The 21st AMIC Annual Conference

The 21st AMIC Annual Conference, in conjunction with its 40th anniversary, to be held in partnership with the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). The conference will be held from July 11-14, 2012, at Concorde Hotel, Shah Alam, Malaysia. The theme of the conference is "Forty Years of Media and Communication in Asia: Retrospect, Introspect and Prospects". There will be a separate local track, specific to Malaysia, on the conference theme. Pre-conference capacity building workshops will also be held on July 10, 2012.

Click here for more information on call for papers.
Click here for more information about the conference.

Register now to enjoy early bird discount
Register here before 09 June 2012 to enjoy special discount.

UiTM-AMIC 2012 Conference
The Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), invites submissions of proposals (both individual papers and collective panels) for the Malaysian Track of the 21st Annual AMIC Conference from July 11-14, 2012. The Malaysian Track will be based on the theme, "Forty Years of Media and Communication in Malaysia: Retrospect, Introspect and Prospects". Itwill be held simultaneously with the 21st AMIC Annual Conference at Concorde Hotel, Shah Alam, Selangor.

Pease click here for more information.

RadioAsia2012 Conference


This year the Radio Asia Conference (RAC) themed, "Connect Me to the World" will be held from 7-9 May 2012, at Crowne Plaza Hotel & Resorts, Jakarta, Indonesia. The conference is co-organized by AMIC, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) and Singapore Exhibition Services (SES).

The conference will address current pressing issues facing the resurgent radio broadcasting industry in Indonesia and in the region. It brings together leading radio media practitioners, communication specialists, policy makers, and academics from across the Asia-Pacific and beyond. Eminent speakers, specializing in various aspects of radio and communications, will share their perspectives.

RadioAsia is the only international radio programming event of its kind in the region. Over the years, this annual gathering of industry players has attracted a great deal of attention from radio broadcasters and other players in the radio industry across the world.

For more information about RAC 2012, please visit here.
For further enquiries, please email Ms Tharuka Prematillake, Conference Coordinator at Tharuka@amic.org.sg.

AMIC/ABU Radio Asia Conference: Jakarta; May 7-9, 2012
Tweetstream by Madanmohan Rao (http://twitter.com/MadanRao)

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CeDEM Asia 2012

The International Conference on e-Democracy and Open Government-Asia 2012 (CeDEM-Asia-2012) is a forum that aims to bring together academics, researchers, policy-makers, industry professionals, and civil society activists to discuss the role of social and mobile media in the future of governance in Asia and elsewhere. CeDEM-Asia-2012 will be held on November 14-15 in Singapore.

Call for Papers
New means of interacting with government and political institutions are causing significant shifts in political and social life. The emerging social and mobile media practices, including content generation, collaboration, and network organization, are changing our understanding of governance and politics. While the changes are already widely debated in mature, developed democracies, there is an even greater need to address them in the context of rapidly developing Asian societies. Following five successful conferences at the Danube University of Krems, CeDEM is looking to open a new forum in Asia for the exchange of ideas, networking, and collaboration on the topics of e-democracy and open government. This year, CeDEM is pleased to be working with the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) as its conference organizer and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore as its main partner. CeDEM-Asia-2012 seeks to critically analyze present and future developments in field, with a special focus on the following themes:

• Social media to engage citizens, smart & mobile democracy, sustainability of e-participation
• Mobilization via social media, networks vs. traditional party-structure, online campaigning
• Communication technologies and their use for governmental transformation
• Open data initiatives, transparency, participation and collaboration in government
• Cultures of governance, access and openness, crowdsourcing for government
• Information provision, mobile devices, service delivery via new communication channels
• Online communities, innovation, bottom-up vs. top-down
• Network effects, power laws, long tail, social web

For more information, please click here.

Important Dates
Submission deadline for full papers and workshop proposals: 15 July 2012
Notification of acceptance: 24 September 2012
Camera-ready paper submission: 15 October 2012
Conference dates & location: 14-15 November 2012, Singapore

Further Information and Contact:
Peter Parycek: Peter.Parycek@donau-uni.ac.at
Marko M. Skoric: marko@ntu.edu.sg

AMIC Officials Join World Press Freedom Day Event in NTU, Singapore
7 May 2012

Media release
World Press Freedom Day: Asian journalists in Singapore honour murdered Pakistani comrade

SINGAPORE, 7 MAY 2012 - Journalists from 14 Asian countries observed World Press Freedom Day at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) with a symbolic release of balloons, honouring the spirit of murdered Pakistani editor and columnist Murtaza Razvi . The journalists are taking part in the Asia Journalism Fellowship (AJF, http://www.ajf.sg), a sabbatical programme of Temasek Foundation and NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI).

Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) officials were on hand to join the commemoration, namely: Chair Dr. Ang Peng Hwa, Acting Secretary-General Ms Maria Mercedes Robles, Research Head Dr. Kalinga Seneviratne and former Research Director Dr. Madanmohan Rao. Dr. Cherian George who is in-charge of the TF-NTU AJF is a member of AMIC’s Board of Management. Dr. Ang and Dr. George are faculty members at WKWSCI.

Stressing the importance of media freedom in furthering the public interest, journalists gathered at the event called on governments in Asia to act against the impunity that currently envelops crimes against media workers. “As journalists from diverse media traditions in Asia, we collectively affirm journalism’s role in advancing our communities’ collective interests, a responsibility that we believe is best fulfilled in an environment that respects human rights, including freedom of expression,” they said in a joint statement (below).

Addressing the Fellows, Ms Robles, the Secretary-General of AMIC, paid tribute to the profession. “We should be grateful that we have heroic deeds of journalists from all over the world which can instigate change and which can inspire the journalists of tomorrow,” she said.

Razvi, who spent three months in Singapore in 2009 as a Fellow in AJF’s inaugural round, was killed two weeks ago in Karachi at the age of 48. He was renowned in Pakistan as an outstanding and courageous journalist, and warmly remembered by the AJF Class of 2009 as a gregarious and generous human being.

The 2012 Fellows and other guests released 60 balloons into the evening sky, one for each journalist who has passed through the AJF programme since its launch in 2009. Razvi was represented by a single red balloon, released by compatriot Gonila Gil, minority affairs reporter of Daily Ajjkal in Lahore. “Murtaza Razvi was respected as a nice human being, highly educated and one of the most well mannered journalists in Pakistan,” she said. “We need to learn from his devotion to journalism.”

ABOUT

World Press Freedom Day: 3 May was proclaimed World Press Freedom Day by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 following a recommendation adopted at the 26th session of UNESCO's General Conference in 1991. For more information, visit http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/flagship-project-activities/world-press-freedom-day/homepage/.

Asia Journalism Fellowship: The Asia Journalism Fellowship is a programme of Temasek Foundation and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, bringing together accomplished journalists from across Asia for a three-month sabbatical that includes professional workshops, seminars, visits and independent research. For more information, visit http://www.ajf.sg. The programme has been conducted annually since 2009.