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Asia is truly amazing. Here you will find more than 2000 spoken languages, political models ranging from monarchies to democracies to authoritarian governments, incredible wealth and unforgiving poverty, and religious traditions from aroundnumerous thereligious globe.traditions.

The story of digital media across Asia reveals equal diversity.

Countries such as South Korea and Japan rank amongst the world's leaders in terms of Internet penetration and technological innovation while countries such as India and Indonesia are only getting started.beginning. In 2008 China became the world's largest Internet market with more than 300 million netizens. Also in 2008 we observed how digital technology--specifically, social networking in Malaysia and mobile technology in South Korea--could dramatically change the fortunes of elected political parties. While emerging economies such as Vietnam rapidly adopt social technologies on the Internet,technologies, theVietnam's government of Vietnam struggles with creatingcreates a legal statute for its blogosphere. Meanwhile citizensCitizens in more established economies such as Singapore display a more cautious and conservative uptake of Webapproach 2.0, attemptingand togenerally take controlled steps toward thea slow but certain adoption of social media within governmental, corporate and social circles.

And as we step off the stage and onto the balcony for a regional view, we quickly see an Internet landscape that differs in each country. To illustrate, I paraphrase Ben Joffe who said that Japan is a mobile market, South Korea an Internet market, and China a giant technology incubator. Digging deeper, these pages will reveal Jakarta's love of Wordpress, Singapore's rank as a top-thirty Twitter location, and Hong Kong's preference for YouTube. You wil also find distinctly Asia brands including QQ (Tencent), Baidu, Naver, Cyworld, Cyvee, and many more.

And success in your home country does not translate well into success abroad, as MySpace and Cyworld have discovered.

This diversity also brings additional challenges and frustrations. How do corporations (or governments, NGOs, and more) navigate such a diverse landscape as they attempt to reach beyond the shores of any single country? Communicating from Singapore to Malaysia is extremely different thenthan communicating from Ohio to Indiana (or perhaps to a lesser degree from EnglandArgentina to Scotland).Uruguay). In addition to widely varying channel preferences, other critical issues include:

digital divide East to West
digital divide between urban and rural
digital dive between rich and poor
challenges to public discourse of all types as people learn how to use new channels
challenges to existing power structures as information and exchange become democratize
political unrest and national security threats as these channels are used for different purposes

To help you think about digital media and communicationgcommunicating in Asia, SMU's COMM 215 course, Digital Media Across Asia, under the direction of Professor Michael Netzley (Michael's blog), have created this wiki in hopes of sharing a few insights and plenty of data. As we like to say in class, "if you are a Swede working in China and looking at South Korea, then what should you know about digital media in that target market?" We hope this wiki at least offers a starting point for answering such questions.

By the end of 2009, we aim to create the first social media map of Asia.

Would you like to visit a dedicated country page? You may either use the menu to your left (above) or scroll down this page and find the dedicated content links (below).

Anyone can explore this site. From the start, we have created this wiki as a free public resource for anyone interested in social media.resource. We compile data about technology penetration, mobile markets, interesting case studies, leading bloggers, important web sites, and governmental policy in a single location. In 2008 bewe started creating original materials such as surveys and video blog posts, listed under the from the creators tab found onin each country page.

2009 will bring more rigorous research and the full digital media map of Asia.

I encourage you to please support SMU, the faculty and students, as they build this site.

And why is this information so important? Moving beyond the common knowledge that we are living in what many be called the Asian Century, and also recognizing that China is the world's largest Internet market with more the 300 million netizens, eMarketer has released a report showing that we have 500 million Internet users in Asia-Pacific and this number is only growing (see graphic, below and left). The implications for PR, corporate communication, marketing, and advertising are profound.

But that is only the good news. The other side of the coin is that, according to a UN ESCAP report:

South Asia, home to 23% of the world’s population, contains fewer than 1% of its Internet users. Clearly the benefits of the emerging knowledge economy are gravitating to the rich and educated, and unless special efforts are made to increase the competitive edge of poor people, that trend can only worsen.

We want to help the world learn more more about this region and about communicating with its netizens.

This wiki has been collectively created across many class sections. Our methods include interviews, writing case studies, data collection from government or industry sources, and first hand experience. These student teams, dedicated to a single country, have compiled their findings here.

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