Digitalization of Television in Japan

JungBong Choi characterizes Japan's introduction of digital broadcasting as a political, cultural and economic endeavor orchestrated by the Japanese state and other para-state institutions. In so doing the author employs a concept of "digitalization," as opposed to "digitization," defined as a social, institutional, and discursive making of digital television. With the analytic framework established, the author observes how the identity of television in Japan was renewed as an apparatus conducive to the acceleration of an informational capitalism. An innovative study in the political economy of media, the book brings to light ways in which digital technologies are engineered as a key device for socio-economic reordering. A stimulating appraisal of the contemorary state, furthermore, it offers a perspective on the progressive conflation between state and market, technology and institution, and cultural discourse and economic planning.