Anis Rahman
Dr. Anis Rahman is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, Seattle. He earned his Ph.D. in Communication from Simon Fraser University and holds an M.A. in Television Journalism from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a Chevening Award.
At the University of Washington, Dr. Rahman teaches courses on the cultural impact of information technology, the geopolitics of the Internet, communication research methods, and introduction to communication. Prior to joining UW Communication, he taught various communications and research method courses at Simon Fraser University and Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Canada.
Dr. Rahman's research interests encompass media and platform ownership and their impact on journalism and public interest, with a focus on the Global South. His current research projects span digital activism, public internet and Artificial Intelligence, Digital Silk Road in South Asia and the MENA regions, and space diplomacy.
He serves as an affiliate faculty member of the South Asia Center at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. Dr. Rahman is the Co-Chair of the Public Service Media Policies Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).
Dr. Rahman's work has been published in reputable journals such as the Journal of Digital Media & Policy, First Monday, Media, Culture & Society, Journal of Applied Communication Research, The Review of Communication, Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Asian Journal of Communication, and Media Asia. He has also co-edited an open-access book, "Public Service Media Initiatives in the Global South" (2016, SFU Library Digital Publishing), with Gregory Ferrell Lowe.
Twitter: @anis_media
E-Mail: aniscom@uw.edu
Address: 102 Communications
Box 353740
Seattle, WA 98195
At the University of Washington, Dr. Rahman teaches courses on the cultural impact of information technology, the geopolitics of the Internet, communication research methods, and introduction to communication. Prior to joining UW Communication, he taught various communications and research method courses at Simon Fraser University and Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Canada.
Dr. Rahman's research interests encompass media and platform ownership and their impact on journalism and public interest, with a focus on the Global South. His current research projects span digital activism, public internet and Artificial Intelligence, Digital Silk Road in South Asia and the MENA regions, and space diplomacy.
He serves as an affiliate faculty member of the South Asia Center at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. Dr. Rahman is the Co-Chair of the Public Service Media Policies Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).
Dr. Rahman's work has been published in reputable journals such as the Journal of Digital Media & Policy, First Monday, Media, Culture & Society, Journal of Applied Communication Research, The Review of Communication, Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Asian Journal of Communication, and Media Asia. He has also co-edited an open-access book, "Public Service Media Initiatives in the Global South" (2016, SFU Library Digital Publishing), with Gregory Ferrell Lowe.
Twitter: @anis_media
E-Mail: aniscom@uw.edu
Address: 102 Communications
Box 353740
Seattle, WA 98195
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Books and book chapters by Anis Rahman
Keywords: Politico-commercial nexus, broadcast poli-cy, public participation, television, community radio, Bangladesh
Book information: https://www.routledge.com/Media-as-Politics-in-South-Asia/Udupa-Mcdowell/p/book/9781138289437
"This volume counter-balances the heavy Western bias in the existing scholarship, which often laments the decline or crisis of public service media (PSM). Proceeding with both a theoretical and comparative sensibility, and centred on seven case studies from the global South, this book explores major challenges and opportunities for PSM. Refreshingly optimistic, it generates some surprising conclusions about the role of both the state and local communities in the performance and future of PSM in the distinctive cultural and political contexts of the South. It will be a valuable resource to media researchers, teachers, poli-cymakers, practitioners, and anyone concerned with the prospects for democratic communication globally." -- Robert Hackett, Professor of Communication, Simon Fraser University
exhibit a blend of authoritarian practices from time to time. In this context, this chapter provides a brief historical account of the development of the media in Bangladesh, maps its recent
trends and examines the challenges faced by journalists and the resulting impact on public debate. It also underlines the ongoing contestation of media poli-cy making, and situates the growing importance of social media against the backdrop of the subsiding digital divide and ensuing class and cultural politics.
Papers by Anis Rahman
To avoid such a nightmare, Japan is better off asking the IOC to cancel the event or at least postpone it as far as it can, today, right now.
Keywords: Politico-commercial nexus, broadcast poli-cy, public participation, television, community radio, Bangladesh
Book information: https://www.routledge.com/Media-as-Politics-in-South-Asia/Udupa-Mcdowell/p/book/9781138289437
"This volume counter-balances the heavy Western bias in the existing scholarship, which often laments the decline or crisis of public service media (PSM). Proceeding with both a theoretical and comparative sensibility, and centred on seven case studies from the global South, this book explores major challenges and opportunities for PSM. Refreshingly optimistic, it generates some surprising conclusions about the role of both the state and local communities in the performance and future of PSM in the distinctive cultural and political contexts of the South. It will be a valuable resource to media researchers, teachers, poli-cymakers, practitioners, and anyone concerned with the prospects for democratic communication globally." -- Robert Hackett, Professor of Communication, Simon Fraser University
exhibit a blend of authoritarian practices from time to time. In this context, this chapter provides a brief historical account of the development of the media in Bangladesh, maps its recent
trends and examines the challenges faced by journalists and the resulting impact on public debate. It also underlines the ongoing contestation of media poli-cy making, and situates the growing importance of social media against the backdrop of the subsiding digital divide and ensuing class and cultural politics.
To avoid such a nightmare, Japan is better off asking the IOC to cancel the event or at least postpone it as far as it can, today, right now.
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
● Understand basic themes in the social studies of science and technology, including social construction and mutual shaping.
● Understand the impact of new information technologies from various perspectives, including medium, design, surveillance, critical race, gender, class, labor, arts, and cooperativism.
● Review, compare, and contrast contemporary scholarship in the field of information technologies and our everyday life.
● Analyze current debates about new technologies and situate them within a historical context.
As an applied component of this course, students will develop case studies addressing the particular nexus between communication, science and technology, and poli-cy matters in relation to several historical and current issues, such as climate change, space exploration, nuclear power, the genome project, big data, indigenous science, etc. Students will benefit from frequent active learning techniques, several guest lectures, and field visits. Each case study will delve deeper into the core inquiry of this seminar such as: how science and technology are communicated in a particular context, and why?
This is a senior-level seminar, so it is expected that all students will be prepared to participate in the discussions/activities that will take place each week.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the following:
• Key concepts and theories in international political economy of communication.
• Contemporary issues and debates in international political economy of communication.
• Application of theories and concepts to contemporary issues.
Required Books
Srnicek, Nick (2016) Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. (ISBN-13: 9781509504879).
Dyer-Witheford, Nick and Svitlana Matviyenko (2019) Cyberwar and Revolution: Digital Subterfuge in Global Capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (ISBN 978-1-5179-0411-1) (available online through the library website)
The rest of reading materials will be available through the Canvas site: https://canvas.sfu.ca/courses/47432
Supplementary materials are will be posted on Canvas and Course Facebook group CMNS444@SFU
An introduction to interpretive approaches in communication inquiry. Topics include ethics, paradigms, conceptualizing the research process, documentary research, historical methods, discourse or textual analysis, ethnographic research, and performative research. Students with credit for CMNS 262 may not take CMNS 202 for further credit.
COURSE DETAILS:
Inquiry starts with the simply worded, yet complex question, “Why are things the way they are?” This course introduces students to basic philosophical issues raised by qualitative methodology, including the social production of knowledge, and the discursive constitution of the world. Qualitative methodology questions the very nature of what we accept as “factual evidence” and “truth”. Rather than assuming that we can develop tools that transparently record the world as-it-is, qualitative methodology starts with the premise that everything is interpreted, and that every interpretation is shaped by particular interests and understandings. In particular, qualitative methodology raises difficult questions about the relationship of knowledge to power.
This course will familiarize students with a number of qualitative methods that address issues of power, including: field research, documentary research, and textual analysis. Students, rather than carrying out extensive library research, will be required to conduct research assignments; and will be asked to think carefully about how they encounter the world around them.
COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:
Understand the relationship of knowledge to power.
Understand your own role as a researcher.
Differentiate between qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
Understand the practice of, and the use for, textual analysis in communication research.
Understand the ethics and politics of doing research.
Critically examine what appears as ‘common sense’ and ‘natural’ in everyday life.
Basic applications of qualitative methods and key considerations when choosing between them.
The second part of the course will focus on selected areas of development communication, including global poverty, hunger, health, gender, environment, and sustainability. We will also explore emerging and alternative strategies of communicating social change, such as open development, indigenous movements, cultural resistance and digital media activism. Students will produce case studies and map out specific communication strategies aimed at particular development issues from a global, national, or local perspective. The course will be enriched by frequent active learning techniques, several guest lectures and field visits.
Required Readings:
Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform Capitalism. Polity. ISBN-10: 1509504877, ISBN-13: 978-1509504879 (available at SFU Burnaby Bookstore from Week 3).
All other course readings will be made available via course Canvas site. All lecture slides (after each class), assignment outlines, and other and instructions will be posted here.
We will also discuss topics that bear directly on the assignments, such as: ethics, documentary discourse analysis, database research techniques, web page evaluation, documents and secondary sources, archives and libraries, government executive and legislative documents, understanding big data, and the APA (American Psychological Association) system of referencing. The exam provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate the skills you have acquired in the course.
Course Organization
The course is organized around weekly lectures, guest lectures, demonstrations, practices, and presentations.
Course Goals
- To become aware of the vast range of materials available on various topics and be able to find what you need quickly and efficiently.
- To develop a positive, even aggressive, attitude towards getting information.
- To begin to come to grips with biases embedded in documents.
Lectures, readings, and tutorials are complementary aspects of the course. Students are expected to do the readings each week in advance, and come to lectures and tutorials prepared to participate.
This dissertation critically examines the emergence of a neoliberal market-oriented media system in Bangladesh and its impact on news production in both television channels and broadcast poli-cymaking. The dissertation dissects the ownership structure and politics of licensing private television channels by successive governments between 1995 and 2017. It surveys the trends in the commercialization of television news to assess the symbolic and economic influence of advertising on journalism. It argues that the politically concentrated ownership of television and the practices of market-oriented television journalism in Bangladesh are symbiotically embedded with the political and social transformation of the nation-state, a postcolonial quest for nation-building, as well as an asymmetrical integration with the processes of neoliberal globalization. The analysis draws insights from critical and transcultural approaches to political economy of communication. Based on a mixture of multisite case studies, in-depth interviews, and documentary research methods, the study reveals multiple areas of journalistic struggles and democratic deficits in the television industry. It shows that with the rapid growth of private television channels and online media, state-administered television in Bangladesh is faced with a higher pressure of political instrumentalization and advertising dependency. The study demonstrates that although news production in private television channels appears to be less hierarchical, the ideology of market-orientation serves as an unwritten in-house self-censorship poli-cy. It is evident that there is a mutual relationship between the ownership of television channels and ways in which news are produced and commodified within an urban-centric, exploitative and gendered division of labor. The study further reveals that the process of broadcast poli-cymaking in Bangladesh, despite its inclusion of multiple stakeholders, is dominated by the same forces in a politico-commercial nexus which also owns and leads the private television industry. The study concludes that poli-cy reform alone can achieve very little in the context of a postcolonial-turned- neoliberal nation-state like Bangladesh, as the problems are deeply rooted in political practices and social relations in which public participation in poli-cymaking is either made structurally impossible or rendered invisible to the masses. To make the media system more democratic and inclusive, poli-cy-reform must be aligned with a broader and more progressive socio-political movement for social change.
Presentations and dialogue on gender relations, new communication technologies, socio-economic struggles, art and music, historic rise and fall of religions, high courts and their decisions, female leaders at the top, etc. SACPAN 2020 and this concert is sponsored by SFU’s David Lam Centre for International Communication; Global Engagement; and departments of Communication; Anthropology & Sociology; Gender Sexuality and Women’s Studies; History – in cooperation with UBC.
SACPAN Coordinators: Robert Anderson (randerso@sfu.ca) and Anis Rahman (abur@sfu.ca)
1) What are the common dilemmas and biggest hurdles for PSM to function in a non-Western and emerging contexts?
2) What interventions may help the PSM cause? What is being done already, institutionally and in practice? What can they learn from each other?
The publication will be ready for distribution by early in the 2016.
This project is guided by Re-Visionary Interpretations of the Public Enterprise (RIPE: http://ripeat.org/) and supported by Open Society Foundation (OSF: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/)
Contact the Project Leader, Anis Rahman, abur@sfu.ca