ABSTRACT
We began working on this book after realizing that we knew very little about the relationship between media and politics in Asia. While there is a fairly developed literature on Asian politics and business, studies on political communication issues in Asia are surprisingly limited both in scope and number. Th is scarcity of research is even more surprising given the fact that many Asian nations have gained great economic and political signifi cance in the past decades. China and India, for example, have become powerful nations with worldwide economic and political infl uence. Even smaller Asian nations, such as Singapore or Malaysia, have assumed important international roles and frequently infl uence world politics. Since many of these Asian nations have well-developed media systems, it is diffi cult to understand why there are so few studies that investigate the interaction of media and politics in these countries. Th e most baffl ing example for this lack of research might be India. How is it possible that there are hardly any studies that analyze political communication processes in India-the world’s largest democracy? For more than half a decade, hundreds of millions of Indian voters have gone to the polls every four years, yet we know virtually nothing about the role of the media in these massive elections. A similar, but somewhat less glaring lack of political communication research can be found in other Asian nations with vibrant media systems and relatively long traditions of free elections, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
