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Issues and Trends in Media and Communications in Borneo over the Past 30 Years

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Borneo Studies in History, Society and Culture

Part of the book series: Asia in Transition ((AT,volume 4))

Abstract

The chapter is a review of the most important English-language research carried out in the field of media and mass communications in Borneo. This research can be classified as media infrastructure, historical, audience studies, content analyses and development communication studies, and was done by scholars from disciplines as diverse as business, marketing, media studies, social anthropology, education and development studies. The main distinction that can be made is that between article-long studies dealing with a single issue in a single medium, and being mostly interested in practical applications, and theses or book-length studies with a more holistic and critical approach. The works belonging to the first group, consisting mostly of media studies, business or marketing, tend to show a pragmatic outlook geared towards development—an idea that is often problematised by the anthropological works belonging to the second group. The latter, by contrast, tends to focus on issues of power relations, representation, nation-building and identity. The study of information and communications technologies (ICT) and their introduction within the life of the people of Borneo—especially the case study of the rural ICT project of eBario—has been, with different approaches, undertaken by authors from both groups. Overall, it can be argued that the status of media studies in the area has improved with the increased attention paid to the subject and in the diversity of studies produced, some of which offer very promising critical insights and theoretical sophistication.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Television production and broadcast in Malaysian Borneo began in 1970 with the setting up of Sabah TV, reaching Sarawak in 1975 as TV Malaysia Rangkaian Ketiga, operating until 1984. For a discussion see Barlocco (2014).

  2. 2.

    The term Kadazandusun or Kadazan-Dusun is officially used in Sabah to refer to a set of peoples who had no idea of having a common ethnic identity and whose members started to increasingly define themselves as either Kadazan or Dusun from the late 1950s. The terms Kadazandusun and Kadazan-Dusun came into usage under the auspices of the Kadazan Dusun Cultural Association and became popular in the late 1980s to forge a political and cultural unity between those who preferred the term Kadazan and those who opposed it, and has become the term used in the census. In order to stress the political and modern origin of the term and to avoid taking sides, I propose the usage of an alternative term, Dusunic peoples, based on the belonging to the Dusunic language family [for a more in-depth discussion see Barlocco (2014)]. In the rest of the chapter I will use the term in inverted commas to refer to its official usage or that by other authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Fausto Barlocco

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  1. Fausto Barlocco
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Correspondence to Fausto Barlocco .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, Gadong, Brunei Darussalam

    Victor T. King

  2. Professor of Anthropology, Institute of Asian Studies and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, Gadong, Brunei Darussalam

    Zawawi Ibrahim

  3. Lecturer at Geography and Development and Environmental Studies, Institute of Asian Studies and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, Gadong, Brunei Darussalam

    Noor Hasharina Hassan

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Barlocco, F. (2017). Issues and Trends in Media and Communications in Borneo over the Past 30 Years. In: King, V., Ibrahim, Z., Hassan, N. (eds) Borneo Studies in History, Society and Culture. Asia in Transition, vol 4. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0672-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0672-2_7

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