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ACCEPTED ABSTRACTS

In today’s global world, media and societal elites are closely knit entities in constructing and reconstructing social realities. While the media constructs and shapes social realities, society also constructs media realities. These social realities are always changing and reflect the dynamics of a living society. Within each society there will always be different forces trying to project and protect their version of reality which will be different than the dominant reality projected by the ruling elites. Media plays a crucial role in promoting the ruling paradigm and the dominant media regurgitates repeatedly the constructed values and norms to the ordinary masses.

In promoting and regurgitating these values and norms, is the media actually censoring information or shaping or controlling what will be conveyed to the general masses? Censorship not only happens at the state level, but also at the organizational and individual levels. Thus, censorship is not a new phenomenon because it has existed ever since humankinds were placed on this Earth. It has evolved, constructed, debated and narrated by members of each society. The different levels of censorship are what differentiate an autocratic society from a democratic and civil society.

Censorship also contributes towards shaping and changing prevailing societal realities. To further complicate these realities, the globalization flux ruptures and destabilizes existing local societal values and norms. With the onslaught of globalization, societies have no other choice but to - constantly look at their existing governing policies to ensure that it stays current with prevailing needs and challenges. While these constructed policies promote social, economic and political development of a nation-state, how the media and censorship have helped in fostering and consolidating the nation-state need to be addressed continuously. Thus society will continue to take stock of new realities and see whether they are in sync with existing socially constructed cultural and social identity.

C-MAS2012 is jointly organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and Film Censorship Control and Enforcement Division, Ministry of Home Affairs Malaysia.