Assistant Professor M. Asiuzzaman will present his paper entitled:  “Media Pluralism and Development in Malaysia: A Third Eye View” on October 7, 2009, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. at the Seminar Room, Campus B. He is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS). 

M. Asiuzzaman has worked for 13 years as a journalist in English language newspapers in Bangladesh. As a part-time research consultant for the Bangladesh Centre for Development Journalism and Communication, he completed several media researches on the Bangladeshi media for UNESCO and other international organizations. He has been awarded the British Chevening Scholarship (1995), Asian Scholarship Foundation Fellowship (2008) and recently, the Australian Leadership Award under which will enable him to pursue his PhD study.

His research abstract reads: “The exponential growth of technology-based new media has transformed media scenario in Malaysia, threatening the very existence of mainstream media. From the vantage point of an outsider, this paper looks into this growth in relation to media independence and its relation with pluralism. The speaker argues that Malaysia has a very ‘peculiar’ media system. The country has a diverse media but at the same time it has the most ‘boring’ media, especially the traditional or mainstream news media. Given the new media landscape, the speaker asks whether the traditional media can still be called the ‘mainstream media.’”

This paper is part of a series being conducted this fall by the Media Studies and Journalism (MSJ) Department of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). The other research papers lined up for presentation are: New Media and Participatory Democracy in Rural Bangladesh (Jude Genilo/Marium Akther); Domestication of Film (Anis Pervez); Public Relations in Bangladesh: Past Discourses, Future Trends (Jude Genilo/Imtiaz Ahmed Chowdhury); and Narratives on Digital Bangladesh: Shared Meanings, Shared Concerns (Jude Genilo/Shamsul Islam/Marium Akther).