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Historical perspective of communication in Asia. ALPS.
Information and Vision for the Future
1. Brief History of Asia Lutheran Press Service
In 1976, the Asian Lutheran
church leaders' conference in Singapore took the initiative to launch
Asia Lutheran News, later to be named Asia Lutheran Press Service, or
ALPS. This conference appointed a five-member ALPS board. The LWF Secretary
for Communication Consultancy, the LWF Asia Secretary and one representative
from Lutheran Communications in Asia (LUCIA) were ex-officio members.
Since the middle of the 1980s, Yuguchi had been appointed as the ex-officio
member from LUCIA to the ALPS Editorial meeting.
Mr. David Lin started working
for Asia Lutheran News in 1978 as the editorial assistant to the managing
editor. The managing editor was Rev. Anders Hanson, an ELCA missionary
with a Swedish background, and he was based in Hong Kong, as was Mr. Lin.
The chairman of the committee was Dr. Andrew Chiu, President of Concordia
Seminary in Hong Kong. ALPS was soon established as a prominent source
of news, partly reporting on Christianity in China after China opened
up after the visit by US President Nixon.
Lin was promoted to acting
managing editor in 1982, when Anders reached retirement age and returned
to the USA. Between 1983 and 1985, Lin went to Boston to study journalism.
During his absence, ALN was published in Colombo, Sri Lanka, temporarily
as a monthly newsletter. Lin was appointed editor of ALPS after he returned
from his studies, and ALN changed its name to Asia Lutheran Press Services.
It was also adapted from just a monthly newsletter to a biweekly news
service plus a monthly newsletter, fulfilling the original objective to
provide "hotter" news to the churches in Asia and the secular
press through Fax (the fastest delivery tool available at that time) and
airmail. Lin served as editor until early 1994 when he left for the World
Association of Christian Communication (WACC) in London. Yuguchi then
succeeded him to launch ALPS as a quarterly magazine from Tokyo, continuing
until March 2002. Now Ms. Sally Kee has succeeded this job at her office
in Bangkok.
The Asia Lutheran, a 40-60-page
magazine, was published in Tokyo from October 1994 to the year 2001, totaling
14 issues. Each issue had a special topic. The Asia Lutheran Web site
was started along with the May issue in 1996, and the first URL was <asia-luth.org>
then <asia-lutheran.org>. We have had many hits to the site, since
there were not many English Home Pages in the 1990s. Over the years, we
have changed our server several times.
2. Evaluations
Magazines sent: Data stored
using Microsoft ACCESS,
Individuals: 123, schools 50, churches 77, library 5, others 51
(number of copies/issue:750)
Individuals 123
School 50
Churches 77
Library 5
Others 51
Within Asia 250
Outside Asia 56
Problems.
For my 7 years as the editor of the Asia Lutheran, I have encountered
some problems in producing the AL. These are:
Little news or reactions: 'No news is good news' for secular society,
but we should consider whether or not this cliché is good for Lutherans
in Asia. There was little news from the churches and few responses from
our readers, which meant I had to edit the magazine, as well as write
the featured articles every time. The main news sources were ecumenical
and secular ones, both on-line and printed sources, several NGOs' publications
on human rights, and environmental issues in Asia.
WWW Board: There are
many messages written to the message board at the asia-luth URL, but almost
all were messages written against the Indonesia church leadership, in
English as well as in local Indonesian languages. After they began writing
in their own languages, I stopped making the content public, since I couldn't
be sure about the integrity of what was being said, and I couldn't assume
the responsibility of publishing those messages under the name of AL.
There were also many messages from pornographic sites as well as anti-Christian
messages with links to other sites appearing on our WWWBoard.
English: Publishing
this news for Asian people only in English has almost always been a concern
for me, since few people in Asia can easily understand information in
English, especially information dealing with Theology and Church matters,
using special terms.
Printings and shipping:
Since 1996, the Asia Lutheran also began to be published on the Internet,
at the same time as the printed version. Shipping by airmail, the postage
cost comes to more than US$1000 every time. We sent more than 10 copies
to the churches where English is the normal tool of communication, such
as in India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. For churches located
in areas where other languages are more prevalent, after looking at the
results of questionnaires, we decided to send them only a few copies of
each edition.
Volunteer jobs: I have
been working as a volunteer, so my mailing and editing work had to be
done on Saturdays and Sundays in my office when my regular Lutheran Hour
job had been completed. It was very good, however, that the fund could
at least cover the salaries for other people who were working to key-in
the text. But the shipping job was one of the hardest jobs for me; stamping
the envelopes, tying string around the envelopes, so that it could be
seen that it was only printed matter inside, sorting the mail according
to regions for shipping, and taking them to the post office is hard work
and time consuming.
Editorials: Without
an editorial committee, I had to set my own guidelines on editorial matters.
For example, deciding what to do about materials critical of church leadership,
critical articles on controversial issues, like women's rights, power
struggles, leadership abuse, and specific human rights issues.
Budget for reporting and church
motivation: When I was involved in LUCIA I was able to meet with leaders
from other groups, and I was able to use such occasions to gather materials
before and after the meetings. I also had a chance to interview such leaders
and actually visit their places of ministry. Since there was no such specific
budget items to cover visitation and interviews for me, it was hard to
gather enough material through interviews. Investigative reporting is
the best resource available for journalists, but AL did not have such
an item on the budget and had little networking power in itself. Waiting
for news from the churches around Asia was the only method available to
gather information to write, and that is one of the least effective methods
of newsgathering for the Asia Lutheran.
These are problems which happened
inside the Asia Lutheran. Before dealing with their solutions, I shall
look at the outside environment, since news relates to these surroundings.
3 Changes in society and the information environment in Asia in the
1990s
New societies and new emerging
information systems.
When Asia Lutheran News started in the 1970s, print was the most common
news media and then came FAX. Both were used to disseminate the news to
the churches in Asia. The Internet then began a new communication tool
and gradually become more common in the 1990s. Web publishing on the Internet
became one popular aspect of such modern communications. For the last
30 years, these news media have changed the style and dissemination methods
in Asia, though we still do use the print media and FAX. But there are
changes not only in technology and format, but also in society itself
and in the content of communication.
The Internet and new readers
The Internet first appeared as plural networks in some schools and government
agencies, growing slowly at first, and eventually became the beginnings
of Internet we know in 1982 when the TCP/IP protocol was decided on as
the standard. NIC was established in 1985, and the first worm affected
the networks in 1988. The World Wide Web (WWW) started in 1991. In the
beginning of the 1990s, Windows 3.1 became the most common operating system,
and many computer users began to link up to the web through browser software
called Mosaic, which caused an Internet storm in many countries and regions.
Windows 95 also made a large impact on the market, especially the Internet
access market. Asia Lutheran was one organization to use the Web. It was
quite an early start for web publishing in Japan (September 1996). It
was made possible for us because of a new telecommunications law enacted
in May, 1996 in Japan, which permitted us to make web pages and use telephone
lines for data transfer, for digital contents as well as analog.
Mailing list
Today there are many mailing lists and there are readers from both north
and south subscribing to the Lutheran mailing lists. Web-based mail servers,
such as Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are also available for Internet café
users in the global arena, which has made it possible for people from
either the north or the south to easily communicate with e-mail. Africa
Online is one such network that is well-known in Kenya and other African
countries. They also provide free web hosting so that users can also set
up pages on the web now. E-mail has become a fundamental means for communication
between both individuals and groups. These things were not even dreamt
of in the 1980s.
The Asia Lutheran will be
able to save printing fees and postage fees once they provide such mailing
list services. Yahoo and Hotmail Chat and video conferences are common
for Christian groups in Asia, especially for broadband access users. That
is another common communication tool today.
Languages: In 1990s,
the language of the Internet was almost exclusively English and those
people who knew English had a large advantage in information gathering
and learning from the knowledge on the net. In the beginning AL tried
to serve all of the Asian churches using English as a medium. We also
watched as the common language of the net become English, and noticed
that it, rather, made a negative impact on the non-English countries in
Asia. It caused the English-speaking countries to become information rich
and non-English speaking countries to lag behind in the information society.
A gap determined solely by language ability, a cultural difference, rather
than technical, as some claimed.
Readers: We cannot
assume that our readers are only people who live in Asia. Rather our readers
are those who are concerned about Lutheran churches in Asia, or human
rights, peace and reconciliation, theology, education, etc. Once they
access the Internet, it does not even matter if they have their own PC
at home or if they access the Internet from an Internet café-they
will be looking at the same information. They might use search engines,
typing in key words, and then finding what they need.
Before, we would simply send
the information to them, and they would receive it, but now they choose
what they want to receive. We used to have the power of initiative in
delivering the news to the readers, but now they have the right to choose.
Authority and free flow of
information: Then our discussion shall move to editorials. The British
authority used to control the voices in its colonies in India and Hong
Kong, and in the late 19th century many Asian governments also used the
same methods. The print medium was, in the sense, an easy medium for authorities
to control. They could require that printed material be registered, the
paper supply could be controlled, and there could be regulations for news
gathering. The postal system was another easy gateway for them to check.
Today, some totalitarian governments are also trying to control individual
information data transfer through government-controlled Internet gateways.
Text e-mail restrictions in China and strict gateway control in Singapore
have some people worried about religious freedom as well as business fairness.
This, however, amplifies the voices of anti-authority groups when they
speak out against the authorities on the Internet from both inside and
outside the country.
Similar questions should be
posed to the Asia Lutheran. Is the news being disseminated from the church
headquarters and church leaders to church members? There were anti-Lutheran
Church leadership comments on the WWW Board on our site, as I wrote before.
What should our attitude be on such a matter? This is a challenge for
all church journalists. When the protesters wrote in their own languages,
the editorial staff here could not understand the content of the messages,
whether or not it was detrimental or prejudiced. This kind of incident
was not quite so common in the 1980s with the Asia Lutheran. Since we
now live in 2002, the situation is different from the 1980s, and we now
need to talk more about how we can balance the free flow of information
with order, in the dissemination of church information.
Some examination on how technology
has changed the idea of authority:
There has been an inversion in the authority structure resulting from
the situation in today's homes, and from technology. For a long time in
Asia, parents have thought that they have the duty to give their children
a chance to have a good education as well as to discipline them. This
traditional image has changed. Mobile phones are common for young generation
in Japan and more than 90 percent of teens have them. They use them for
talking, sending e-mails and pictures, playing games, and for taking memos
and address notes. Desktop PCs are also popular in Japan, and more than
50 percent of houses have at least one PC.
Parents often do not know
much about using PCs or about accessing the Internet through mobile phones,
but children can deal with this new technology without difficulty. Education
is to develop discipline and patience, but a recent survey shows communication
problems are showing up between the educators and the educated. Parents
are supposed to teach and demonstrate discipline and patience to their
children when it is hard to memorize their lessons or master what they
are studying. Parents insist that they keep on trying, telling their children
that daily study will result in progress. Parents these days, however,
are not able to teach the basics of education to their sons and daughters.
They give up on trying to master computers and other IT tools, and never
try again. They show their lack of discipline and patience in front of
their children. They are not able to ask their children to do something
that they themselves cannot do. On the other hand, children also not supposed
to teach their parents, traditionally. But nowadays, parents have to learn
to ask their children to help them and children are also expected to become
teachers to their parents.
Traditional ideas on authority
may sometimes hamper organizational growth, as can be seen in the case
of today's homes, since our society is already moving, changing, never
stopping. In the midst of these large social changes in our region, the
relationship between parents and children, teachers and students, and
pastors and church members really must be reconsidered.
4. Future of News in Asia
Diversity of cultures:
In Asia we have more than fifty percent of the global population gathered
in our region with different people, cultures, and languages. Lutheran
churches have been serving Asia in the midst of these multiple-culture
societies and languages. The Internet, however, gave the English language
the monopoly on information for the past decade and made us feel that
there is a mono-language culture in Asia. Churches were concerned about
the trend in cultures; while at the same time as they were concerned about
economic globalization, or economic Pax Americana.
Cultural interaction, however, is necessary for community and groups
that need to join together. News information was part of the problem under
the mono-internet cultures. I shall present some alternatives to counter
the trend, because people live locally with their own language, maintaining
their own life style and their own churches.
Auto Translation Software
There is new information technology being developed continually, and much
of it has positive effects in our lives. Thanks to one of these new developments,
auto translation software and web sites are available for us to use, and
they are able to make much better translations today than they were before.
Especially Korean and Japanese translation web services are helpful for
my friends and me. See the translation examples below. On the Al Jazeera
site after September 11, we were able to read original Arabic text at
the TV news site using an Arabic-to-English translation web site. There
was also much other information about the Arabic world on the site, a
big contrast from western news. I personally used the Korean -Japanese
translation sites and read the Lutheran Church in Korea's homepage in
Japanese, and the translation makes sense.
Webs
Lutheran church networks mushroomed since the late 1990s in Japan, as
the government also named IT as its national global strategy to compete
in the global market. Computer networking around the country was considered
important for the economy and education.
Both national and regional governmental economic planning has inherent
risks since the motivation lay mainly with the market. Church workers
have been concerned about the people who cannot access the net, bringing
into focus a "digital divide," a gap between those who are able
to access the Internet and those who cannot. Fair and free access to such
information is still our concern. Such privileges should not depend on
individual income and education. Media Literacy on the Internet should
be a higher priority for the church than Internet know-how. I think that
teaching people to use critical viewing methods for the information they
encounter, should be the highest priority in the church.
Churches in Japan have also made training courses and seminars to set
up local church web sites along the lines of the government recommendations.
The chart below shows the statistics for 2002 regarding Lutheran church
web sites in Japan.
As shown above, 30-40 % of the Lutheran churches in Japan now have their
own web site. The web sites inform visitors about the activities each
church carries out depending on church members and local conditions. However,
almost all of the web contents are pastors' sermons, invitation to the
Sunday service and Sunday schools, and Bible study. With the exception
of Fellowship Deaconry Church in Japan, all other church headquarters
have their own web sites and use them to post church news and newsletters
for those who visit the sites.
The headquarters of almost all of the Lutheran churches in North Asia
have Web sites so that we can get information once we know the vernacular
languages used on the Internet. We need to discuss the areas and countries
where the Internet has not been established as an infrastructure.
Web Log hosts
Online journals and web sites by some groups or individuals have become
popular, and this style of online journalism has also affected the situation
of many news sites because it has raised the importance of popularity
on the Internet. I am a big consumer of Internet news. But there are problems
for consumers with such news sites. Although search engines are popular
and convenient, we can get too many results when we use them, so it's
not uncommon to find more than 10,000 web sites containing the information
we are looking for. Another problem is bias in news reporting. I have
looked at news related to September 11, and related to recent Israeli
and Palestinian conflicts on the net. Reading the news articles on these
issues, I looked at such sites as CNN, Newsweek, and other major newswires.
I found that the contents appeared biased to the Israeli side. Before
Internet newswires, readers could only read the printed news and watch
the TV news as one-way communication, and then complain afterwards when
they felt the reporting was biased. But now the viewers can find views
from other perspectives, such as looking at some Arab news services, too.
We can choose what we read and also search for the news that we really
want to get on the net.
Because of these two particular problems, I use Web log sites, where
some hosts on the site have made web links related to the issues she or
he might be advocating regarding some specific topic. When you want to
read about the human rights issue in Afghanistan or Palestine, then go
to some web log sites and read material from the original news site via
links at those web log sites. Their role is to help the person who is
looking for news to reach the original material.
Search engines often provide too many sites, so such web log hosts are
a valuable new resource for web news researchers to narrow down their
searches. The hosts need deep and active insight into the topics; they
can't get by with just making interesting links. Web log hosting is a
daily job, since the links and information must be continually updated.
One-week-old news or links are no longer news in the online world.
I am not sure if Lutherans are concerned about such sites on the net.
It is important that news is not only obtained through original news reporting,
but also through materials gleaned from the news to be found through web
logs.
The Contents and structure of information flows
Christians are more concerned with the marginalised people rather than
those in the center, where there is no oppositions. There are, however,
four types of marginalised people. There is the idea of center and peripheral
according to region, like North and South, where capitalism reinforces
the have- and have not- countries economic system. But marginalised people
are also found in the Center countries. Even within the rich countries,
there are sectors that could be considered central as well as those that
are more peripheral. In the peripheral countries also, there are elite
center people as well as marginalised people. Therefore we shall focus
on both the marginalised people within the central regions and the marginalised
people in the peripheral areas of society. We should use the same framework
to catch our own weaknesses in church organizations. Church power often
is centralized leaving most people on the periphery.
Structure pf Imperialism A Feudal Center-periphery structure
Central Periphery
In societies in Asia, human rights issues, freedom of expression and belief,
and the environment, are the bridge issues between the center and the
periphery, between society and churches. Those people who live in peripheral
areas have no voice. As Jesus did for the people who were not treated
as human, those who were discriminated against by the religious elite
or those of another race, we also should pay attention to the people and
the situation of the voiceless.
Therefore the role of Christian journalism is to write for those who
live in the periphery and set up new lines of communication and relationship
between the peripheries, which need not go through the communication channels
of the center. I want to use the word Peace for this communication flow
and for its content. This peace, therefore, is a central concern for us
to address in Asia. Although here I am using the word Peace for this concept
of a fair balance of information flow between people, it also can cover
other economic, cultural, political issues which may divide people. The
Study of Peace has even dealt with environmental issues for a long time.
Peace, therefore, is a central strategic tool that can be used to tackle
various problems in Asia. Therefore the churches should really include
this field of Peace issues in their ministries in dealing with the problems
around them.
Narratives Consuming and Loneliness
Another suggestion about the idea of content is to communicate not with
"great narratives," but with "small narratives," which
are the language of post-modernism. When Lutheran Hour Ministries was
looking for the reason for recent sluggish church growth and for the fact
that less people are coming to the church, they came to the conclusion
that the modern church is still standing on the standard of modernism,
just thinking that many people still believe and seek grand narratives.
But as the marketing business has recognized, these modern marketing concepts
cannot catch up with the attitudes of today's consumers. In Japan, some
use the term "data based" worldviews when describing people's
thinking, especially the young generation. And these postmodern advocates
say that some organizations have made mistakes and have failed to recognize
the market and people properly. Then what are "small narratives"
for us? I think they are narratives with their values and views based
on the society around them and these do not refer to grand narratives
anymore. Although those who live in these small narratives need wider
great narratives worldviews, they failed to grasp them, so they end up
feeling lonely. But they are seeking someone to stand beside them. One
real example of those who searched but failed to find are those people
who set up "virtual" religions like Aum Shinri Kyo, the cult
group which sprayed nerve gas in a Tokyo subway in 1995.
The church needs to be open to those felt fears and individual inner
conflicts, and to the people who end up lonely from searching in the great
narratives and giving up. It should also provide wider doors for them,
not by inviting them to church but by church members listening and talking
and making relationships with them where they are, and then can come the
greater narratives and the invitations to church services.
Peace Journalism
The World Cup in Korea and Japan had us all feeling excitement and got
us into a national frenzy mode as long as Our Team was winning. At the
closing of the games, we were able to become sober again, and regain our
composure when looking at the media and TV reporting. It is interesting
that Johan Galtung, who began his study on Peace in the 1970s, noticed
that War Journalism was based on the same assumptions as Sports Journalism.
They deal with, winning as being the only thing, in a zero sum game. It
was he that felt that Peace Journalism would be like Health Journalism,
as if the journalist were describing a patient's battle against cancer,
and then describing the causes of cancer, life style, environment, genetic
make-up, etc.
Peace/Conflict Journalism War/Violence Journalism
Peace/Conflict Oriented War/Violence Oriented
Truth- Oriented Propaganda- Oriented
People- Oriented Elite- Oriented
Solution- Oriented Victory- Oriented
Training
The church should be an organization to serve and advocate Peace globally
as well as locally. We need journalists for peace, and we need to give
them special training-not one time training, but periodical. Transcend
has provided courses on peace journalism, making it possible for LUCIA
or other communication groups to hold training seminars on Peace. These
have been common for LUCIA, for journalism courses in the 1980s and many
have participated in the seminar. Some of the participants have been active
contributors to the Asia Lutheran. Photo and Video journalism is also
an important aspect of the training as well as dealing with text journalism.
Local activities
Peace journalism is not for special people but for all. The year 2000
was the International Year for the Culture of Peace, and now we are in
the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the
Children of the World up to 2010.
The UN has emphasized Peace Education, and a part of it is for church
members to serve for peace in local and regional education and conflicts.
Some recommendation for the youth communication for peace is:
- writing articles about your action for peace, newsletter or others
- conducting a media watch, examining how the media portrays certain groups
- make your own media, and create video for local channels, produce youth
programs and start a web site on important issues
- contribute national and international reflections on communication practices
These are not only good for youth groups but also for all in the church
who are concerned about Peace. For church remembers, conflict resolution
methods could be a good communication tool in building sound personal
relationships. Environmental issues should be dealt with using the same
method, seeking sustainable lifestyle and conscientiously managing the
resources around us.
Thinking of environment issues, it is interesting that the more we think
globally the more we need locally-based information. Global Warming made
us, "think globally, act locally," is a good an example, and
they use the term "glocal" to express this concept. News is
the same; we need the global scope for our local lifestyle and action
and at the same time, global movements need locally-based people and ideas.
Networking
The Asia Lutheran site should become a common news site as well as its
printed version. The Internet site would be faster to reach some people,
and easy for use. To maintain the site and its printings, we need regular
contributors, and journalists as well as free contributions. Those people
could gather once a year or every two years, where they could evaluate
the contents, methods, balance of news coverage, and future planning.
The Asia Lutheran News had a committee, which helped the editorial staff
constantly, and if the new group could also have the same, I am sure the
editorial staff may be greatly supported by it. Such a committee would
keep in contact with each other through e-mail, and, if possible, by voice
or video chatting regularly. There should also be a face-to-face meeting
once a year, as that is the most effective to do news writing. These activities
may help to establish a new Asia Lutheran News and Information, which
could provide rich information when maintained properly. Again I feel
that having the committee made up of delegates from both the Church and
LUCIA would be the most realistic.
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