JMSC Research Seminar: The Freedom of Critical Thinking: News Literacy Education in Authoritarian States in Asia

Date: March 06, 2015
Time: 13:00 – 14:00
Venue: Digital Media Lab, G/F, Eliot Hall, JMSC, HKU

In this talk Dr. Kajimoto examines how university educators in Vietnam, Malaysia and Myanmar adapted a news literacy curriculum initially designed for the students in democratic societies. Through a series of case studies, his research sheds light on how the country-specific social, cultural, and political environments have been interwoven into the pedagogy in the countries where accessing, creating, and disseminating information could be considered subversive activities. His evaluation of teaching methods that deal with news media content indicates that when educational material from one culture is translated into another culture, the schemata that formed the basis of common understanding in the original culture could lose its intended meaning in the other culture. The study illustrates that the understanding of the local context is essential because mediated messages in news reports are cultural products that are constructed from particular journalistic practices within the boundaries given by the social conditions.

Dr. Masato Kajimoto is Assistant Professor at Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong.