Asia Pacific Media Network
Pacific Media, a new regional research journal, made its debut today with a collection of papers on issues challenging the future, such as independent journalism amid “intensifying geostrategic competition”.
The papers have been largely drawn from an inaugural Pacific International Media conference hosted by The University of the South Pacific in the Fiji capital Suva in July last year.
“It was the first Pacific media conference of its kind in 20 years, convened to address the unprecedented shifts and challenges facing the region’s media systems,” said conference coordinator and edition editor Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor in journalism at USP.
“These include pressures arising from governance and political instability, intensifying geostrategic competition—particularly between China and the United States—climate change and environmental degradation, as well as the profound impacts of digital disruption and the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Topics included in the volume include “how critical journalism can survive” in the Pacific; “reporting the nuclear Pacific”; “Behind the mic” with Talking Point podcaster Sashi Singh, the “coconut wireless” and community news in Hawai’i,; women’s political empowerment in the Asia Pacific; “weaponising the partisan WhatsApp group in Indonesia; and “mapping the past to navigate the future” in a major Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) publishing project.
Other contributors include journalists and media academics from Australia and New Zealand featuring a “Blood on the tracks” case study in investigative journalism practice, and digital weather media coverage in the Pacific.
This inaugural publication of Pacific Media has been produced jointly by The University of the South Pacific and the New Zealand-based Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), with Dr Amit Sarwal, one of the conference organisers, joining Dr Singh as co-editor.
Designer is Pacific Journalism Review’s Del Abcede.
APMN managing editor Dr David Robie welcomed the new publication, saying “this journal will carry on the fine and innovative research mahi (work) established by Pacific Journalism Review during a remarkable 30 years contributing to the region”.
It ceased publication last year, but is still ranked as a Q2 journal by SCOPUS.
The new journal will open up some new doors for community participation.
Both the PJR and PM research archives are in the public domain at the Tuwhera digital collection at Auckland University of Technology.
Khairaih A Rahman has been appointed by APMN as Pacific Media editor and her first edition with a collection of papers from the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference in Vietnam last October will also be published shortly.
Published with permission from Asia Pacific Media Network.
