The Past and Coming Communication Journey in Malaysia

Abstract

The paper recorded the tremendous changes in the academic and media landscape in tracing the development of communication studies since its beginning in 1971. Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) was the first to offer the communication programme followed by Universiti Technology MARA (UiTM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and the other public universities. USM and UiTM benefitted from the American experts in the preparation of their academic programmes. The early communication programmes in public universities were American oriented due to the presence of the local lecturers whose early post graduate training was from American universities. This paper traced the turnover of academic staff in "generational order" to record such changes had on the development of the programme. The first generation of lecturers in the communication programmes has been taken over by the third and fourth generation compared to the new universities that only recorded the first generation of lecturers. The paper then discussed the challenges faced by the communication programmes in public universities such as the growth of the communication programmes in private universities, the lack of academic staff, and the adoption of the new media technology. Keywords

Research on the State of Social Media Studies in Malaysia: 2004-2015

“…Other articles reviewed did not mention a specific approach, failing to demonstrate methodological rigour. The findings concur with Hassan and Salleh (1990) and Idid's (2014) scholarly work on communication trends indicating that quantitative research were the most frequently employed. The same sentiment can be seen in the trends analyses of the Western scholars, where Zhang and Leung (2014) stated that quantitative approaches were more dominant in social networking sites studies (75%) from the year 2006 until 2011.…”

“…This result contradicts with previous literature of theoretical trends. In Malaysia, past studies revealed that Malaysian scholars were lacking in conceptualising or applying theories in research (Hassan & Salleh, 1990;Merican, 2005;Idid, 2014). In addition, research trends analyses in the Western countries illustrated that communication and social media related research are atheoretical with approximately 15-40% of the articles presented an explicit theory or theoretical framework (Kamhawi & Weaver, 2003;Bryant 7 Miron, 2004;Cho & Khang, 2006;Khang, Ki & Ye, 2012).…”

“…The findings coincided with past assessment on research methods trends in Malaysia and in the US. According to prior analyses, survey and content analysis methods were widely employed in communication and social media research in Malaysia between the years 1970s and 2013 (Hassan & Salleh, 1990;Idid, 2014) as well as in Western countries from 1997 to 2010 (Khang, Ki & Ye, 2012). Nonetheless, more research is needed to utilise other types of research methods including qualitative methods, participatory and more to expand our understanding on social media.…”

“…Few scholars in Malaysia have given attention to the evolution of the communication field by observing communication research needs (Hassan & Salleh, 1990), communication identities (Merican, 2005) and communication scholarship (Idid, 2014). Past research trends analyses in Malaysia have also assessed on social media studies such as Twitter, wikis and YouTube published in journals (Alias, DeWitt, Siraj, Syed Kamaruddin & Md Daud, 2013;Alias, Sabdan, Abdul Aziz, Mohammed, Hamidon & Jomhari, 2013;Alias, Abd Razak, elHadad, Mat Noh, Kunjambu & Muniandy, 2013).…”

Newspaper Advertising for Public Relations Practitioners during the Malaya Era 1957-1963

“…They also organised campaigns to educate people on the voting process (Bashir, n.d). Due to the rise of nationalism and series of political, social and economic growth, there was a strong need for personnel and trained professionals in the field of public relations (Idid, 2014).…”