Digital Media in East Asia: National Innovation and the Transform ...

digitally enabled experiences are reshaping social relations and cultural norms around the world.⁹ East Asia, a long- and still-important player in the technological aspects of the digital revolution, has engaged extensively in the digital content explosion. Regional content producers play influential roles across a variety of sectors and have established a global commercial and cultural reach through video and Internet games, anime, and other digital representations.

Importantly, however, there are regional aspects to the technological and content elements of the digital revolution. The use of Internet technologies is different in important respects in East Asia than in other parts of the world. Similarly, the content produced for digital delivery or use in East Asia has important national and regional audiences that are not always spread widely around the world. YouTube, for all of its global reach, is largely a content engine for North American youth,¹⁰ just as dozens of key Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese websites serve language- and culture-specific clientele. Digital Media in East Asia is animated by the desire to understand this important convergence of international outreach, foreign penetration, global integration, national uniqueness, and regional connectivity. Making sense of the digital networks of East Asia—in terms of manufacturing, commerce, and digital content production and consumption—is a central purpose of this study. Our view is that the digital revolution has elevated East Asia’s global economic integration, demonstrating the effectiveness of national innovation policies and challenging the remaining stereotypes about Asian commercial and design capabilities in the process. The digital revolution has also accelerated East Asian regional integration through the rapid production of Asian digital content, largely cut off from the rest of the world by linguistic and cultural barriers.

In a world transformed by digital technologies, East Asia is emerging as the major digital powerhouse, although one would scarcely know this from the global overemphasis on Apple, Microsoft, and Research in Motion (RIM). North American and European media pay little attention to