NEWS

2025.02.26

【Talk Session】Dialogue between Dr. Gammon and Dr. Matsui on Digital Transformation in Academic Research and its Future

Dr. Liam Gammon, the editor of New Mandala (right side), and Dr. Nobuyuki Matsui, chief coordinator of the AJI website, discuss the digital transformation in our academic world (Left: Professor Yasushi Kosugi, moderator)

Our readers have probably utilized some academic content on a particular website of an academic institute. Currently, universities are required to make academic content visible and accessible for scholars as well as the general public. In this context, the Asia-Japan Institute (AJI) has also been actively engaged in the digital transformation (DX) of research dissemination and activities. Among the pioneers in this field, New Mandala (https://www.newmandala.org/) specializes in providing essays on political affairs in Southeast Asian countries written by academic scholars. Readers can find a wide variety of essays, book reviews, podcasts, and other useful information on this academic platform. As the AJI staff regard New Mandala as an excellent digital transformation model for academic activity, we were delighted have this opportunity for a discussion with Dr. Gammon, the editor of New Mandala and a research fellow at the Australian National University, about academic DX.

Professor Yasushi Kosugi, the Director of the AJI, acted as the moderator. At the same time, Dr. Nobuyuki Matsui, Associate Professor at the Ritsumeikan Asia-Japan Research Organization and the chief coordinator of this website, conducted a dialogue with Dr. Gammon, the editor of New Mandala, on multiple aspects of the DX for research activities today and their prospects in the future. This talk was held on December 11, 2024.

[Academic titles omitted below]
Matsui: We are delighted to welcome you today, Liam (Gammon). We are very fortunate to have you here at Ritsumeikan University. Can you tell us the purpose of your present visit to Japan?

Gammon: Thank you so much for this opportunity, too. Well, I’ve been in Japan for 10 weeks now. I’m going back home soon. I’m in Japan because the Japan Foundation supports my project of conducting surveys on public opinion in Indonesia and the Philippines. Professor Jun Honna, Professor of the College of International Relations at Ritsumeikan University, hosted my visit. There is a fantastic community of Southeast Asia researchers here in Kyoto. Now, I am in the process of finalizing my work with my team in Jakarta. It’s been a wonderful experience, and I’m sad I’ll be leaving Japan soon.

Kosugi: Thank you for coming to this talk during your busy days finalizing your main work.

Gammon: Well, thank you very much, Professor Kosugi. I am pleased to have this session, too!

Kosugi: We are very keen to utilize this opportunity to review the various technologies of the digitalized world today and the challenges we face. Dr. Matsui and I share a common interest. So today, let us discuss some aspects of our work concerning the digital transformation of our academic activities.

Matsui: Thank you, Professor Kosugi. First, let me introduce myself and my research background. Currently, I belong to the Ritsumeikan Asia-Japan Research Organization. My research field is philosophy and International Relations. One of the reasons that I bridge these two fields is that I have had a considerable interest in the historical and current situation of the political and economic structure since I was a graduate school student. The question of how the social system evolves interconnectedly is my primary concern. For this question to be tackled, it is important to focus on today’s digitalizing context. Even though I’m not a tech person, I think the philosophical approach is required to grasp how digital technologies might change our way of imagining the world.

Also, I am in charge of editing the website of the Asia-Japan Research Institute (AJI). Our website is characteristic in the sense that the AJI platform not only shows our internal research activities, such as information and reports of events, but also provides academic content to academics and the general public. In this context, when I read the New Mandala that you edit, I was highly impressed, because it is full of academic content that can help readers catch up with what is going on in the Southeast Asian region. So, I want to ask you today what your basic concept is when you edit such rich digital content.

Gammon: Thank you for your introduction. Excellent question. This is exactly what I was hoping to discuss with you. Your question would be concerned with how digital transformation changes the way research is conducted, how it is published, and how people consume it. But, before getting into these questions, let me introduce myself. I am a political scientist. Specifically, my research focus is on contemporary Indonesian politics. I’m interested in democratization and the interrelationships between the design of political institutions, campaigning modes, political organization, and mobilization. I am also beginning to branch out a little bit into the Philippines because I am more ambitious about doing comparative work in the future.

Regarding today’s topic of editing academic digital content, the first thing I would say is why the New Mandala has such a rich collection of Southeast Asian material. First of all, it is actually pretty old. The New Mandala predates all the websites you could consider its peers. It started as an experiment by two Australian National University (ANU) researchers. In 2006, Professor Andrew Walker, who was an anthropologist who worked mainly on Thailand and mainland Southeast Asia, and Nicholas Farrelly, who was a Ph.D. student of Professor Walker at that time and is now a professor, started a blog post so that Professor Walker could give his thoughts on the political crisis in Thailand in 2006. So, readers can still go all the way back to that post in June 2006. He just offered his quick thoughts on that affair in 700 words. We should remember these people’s situation and not forget what the world was like before SNS. Although their posts were casual and brief, they could provide academic perspectives about various affairs in the news. Moreover, the blog writing style could reach a broad audience because it was a unique experiment. Notably, it attracted a readership outside academia, such as journalism and civil society. Also, New Mandala has a comment section under each post, which provides an interactive space for readers. Over the years, New Mandala became known for hosting commentary on Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, etc. In this sense, it made a space where people would visit and find things that were not published in the mainstream media and were not necessarily made into academic publications.

I initially got involved in New Mandala in 2014. By this time, New Mandala was famous as a website for covering mainland Southeast Asia. There is a story here, too. I was a Ph.D. student in 2014, and Indonesia had a national election, including a presidential election at that time. Susilo Yudhoyono and Joko Widodo competed in it. I wanted to start a blog about it with my colleagues. Then, we thought, what do we do? Do we start a website? Do we start a Twitter account? Do we do videos? At last, we thought, well, why don’t we just approach Andrew and Nick, the editors of New Mandala? In the end, we asked them to have a sort of guest section on the website about Indonesia. We did that, and it was a huge success, with hundreds of viewers in the election year. The important thing is that it actually shaped academic debates and conversations in ways that would not have been possible if they had taken place in peer-reviewed journals. A journalist from a major international news organization in Jakarta once told me, “We often reach out to experts to quote in our articles. However, our readers can now visit a website like New Mandala to access expert commentary on the news as it breaks.” Since then, people have shared posts on New Mandala through online media like Facebook and Twitter. In the years since then, New Mandala has dealt with all Southeast Asian countries. We were fortunate to have a head’s start, because it takes five to ten years to develop a new mode of publishing and a new identity, and it is a process of trial and error. Today, there are many similar websites across the world. In this situation, academics now face the question of deciding what the best place to publish is, because there are many, many sorts of sites that essentially offer very similar contents.

Matsui: It is surprising that New Mandala just started as blog writing. Also, I could understand the importance of responding to current social affairs with quick thoughts and creating interactions with general readers. Having said so, today we have not only many blog writings, but also SNS. On the one hand, as you said, an academic website can be synergized with these services. On the other hand, they can become a competitor for us academics, because many people can easily access a website, read a post, and make quick comments.

Gammon: Yes, people can communicate instantly without even having an editor. However, because of this, there is still a valuable role for edited publications and websites to play. Admittedly, editors must confront the challenges concerning the rate of submissions. We are at an interesting point now. I am also on the editorial board at the East Asia Forum, overseeing the editing processes. It becomes increasingly challenging for a lot of websites to get quality submissions regularly, because academics are constantly pressured to write more and more. Also, there has been a decline in the rate of sharing and clicking on social media. It is increasingly uncertain because even if you write a post, you don’t know if it will get a big audience. In a nutshell, I think there are issues, such as the pressure to publish, the challenge of choosing the right place to publish, and then competition between mainstream media.

Additionally, we witness SNS becoming an unstable and hostile site that has not been replaced by anything. In this situation, academics should find a midway mode of publication. But even in this situation, the blog post is valuable in its openness to general readers because people outside academia, such as policymakers or journalists, don’t have much time to read a 10,000-word article.

Matsui: Thank you. That is a critical point. So, you place New Mandala or the other academic websites midway between scholarly journals and SNS. The AJI’s website has also tried to disseminate short essays and articles regarding the entire Asian region. Right now, we do publish open content called “Asia Map,” but only on the Japanese page. We will create the same kind of content on the English page soon. However, we still have a limited readership because presently only Japanese speakers and people who understand Japanese can enjoy it. In the editing process, we institute members enjoy deciding topics and selecting authors for each country. We try to show the multiple aspects and range of Asian countries and regions. Since we emphasize openness to the general public, what you have just shared is highly significant. Also, I can understand the challenges when editors ask authors to write an article in fewer words without losing the academic quality.

Gammon: Currently, we are publishing longer pieces with 1500 to 2500 words lengths. It is not quite a journal article, right? Also, we don’t have any budget for running it. However, if we publish something that moves the conversation forward meaningfully, I’m very happy with that. This year, we got a grant from ANU. We have had a good amount of support that allowed us to pursue worthwhile initiatives, including a program called the Emerging Scholars Program, where we are paying small grants to 24 Ph.D. students who finished their degrees or are soon to finish their degrees. So, over the next year, with the support of the ANU, we will be publishing 24 essays based on their research. However, New Mandala is not a website that promotes the university. The principle is the openness to the scholarly community and all stakeholders that benefit from this site’s existence. It is a public good.

As for the selection process of topics and authors, it depends on what kind of support and background an academic website has. The AJI has a peer-reviewed journal and an editorial board for academic content. So, AJI’s academic credibility is guaranteed by this and you probably find a set of contributors because of this. But if you want to enhance the English content with shorter essays, let’s say 1500 to 2500 words in length, or shorter, this is something people may want to read.

Matsui: I agree. In addition to the necessity of posting shorter writings, the issue of making them less academic is also important. The AJI tries to open opportunities for academics to write shorter essays in simpler terms without academic jargon in exhaustive detail that can only be accessed by experts.

Gammon: Yes, what you have just said is the point where editing for a popular audience becomes really challenging. It requires specialized skills. For instance, a certain university hires ex-journalists to edit a website, and the journalist often tells the academics, “Take away all the academic jargon and take away the concepts and theory.” I personally disagree with that. I think that scholars add value by bringing a scholarly perspective to things. I would never tell authors to remove theoretical discussions. I would say, “Do not assume that your readership knows about a concept or a theory, and explain academic concepts in a way that readers can find interesting.” For example, if one uses concepts like “democracy” or “populism,” I would ask the person to write a few sentences to explain it.

Matsui: Yes, explaining concepts and theories as easily as possible without losing the academic rigor is what many academics are required to do today, and editors should be concerned with this. This is a tough challenge for us. Regarding this difficulty, I want to discuss the writing skills required for earlier career scholars or the next generation of researchers. These days we are required to write not only academic journals but also blog posts. Can you share your thoughts on this? What kind of skills and training processes are needed?

Gammon: It is helpful to think about the case of teaching. How do you explain a particular academic concept to students? How do you explain theoretical concepts to them in a few sentences? Every academic has to do this. Clarity is important. Empathy for readers is also important. It would be irritating if an author doesn’t explain the concepts adequately. We should imagine what information is needed about a concept in order for readers to understand it. In this sense, we need an ability beyond the style of explanation with people who share our own ideological or theoretical viewpoint within a discipline. Also, addressing key issues and questions is, of course, essential. New Mandala’s mission has always been prominently stated: to offer new perspectives on mainland Southeast Asia and to rethink assumptions about how politics function, mainly focusing on grassroots and subaltern studies. In this sense, what kind of viewpoints one emphasizes is very important to write an article regardless of length.

Matsui: I agree. Emphasizing one’s own mission is a particularly important point. Academics are often asked to disseminate their research outputs, especially in high-reputation journals. However, the writing skills required for blog writing or digital content have become increasingly necessary. I’m curious about how blog posts are perceived in Australia.

Gammon: In fact, there is not as much professional incentive for academics to contribute outside of traditional journals. To help encourage academics to engage with a broader audience, we need a specific incentive for academics to contribute to blog writing. Moreover, blogging can increase the visibility of their articles and books. For example, I reach out to authors who have written interesting articles in journals like Critical Asian Studie or the Journal of Contemporary Asia and suggest that they write a 1,000-word version that highlights key arguments from their research. This creates a mutually beneficial scenario because I can gain valuable content, readers receive accessible information, and authors can draw attention to their original work. Sharing engaging stories from their fieldwork that may not have fit into the original article is preferable to achieve this. Nonetheless, blogging alone is insufficient for building a serious academic career in Australia.

Kosugi: In Japan, how to secure jobs for new PhD holders has become a social issue in the last two decades or so; our Ministry of Education encouraged an increase in the number of graduate students, but it did not end up with companies accepting PhD holders as their regular recruitment. Now, under these circumstances, a new type of academics appears. They call themselves independent researchers. Now, they earn money on YouTube, for instance. They disseminate academic arguments in the more popular discourses. Do you have a similar phenomenon in Australia?

Gammon: I have not seen this issue in Australia. We face a similar problem where more PhDs graduate from universities than the academic job market can accommodate. Many individuals pursue PhDs and get posts in government, consulting, or other fields. The notion of completing a PhD and becoming a public intellectual independently out of a university is rare in both the U.S. and Australia.

Kosugi: I have a particular concern about the phenomenon of independent researchers. I have noticed that many of them create attractive programs. However, they often rely on academic books and build their arguments from those sources. It is common for us to blend established academic knowledge with our personal findings. However, independent researchers often base their work on just one or two books, simplifying complex topics into easily digestible points. From the academic standard, this approach comes dangerously close to plagiarism. I would like to know if the activities of independent researchers can genuinely offer a viable career path for job-seeking PhDs in this sense.

Gammon: In Australia, with a population of only 25 to 27 million, the market for YouTube viewers is much smaller. I find the YouTube phenomenon fascinating, particularly in countries like Indonesia and Japan, where there is a large audience. Also, this situation parallels the current crisis in mainstream media and journalism in Western countries, where media companies face significant financial losses. The downside is that without the backing of a media organization, independent journalists cannot afford to take extended periods off, such as the three months needed to deeply investigate a story.

Matsui: Achieving success on YouTube is tough, but I have often thought that I should make a channel to do an academic program on YouTube to further my academic career. At least, it attracts even the next generation of researchers who are concerned about living a quasi-academic life and establishing a position on YouTube.

We have discussed opening our research viewpoints to a broader readership and making academic outputs and findings more public. In the age of digitizing our research activities, we need some attempts to reconsider our way of making academic outputs. We are in a challenging period. Making academic content on the web and making it accessible to the general public, including writings and archives, is essential for scholars like us in the humanities, political science, and social sciences. What activities are necessary to adapt our research efforts to this digital transformation? I want to explore how we can navigate this transitional movement in society, particularly regarding digital transformation in universities and culture, especially for those in the humanities and social sciences.

Gammon: The challenge for the humanities and social sciences lies in appealing to younger people. However, many of the younger generation seem to think that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is the future and that pursuing a degree in those fields is necessary to secure jobs. I worry that the desire to earn a humanities degree for intellectual enrichment—not simply to become an academic—is declining. Moreover, I am concerned that smartphones and social media have diminished people’s concentration ability. Engagement with subjects like history, politics, and sociology—more so than in the natural sciences—requires accurate reading and engagement with literature and the ability to read critically and understand the nuances of complex arguments, such as in philosophy.

How can one possibly study philosophy without the capacity to engage with complex, nuanced writing? I worry that smartphones have significantly shortened attention spans, compromising students’ ability to engage at that level. Perhaps I’m just getting old and complaining about younger generations, but I consider that a tutorial is meant to be a conversation between the lecturer and the students, and the presence of phones and laptops undermines genuine face-to-face interaction. I hate to sound pessimistic, but the effects have been significant.

Matsui: I share the same concern. We must also address this issue many people are experiencing, particularly concerning concentration and the decline in traditional reading materials, like books. We are asked to find ways to appreciate and promote traditional academic activities while integrating new technologies. Furthermore, we are now beginning to use generative AI tools to create articles, find materials, and even write papers. The effect will be ambivalent. On the one hand it can reduce our ability to think, but perhaps on the other it can help us find a new way of thinking, new materials that we didn’t know, and a better way of writing.

Gammon: The concern regarding the use of AI in writing is that it does not contribute to scholarly work because it fails to advance an argument. For instance, an AI-generated paper might have flawless sentences without substantive arguments or engaging content. Writing is a process that involves critical thinking. This is my main worry about the rise of generative AI. The real issue lies in the combination of social media and our constant access to devices that continuously deliver content.

Matsui: I agree with you. But at least, we are at a midpoint, and it isn’t easy to judge the consequences of our situation. Let’s take a look at the broader activities involving AI in fields like social sciences and humanities. We see some scholars collaborating with AI engineers to create databases for historical materials, a field known as digital humanities. If this kind of content continues to develop, it may enable people to discover new ways to access academic materials and cultivate their interests. Also, this development can help us understand interesting concepts and theories. I also see the negative side of the current development of digital technologies coupled with political and socio-economic issues.

Gammon: I feel optimistic about the potential outcomes. If students are learning and understanding the concepts, it doesn’t matter whether they access the information from a journal article, an interactive session, a video lecture, or any other source. As you said, we are at a midpoint.
In conclusion, I would like to thank you both very much for this meaningful discussion!