Liew Kai Khiun
I have developed through my professional journey in academia for two decades a knowledgebase and professional networks on Cultural Communications in the Asia-Pacific region. Through research and education, media broadcasts and public campaigns, I communicate otherwise intangible ideas into recognizable projects, plans and policies to networks in government, industry and community.
Reflected extensively through publications, exhibitions and public deliberations, my journey has brought me into the fields of the arts, popular entertainment, social media, cultural heritage and corporate communications. My route has passed through international conferences on popular media trends, government committees, classrooms on digital literacy and organising community activities to otherwise forgotten heritage sites.
Supervisors: Associate Professor Peter Borschberg and Dr Sanjoy Battacharya
Reflected extensively through publications, exhibitions and public deliberations, my journey has brought me into the fields of the arts, popular entertainment, social media, cultural heritage and corporate communications. My route has passed through international conferences on popular media trends, government committees, classrooms on digital literacy and organising community activities to otherwise forgotten heritage sites.
Supervisors: Associate Professor Peter Borschberg and Dr Sanjoy Battacharya
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Journal Papers by Liew Kai Khiun
projection of ‘soft power’. Yet these globalizing television productions are crossing diverse cultures embedded in temporal-spatially specific value-laden societies, in the case of East Asia, in varying degrees, the persistent attributions to Confucianism seeping down to the mediascapes of television.
imposing and paternalistic presence of Lee Kuan Yew who has overseen the city-state as prime minister
and subsequently, senior statesman since 1959. Unlike the statues and street-names dedicated to other
founding leaders in newly decolonized countries, Lee has consciously discouraged any public portraitures
of himself in Singapore. However, as his presence fades with ailing health in the recent years, his
images are beginning to surface in figurines, coffee table books and even street art. Over in the social
and alternative media, there is an increasingly more irreverent use of the Hokkien/Minan term ‘limpeh’
or ‘your father’ as parodies of Lee’s unyielding paternalism. As a masculinistic self-assertion of one’s
authority, ‘limpeh’ is often crudely associated with the Hokkien/Minan-speaking ethnic Singaporean
Chinese working class. Singaporeans have also recognized the characteristics of ‘limpeh’ with the
authoritarian legacy of Lee who had displayed little mercy in crushing his political rivals and pushing
his social vision to society. In this respect, these popular communications can be seen as the cacophony
of emerging voices of the city-state in a late authoritarian phase.
projection of ‘soft power’. Yet these globalizing television productions are crossing diverse cultures embedded in temporal-spatially specific value-laden societies, in the case of East Asia, in varying degrees, the persistent attributions to Confucianism seeping down to the mediascapes of television.
imposing and paternalistic presence of Lee Kuan Yew who has overseen the city-state as prime minister
and subsequently, senior statesman since 1959. Unlike the statues and street-names dedicated to other
founding leaders in newly decolonized countries, Lee has consciously discouraged any public portraitures
of himself in Singapore. However, as his presence fades with ailing health in the recent years, his
images are beginning to surface in figurines, coffee table books and even street art. Over in the social
and alternative media, there is an increasingly more irreverent use of the Hokkien/Minan term ‘limpeh’
or ‘your father’ as parodies of Lee’s unyielding paternalism. As a masculinistic self-assertion of one’s
authority, ‘limpeh’ is often crudely associated with the Hokkien/Minan-speaking ethnic Singaporean
Chinese working class. Singaporeans have also recognized the characteristics of ‘limpeh’ with the
authoritarian legacy of Lee who had displayed little mercy in crushing his political rivals and pushing
his social vision to society. In this respect, these popular communications can be seen as the cacophony
of emerging voices of the city-state in a late authoritarian phase.
communication technologies through the ‘iBBC’ app to locate and reference tombstones of prominent historical personalities in Singapore’s Bukit Brown Cemetery. The densely vegetated, 80-year-old former Chinese municipal cemetery filled with more than a hundred thousand graves has been largely neglected, and the traditional Chinese inscriptions written on many of the tombstones are inscrutable to many contemporary visitors. As part of the process of digital interventions, iBBC helps visitors obtain encyclopedic information immediately on-site by using Augmented Reality (AR) to recognize selected tomb monuments. Such interventions are critical in sensitizing the public to the cemetery’s cultural heritage.
Keywords: Thai Cinema, Korean Wave, Popular Culture Flows, Asian Modernity, Identity,Media and Society, Culture & Representation, Thai Urbanism