ICA Presents. Hello, I’m Ellen Wartella and welcome to this episode of the Architects of Communication Scholarship podcast, brought to you by the ICA Podcast Network. Today, we are going to hear from Eddie Kuo. Eddie Kuo is Professor Emeritus and Founding Dean of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. In 2003-05, he was appointed (founding) Interim Dean of the new School of Humanities & Social Sciences at NTU to plan and set up the new school. Before joining NTU, Professor Kuo had served as Head of the Sociology Department, Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies, and Head of the Mass Communication Department at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is currently Academic Advisor at Singapore University of Social Sciences and had served as the founding Director of its Centre for Chinese Studies. An internationally recognized scholar in sociology and communication, Professor Kuo is the founding Editor of Asian Journal of Communication , and Vice President of International Association of Media and Communication Research. In recognition of his contribution to Asian communication research and institution building, he was awarded the Asian Communication Award in 2007 by the Asian Media Information and Communication Center (AMIC). Our interviewer today is Peng Hwa Ang. He is Director of Singapore internet Research Centre and Professor of Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University. Professor Peng Hwa Ang succeeded Professor Eddi Kuo as the second Dean of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University. He is also a former President of the International Communication Association. Here's Peng Hwa Ang.
Hi. I'm delighted to have this conversation with my former boss. Eddie is a pioneer in communication in Asia. He began his career in academia as a professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore. So Eddie, I'm excited to have this conversation with you about your life's work in the academy. I know there have been twists and turns in your journey to make it easier for those of us who came after you. So let's begin by talking a bit about your own background and how you began. Tell us about your early university education from sociology into journalism and mass communication.
I started with my undergraduate study in Taiwan and in National Chengchi University, Department of Journalism, which even today is among the top journalism communication schools in Asia. I started journalism at a time when Taiwan was very much a third world country. We took classes in news reporting, news writing, editorial writing, typeset procedures, how to write captions, and all that, which did not interest me very much. Then I started graduate study in Taiwan, also, to get my master’s and that's where I met my first mentor who is Godwin Chu who just returned from Stanford as among the first batch of PhD students from Wilbur Schramm in Stanford in the 60s. And he returned and taught the first class in Taiwan on mass communication and where I learned about theories, theoretical models, research methods, social survey, all the procedures which was eye opening for me. And when he knew of my interest in journalism, he said, if you're going to go overseas to study it's much better that you track your shift from journalism to communication, because your background is very much in the social science and theoretical world. You can shift to either sociology or psychology, and I was lucky enough to get a East-West Center scholarship in the 1960s and started my master's in Hawaii, which, of course, is really a different world altogether. Quite a large number of comparative research I did initiated from Hawaii although I carry that on to Asia to Singapore, and in some way Singapore played a key role in coordinating all kinds of research. So then I was lucky to be in two sort of key positions, crossroads between East and West. And both because in both cases, they were so minor. They themselves couldn't do much. You look at Singapore, you know, how much can we do about Singapore, I cannot talk about Singapore communication theory because we don't have one. But we are in a position to sort of align together to sharpen the kind of comparative perspective. We take it for granted in Singapore, but nevertheless, is a very important role we play here. As part of a deal, I was in some way entitled or granted opportunity to spend one semester in Columbia University. I was there for one semester, but that one semester taught me a lot. First of all, it was an exposure to among the top programs in sociology, literally dominated by structural, functional school. And after my master in Hawaii, again, I was lucky, I got a teaching assistantship to start my PhD study in Minnesota which again, is a contrast to New York. Minnesota at that time was, like all other Midwest Big Ten very much informed by Chicago School. And there I was exposed to ideas of sociology, and communication as a minor, by the way, so I couldn't run away from my communication background. At that time, In the 60s and 70s, two schools dominated: it’s the structural functionalism in Columbia and then its the symbolic interactionism from Chicago And both have an influence on me. Structural functionalism looking at social structure, symbolic interaction looking more into communication and meaning and so on, but comparing the two, I must say symbolic interactionism has a bigger impression on me, although I always have the other one back in my mind. When I study sociology, when I study in communication, I can easily crossover from one to the other without much effort and I have a bias that communication is so deep into sociology or into society into social life, they cannot be society without communication. I will say this awareness of the importance of communication is very much part of it.
And after you graduated, you joined the University of Singapore.
Yes. I got my degree in 1972, I spent one year teaching in Wisconsin, then I took an offer and moved to Singapore in sociology, and at that time it was called the University of Singapore. I should say that Singapore in terms of university tradition is very British. And so for me it was another eye opening because I moved from a very typical American system to a British system with all the different terminologies. But in 1973, I joined a small group of sociologists and sort of start with the very foundational research on Singapore society. And of course, I also study in communication. Communication study was just beginning. Hawaii East-West Center had just set up East West Communication Institute. So in both organizations, I was involved even though I was sociologist. And, my connection with communication started from there. I'm a witness to all the changes, transitions in communication research throughout the past 50 years.
The major one of course that has an impact that’s still ongoing, of course, is Asian Journal of Communication. Your founding it with Anura.
I got to know quite a few of fellow researchers from the region and at AMIC I met with the late Anura Goonasekera, he was research director at AMIC. He came from Sri Lanka. And interesting enough like me, he had sociology training. Here is quite interesting: two sociologists coming together in communication, and we discussed and we decided we should do something about Asian communication. We decided to propose and set up a journal on Asian communication for Asian communication researchers, and so on. And so we managed to get a proposal done, we got some funding And then we actually launched the journal in December 1990. Initially, we published only two issues a year. Every year we published maybe 12, 13 manuscripts. Definitely. It's a challenge. everything is manual. So it took quite a few years, we worked hard, the initial branding. Well, for one thing, we never missed one issue. We never had a combined issue. We just go on and on routinely, and then the stability and reputation began to build up. And then by early 2001 ‘02 ‘03, we began to get international publishing houses knocking on our door and I must say that that was also the time that Asian communication started to get attention. publishing industry, they also know that here is the future market. And they are looking for good journals. Our objective was quite clear, we wanted to provide a platform. The background to that is research on Asian communication hardly got attention internationally at that time. And I must say that is very difficult to get published. And so, I mean, in competition with that, at that time communication is American Euro centric. So the objective for me and Anura at that time was to provide such a platform to encourage Asian scholars or studies on Asian communication to have a channel for publication.
So moving on now talking about the time when you founded the School of Communication Studies at NTU.
Yeah. In the late 80s, I was head of sociology. At that time, National University of Singapore was the only university yet the government was setting up another new university. So there'll be two major universities in Singapore.And among the plan is a mass communication program. They realized mass communication is going to be very, very popular. And so they immediately took a preempted move.They invited me to start as a foundation chair for a new department of mass communication. We set up a new department of Mass Comm in 1990 at the National University of Singapore.So here we have two universities with two programs in communication. And in a typical Singapore government viewing this competition may not be good for Singapore because we are limited in resources, how many PhD we have and now we have the divided by two program. to cut a long story short, The administrative decision is to move.We started with a transition. It took three years to move transitionally, incrementally from one university to the other university. So in 1992, The New School of Communication Studies was formally set up at Nanyang Technological University. The mission was to set up a new school with nothing, no building, no curriculum, no staff, no, everything. I took it as a challenge.
So tell us a bit about what you can about the challenges that you faced, you know, as somebody starting this new program and in communication in Singapore.
First of all, it’s a second University in Singapore. And it will probably always seem to be second you know, in Singapore, although it's been doing very well, rankings is another thing and so on yeah. Secondly, I was going to be communication through among mostly engineering schools, programs. And so I will be very, very odd. I will speak a different language.That's one thing. The society as a whole, communication was very, very hot at that time. It was a time of media revolution, you know, IT revolution, everything, and so on was something new in the beginning of 1990. The government side, some are questioning, why do we need communication? I managed to persuade them even among the ministers and so I got my way. But I did get the support from some key figures.And my persuasive line was that we are looking at the 21st century. This is new IT information coming up. We must be prepared, you know, we are training a new generation of communication professionals. It’s no longer news recording and writing. It is a whole different game altogether.Then, the other major challenge is, how do I promote this internationally?, it must be accepted globally. Our students must be able to move everywhere and so on. And so I started with my very frequent journey to North America. Visiting a number of universities. In the end, we signed up a memorandum of understanding with universities. I remember we started with Cornell, and then Purdue, Michigan State. University of Southern California (USC). And to top it off we signed with Missouri, you know being the oldest journalism school.
So I have to say that after I took over from you when I visited schools all over North America and Europe again, they were all very welcoming and I attribute it to the work you’ve done beforehand. You can create a way for someone like me a lot easier. I don't think not just for me, but I think for other Asian scholars. I think they may not be aware of this, but you know, people create a way for us. So I want to move on now This is a big picture question about looking at Asia now. And from your position. what are some big questions that you think we should be looking at? Some big issues that you think that we should be concerned about? Going forward in communication research in Asia especially?
In a way, I'm lucky enough, I'm in a position to observe to witness what happened to Asian communication research over 50 years actually, and compare with what I started 50 years ago is so different now. At that time, when I study in the US, I must say, we took it for granted. We were brainwashed by American capitalism, American imperialism, even though when I was there in the late 60s and 70s, as you know, there was a time of rebel, there was a hippie generation. So I've observed what happened. Again, you look at the communication, the key word is modernization, we talk about development, communication, when we talk about modernization, development is modernization and modernization is westernization. But modernization equals democratization equals moving from traditional to modern society, all these linear development model at a time.But then, soon in the 80s and 90s, there began to be awareness. We start to look and to begin to be aware that is, in fact, information imbalance, the lack of balance, totally biased. And I must say even today is still biased. We know more of what's happening in the West than what's happening in Africa, or fellow Asian countries and so on. What happened now we see in the communication field, the technology is pushing so fast, pushing us that the society as a whole keeps on responding, adjusting, adapting to all the new things happening, like it or not, is there and you have to learn. But on the Asian communication area, again, compared with what, it was when I started a journal. If you look at the international journals now, you almost always find every issue, there'll be one or two Asian scholars or research on Asian communication. That is the improved balance we get now. Now we realize communication is not just Euro- American. It's global. And now you look at the scholarship from Asia, the scholars from Korea, I must say overwhelming. If we look at international organizations, people like you became president of ICA. We could not think of that.
When I became president, I remember people saying, Okay, now ICA is finally serious, you know, it's a surprise many people say that.
Of course, you should be there. Because you have a scholarship, you make your contribution. So we recognize that you can contribute to this international organization. In North American department schools of communication, I am pretty sure now you can always find one or two well trained Asian scholars doing research and they may not be only doing research on their own country or Asia, they're doing research on communication per se.It wasn't easy in the early 90s. It really took a while to get people to realize that Asian communication is finally coming of age. And even though we have not reached there yet, I would like to say, it's much more balanced, healthier. But then, of course, there's a lot more we still have to do now.
So I just have one final question. This series is titled Architects of Communication Scholarship. What would you say you've built given your time in communication?
Well number one, I was lucky to be among those in this whole generation in the past 30 years or more, to work together to build it up. Of course, you know, I can be credited as the founding editor of Asian Journal Communication, which still plays a role there. I set up our School of Communication Studies, which has ranked number one, by the way, must highlight this. Number one in Asia Pacific. And in some rating is among the top 10. Internationally, on reflection, I cannot be the one who built it up. I'm one of those who help to work together. If I can say something about what I've done, you have contributed one or two or three pieces of brick that helped to build up a bridge linking connecting Asia with the West. I will be happy to claim that.
You've been very modest, of course in what you've built here. So we began at East West Center. And now we're back to center, east and west, you could say. I want to thank you for taking the time to make this podcast. You certainly built Asian communication research in laying the path for us following behind you to make it easier. So thank you for your time. And wish now, have a good day ahead.
Thank you. All the best to ICA.
This episode of Architects of Communication Scholarship podcast series is presented by the International Communication Association Podcast Network and is sponsored by The School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University. Our producer is Jacqueline Colarusso. Our executive producer is Aldo Diaz Caballero. Our production consultant is Nick Song. The theme music is by Humans Win. For more information about our participants on this episode, as well as our sponsor, be sure to check the episode description. Thanks for listening.
