital self-expression’ and of ‘middle-class struggles’ to capture the value-stratified nature of political engagement in the online sphere. Drawing on a blend of ‘big-data’ text analyses, representative opinion research, and socioeconomic household analyses, a rich picture of the determinants of digital activism emerges. This truly cross-disciplinary book will appeal particularly to students and scholars in Political Science, Sociology, International Development, and Communication, but also to anyone eager to learn about political activism, social transformation, and new media from a global perspective.

Although not considered a formal area of study, scholarship on the uses, content, and effects of entertaining media has been central to communication studies and related fields for more than a century. The serious study of entertainment seems paradoxical, as we presume entertainment to be the “lighter side” of our daily lives. Yet as revealed in this volume, entertainment media serve as cultural artifacts that shape our understandings of various peoples and publics in ways that invite deeper, immersive, and increasingly interactive engagement. On this backdrop, Entertainment Media and Communication serves as a reference guide for canonical and foundational research into media entertainment and a collection of emerging and updated theories and models core to the study of media entertainment in the 21st century. Across more than forty chapters and with a diverse and inclusive list of authors, this volume provides a broad-yet-nuanced view into entertainment media and communication scholarship. The contributors explore its foundations, define and extend key concepts and theories through myriad lenses, discuss unique considerations of digital media, and divine future paths for scholarly inquiry.

"This book aims to engage the complex relationship between technology, culture, and socio-economic elements by exploring it in a transnational, yet contextually grounded, framework, exploring diverse perspectives and approaches, from political economy to cultural studies, and from policy studies to ethnography"--Provided by publisher.

Korea’s Platform Empire explores the evolution of digital platforms in South Korea’s media sphere, and their global political, economic, cultural, and technological influence. With a focus on Korea in the context of the global platform revolution, the book takes a methodical look at the broader social implications and the impact on cultural production. The authors explore various facets of the media and cultural industries—looking beyond social media to news broadcasting and the music industry—and look at the policy and regulations behind this shifting technological advancement. This book will appeal to students and scholars working on media industries, digital media, platform studies, information and technology studies, Korean and East Asian media studies, and the creative and cultural industries.

This book is about K-pop dance and the evolution and presence of its dance fandom on social media. Based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, choreography, and participation-observation with 40 amateur and professional K-pop dancers in New York, California, and Seoul, the book traces the evolution of K-pop dance from the 1980s to the 2020s and explains its distinctive feature called ‘gestural point choreography’ – front-driven, two-dimensional, decorative and charming movements of the upper body and face – as an example of what the author theorizes as ‘social media dance.’ It also explores K-pop cover dance as a form of intercultural performance, suggesting that, by imitating and idolizing K-pop dance, fans are eventually ‘fandoming’ themselves and their bodies. Presenting an ethnographic study of K-pop dance and its fandom, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Media Studies, Korean Studies, Performance Studies, and Dance.

TikTok has drawn attention from all over the world. Even if you have never used it before, you would still be familiar with its name. Many people have assumed that it is a US-generated platform, and normally awed at its real origin – a Chinese born and operated platform, a sister or parallel platform of Douyin. Because of the short-video platform–TikTok, and also its dispute with the US government, people have started to paying attention to what is really happening and changing in China. Two questions that hang over everyone’s mind seem to be: why China? And why TikTok? This book attempted to answer the question of why short-video platforms such as TikTok—the most popular ‘made in China’ product of all the Chinese digital platforms—became a significant competitor on the global stage. This book explores the reasons behind the rise of short video platforms in China, with a focus on the sudden and unexpected success of TikTok and its parallel platform Douyin. Beginning with the historical development of China’s online screen industry, the book goes on to investigate the ICT industry, its business models and impact on the screen industry, to unfold the reasons behind the domestic popularity of Douyin. It draws on a spectrum of sources including policy documents, industry reports and expert analysis, which is supplemented by interviews with key people in the field. It traces the changing dynamics of the Chinese online screen ecology, and shows how a mixture of technological, industrial and cultural factors contributed to the proliferation of short-video platforms in China. This engaging and topical book will be ideal reading for students and scholars of media and communication studies, platform studies, and political economy studies.

Over the past several years, the Thai popular culture landscape has radically transformed due to the emergence of “Boys Love” (BL) soap operas which celebrate the love between handsome young men. Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture is the first book length study of this increasingly significant transnational pop culture phenomenon. Drawing upon six years of ethnographic research, the book reveals BL's impacts on depictions of same-sex desire in Thai media culture and the resultant mainstreaming of queer romance through new forms of celebrity and participatory fandom. The author explores how the rise of BL has transformed contemporary Thai consumer culture, leading to heterosexual female fans of male celebrities who perform homoeroticism becoming the main audience to whom Thai pop culture is geared. Through the case study of BL, this book thus also investigates how Thai media is responding to broader regional trends across Asia where the economic potentials of female and queer fans are becoming increasingly important. Baudinette ultimately argues that the center of queer cultural production in Asia has shifted from Japan to Thailand, investigating both the growing international fandom of Thailand's BL series as well as the influence of international investment into the development of these media. The book particularly focuses on specific case studies of the fandom for Thai BL celebrity couples in Thailand, China, the Philippines, and Japan to explore how BL series have transformed each of these national contexts' queer consumer cultures.