The Asia Pacific is the most dynamic digital landscape in the world, home to the fastest adopters of new technologies and the largest concentration of mobile and social media users. An escalation in online activism, changing cyber dynamics, developments in digital diplomacy and the exploitation of big data are shaping the region's engagement with the world.
- Myanmar’s mobile subscriptions grew 87% last year (until September), pushing penetration to 20% of the population. This blog post discusses what such rapid mobile adoption may mean for the country and this article outlines what companies are doing to increase digital literacy and mobile access for women.
- Even though it is banned in China, Twitter is opening an office in Hong Kong to help Chinese companies market their products overseas. Many Chinese brands are turning to Western social media channels to build their global image, including the state-owned Xinhua news agency which has re-branded itself ‘New China’ across Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
- I look at internet citizenry in Asia in this Interpreter post and, specifically, why it is important to think about the powerful online reactions to recent viral documentaries in China (Under the Dome) and India (India’s Daughter).
- This short report from the ANU’s Bell School analyses Papua New Guinea’s mobile and ICT market. With a focus on the dominance of Irish telecommunications company Digicel, the author calls for more effective regulation to safeguard against potential market abuse.
- How USBs and camera memory cards are being used to smuggle data into North Korea, including South Korean movies, American TV series (Scandal is the current favourite) and Wikipedia-like information summaries.
- A great editorial from the New York Times on what tech companies are doing to make the internet available to more people (less than half the world’s population are online) but why bridging the digital divide is not progressing fast enough (thanks Brendan).
- The attempts of China’s internet giants to depict International Woman’s Day with online doodles (as Google did) resulted in an online backlash in China for their sexist nature. This one was from Chinese search engine Baidu:
