Social Media in Singapore Politics.docx

7/29/2019 Social Media in Singapore Politics.docx

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Social Media in Singapore Politics: Its Serious Business

Folks!

Published by Economy Watch on 24 May 2011

Raymond Tham/

Singaporeans Find Their Voice (Credit: Stell Woll)

It takes a brave person to write about politics in Singapore.

Over the years, publications and journalists have been suedand even jailed for criticising

the ruling Peoples Action Party (PAP), who have been in power since 1963.

The older generation of Singaporeans believe criticising the government only means trouble.

Even in private conversations, many older Singaporeans resist talking about the government

in the fear big brother may be listening.

In past interviews, former Prime Minister and founder of the PAP, Lee Kuan Yew has made

no attempt to mask the fact that his government has deliberately bred a culture of fear within

the Singaporean society.

I have never been over concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think

a leader who is, is a weak leader, Lee wrote in his autobiography pub lished in 1997.

Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. Ifnobody is afraid of me, Im meaningless.
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Yet surprisingly in the build-up and aftermath of the 2011 Singapore General Elections held

on the 7th of May, Singaporeans were not afraid to criticise the PAP openly and in media.

Instead, the biggest fear was publishing anything that could be construed to support the PAP.

The Social Media Revolution in Singapore

The 2011 Singapore General Elections was a water-shed event in Singapores political

history. Not because for the first time ever, an opposition party (the Workers Party or WP)

managed to secure a Group Representative Constituency (GRC) from the PAP. Nor was it

because the PAPs popular vote had fallen from 67 percent in 2007 to 60.1 percent.

Rather, it was a result of Singapores political landscape being dramatically altered with the

advent of social media and the Internet.

The Internet and Social Media sparked a new way of thinking for Singapore, especially in the

political arena. While older Singaporeans relied on state controlled media agencies for their

news and information, the Internet opened up a source of independent information that couldnot be tightly regulated or controlled as traditional media platforms.

Singapores World Press Freedom Index ranking is a dismal 136th out of 178 countries

(assessed by Reporters Without Borders) and 151st out of 196 countries according to the

Freedom of the Press 2010 Global Rankings report.

As Singaporeans began to seek alternative viewpoints that were not expressed in the local

media, websites like theTemasek ReviewandThe Online Citizencropped up. These sites

gained popularity and support for publishing articles that were critical of the local

government for the first time.

Soon, the Internet became a platform for Singaporeans to not only vent their frustrations at

the PAP, but also share political opinion and connect with other like-minded individuals.

The Irony of the Social Media Revolution in Singapore

Despite representing the dawn of a new age of political awareness in Singapore, social media

was also responsible for a level of hypocrisy that began to spread as effortlessly as the

original call for political change among Singaporeans online.

Anti-PAP sentiments on Facebook and Twitter had reached such incredible heights thatpeople who dared to criticise the opposition or advocate the capabilities of the PAP, would

be ostracised by the online community.

MohHonMeng, wrote on his Facebook note entitled In Defence of the PAP, When did

this happen? It used to be that if you spoke up against the PAP, you feared for your life. But

now online sentiment for the PAP has turned so overwhelmingly negative that Im afraid to

post this!

Similarly, popular local blogger Wendy Cheng, a.k.a.Xiaxue, was flamed by the online

community after she had expressed support for the PAP on her online blog. The online

resentment towards her was so intense that advertisers had to pull their ads from her blog inorder to avoid any potential backlash.
http://www.temasekreview.com/http://www.temasekreview.com/http://www.temasekreview.com/http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/social-media-in-singapore-politics-its-serious-business-folks.24-05.htmlhttp://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/social-media-in-singapore-politics-its-serious-business-folks.24-05.htmlhttp://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/social-media-in-singapore-politics-its-serious-business-folks.24-05.htmlhttp://www.facebook.com/notes/moh-hon-meng/in-defence-of-the-pap/223151944364478http://www.facebook.com/notes/moh-hon-meng/in-defence-of-the-pap/223151944364478http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/http://www.facebook.com/notes/moh-hon-meng/in-defence-of-the-pap/223151944364478http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/social-media-in-singapore-politics-its-serious-business-folks.24-05.htmlhttp://www.theonlinecitizen.com/http://www.temasekreview.com/


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So what is the irony of it all?

Well on one hand, Singaporeans have complained about the PAP clamping down on their

right to free speech and how their views are not being heard by the governmentand how

theyre afraid of government reprisal if they express their opinions.

Yet in the recent elections, when the government allowed Singaporeans to use social media

as a political tool, Singaporeans did the very things they have been criticising their

government of: intimidation, and penalising individuals with opposing points of view.

Furthermore in what must be the most blatant demonstration of irony ever, Singaporeans who

have often complained about how biased and one-sided the local media is, then proceed to fill

Facebook news feeds and Twitter timelines with strictly anti-PAP/pro-opposition articles or

status updates.

But perhaps the biggest exhibition of hypocrisy must come from the Singaporeans who have

been banging on about the virtues of a true democracy prior to the elections.

Thousands of Singaporeans then converged on a single constituency to demand a by-election

because voters in that constituency voted for the PAP, albeit by a small margin of slightly

more than a hundred votes.

Singapores Political and Economic Situation

Although I may be critical of the behaviour of some Singaporeans on social media, I can also

understand where theyre coming from.

After all, politics is a subject that inherently stirs up emotional responses. Even rational

decisions are often only rational to the particular individual and not to anyone else.

I found it extremely hard to decide who to vote for in my constituency. There was really only

one party you could vote for: the PAP. The problem with every other political party in

Singapore is that they tend to be merged into a single entity: the opposition. As individual

parties, none of them truly stand out or have distinct ideological differences from each other.

Therefore when you enter the voting booth, you are indicating your belief on whether youthink the ruling party is doing a good job, or whether you think someone else can do a better

job.

The undeniable fact is that ever since the PAP came into power 48 years ago, Singapore has

been a shining beacon of what a guided economy should turn out to be. Despite having little

to no natural resources available in Singapore, Singapores economy is incredibly successful

owing to government intervention and guidance.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Singapore is the 2nd freest economy in the

world.Singapore is also only Asian country with AAA ratings from Moodys, Standard &

Poors and Fitch Ratings. Apart from that,Singapore also has the 3rd highest GDP per capita

(PPP) in the world,the 2ndhighest real gdp growth rate in the world for 2010,the 3rd highest

industrial production growth rate in the world,the 9th largest current account balance in theworld, the 11th largest reserves of foreign exchange and gold in the world, andone of the
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lowest unemployment rates in the world. Despite not having a drop of crude oil on their soil,

Singapore somehow is also the18th largest exporter of oil in the world.

However many Singaporeans feel that the economic success we enjoy have come at a high

price where unpopular policies are implemented for the sake of the economy.

These unpopular policies, including the high influx of foreign workers and the increasing costof living, have negatively affected the day-to-day lives of Singaporeans.

[Ed: This is reflected in the fact that Singapore has fairly high income inequality, meaning

that as the rich have got richer, the income of the poor has tended to stagnate.

See:Singapore's Gini Index figure of 0.48,meaning slightly more inequality than the US

which comes in at 0.45.]

Despite winning 81 out of 87 seats in parliament, the PAP has recognised the need to

reconnect with the local population. However, based on social media sentiments, this looks to

be an increasingly hard task.

Singapore is growing into a true democracy, and freedom of speech is finally here. So how

will Singapores political system and economy change in the next five years?
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5/16

Blinkered MDA worried that media consumers may trust the internet

Published 23 September 2012 by yawningbread.wordpress.com

The reporter pointed out to me that the survey found that 35% of respondents believe thatall, if not most, of information on the Internet is true, and asked what I thought of that.

I clicked the hyperlink he had provided to the survey results and was momentarily perplexed.

To me, the graph seemed quite normal, with a bunching of answers around the middle. The

vast majority thought that information on the internet was partly or mostly truewhich, if

youre an internet user, would seem like a very reasonable assessment. So why was the

reporters question phrased the way it was?

Taking the data froma table in the reportand converting them into bar graphs:

These figures came from theConsumer experience study 2011commissioned by Media

Development Authority (MDA), and conducted by the Singapore Internet Research Centre,

Nanyang Technological University.

However, the reporters question was led by the headline that MDA gave to the above data

the headline screamed About 35% of respondents believe that most or all of the information

. . . are true and which implied a wholly different way of looking at the results. Presented

graphically (by me), this was how the bureaucrats saw the data:
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Thats a rather strange way ofslicing the data, isnt it?

The remark tells us less about the data than about the mindset. It suggests a mindset that

holds as incontrovertible truth the following dictum: If internet users trust most (or, in the

case of a few respondents, all) of what they read as truthful, these people must have taken

leave of good sense and reality. Just as evolution never happened, this cannot possibly be.

The internet just is not truthful. How can people believe that??? And so many of them!!!

Heres justification then for a new campaign towards media literacy. Singaporeans must betaught to stop believing the internet.

As for television . . .

Yet, even higher percentages believe television news and documentaries show a true picture

of what really happened. Here is the relevant page from the report put out by the MDA

(click image for a larger version):
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Of viewers aged 15 to 29, about 6070 percent of them thought that documentaries and

news on TV were believably true. This, if you would please note, is nearly twice as high as

the 35% who thought internet information to be mostly or wholly true. Yet the headline that

the MDA gave to the 6070 percent result sounded downcast, describing these age cohorts

as relatively more critical.

So, 6070 percent holding TV news as true is disappointing to the authorities, but 35%holding internet information as mostly true is shockingly wrong.

Doesnt this tell us more about warped government minds than about ordinary people? If

theres anything to be shocked about, it is that 6070 percent of viewers think so highly of

TVand thats the lower end, with higher percentages among older adults.

Pre-digested report

The most annoying thing about the report published by the MDA is how (and the above is

just one example) it is presented as pre-digested information, with no link to the survey data,

and no discussion of its own limitations. It tells us for example that it was a face-to-facesurvey based on 1,030 respondents aligned with 2010 census profile. Then there were also

focus group discussions. But it does not discuss margins of error, or the possible skewing

from face-to-face interviews as opposed to anonymous surveys, or declare which results

came from surveys and which were drawn from focus groups discussions. Nor does it tell us

when exactly the survey was conducted. This is important because there were several key

events in 2011, e.g. general election, presidential election, that would have affected the

context.

Much of the information was presented in the form of bar graphs, with no notation as to the

precise number or percentage represented by any bar. See for example, this one (click for a

larger version) that I have taken from a page in the report:
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In the above graph, the headline focuses on a relatively minor detail, represented by the short

blue bars. It does not capture the essence represented by the taller red and green bars.

Furthermore, look at the four bars relating to the age group 6065 years. They do not add up

to 100 percent. This cries out for explanation, but there is none.

In the first set of figures behind the bar graph that I drew for the top of this article, there is a

mysterious statement saying 13 percent or 14 percent N.A. with no explanation what N.A.means or why.

This kind of cavitied presentation, dumbing down and slanted commentary does not leave a

good impression.

Myth-busting

A few days ago, the Singapore government launched a new section on its official website

intended to provide answers to hot topics as part of its myth busting initiatives, reported

AsiaOne (Source). According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Information,

Communications and the Arts (Mica), the section, calledFactually, is meant to be aconvenient, central and credible platform for a summary of key facts on various policies.

Going by the kind of reports put out by the MDA such as described above, I think they need

to work on their own credibility.
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9/16

SPH falls out of open train door

Published 25 June 2012media29 Comments

Ah, schadenfreude!

Government-linked Singapore Press Holdings has apologised to government-linked SMRT

Corporation for an instance of libellous fabrication. There goes SPHs vainglorious claim to

fair, objective journalism.

The government has tried for over a decade (over a decade!) to paint bloggers et al of being

beneath the standards they have set for themselves and their coterie of fawning media. Time

and again, they have resorted to innuendo and outright accusations both, saying that blogs,

online forums and social media are full of distortions and half-truths. Now, who has been

shown to be engaging in total untruth?

Last week, SPHs citizen journalism portal Stomp posted a photograph (above) said to

show a moving train with its doors open. I had my suspicions the moment I saw it. Firstly, if

the train had been moving, why was the railing beyond the open door not blurred? Secondly,

the right foreground had a bit of a sticker which is typically found on the platform safety

doors, indicating that the picture was shot by someone standing on the platform. Thirdly,

there was a streak of light over the open door which looked to be a reflection of overhead

lights somewhere, once again suggesting that the picture had been taken through glass from

the platform.

According to The Online Citizen, the caption that went with the picture on Stomp said:

I was on my way home from Boon Lay MRT to City Hall MRT last night. At Lakeside

station at 10.15pm, one of the doors started making noises during Doors Closing and

remained stuck open even while the train started moving.

The posting was attributed to wasabi.

SMRT promptly challenged the veracity of the photograph, maintaining that its trains had

safety features that would prevent them moving if the doors remained open. Interestinglythough, in the story about SMRTs response, the Straits Times revealed that the picture had
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been taken by a certain Samantha Francis, who stepped forward to assist SMRT in its

investigations. So, she was wasabi.

It also said that Ms Samantha Francis, 23, who claimed to have taken the picture at Lakeside

MRT station on Tuesday night, was not actually at the MRT station that day. This assertion is

based on CCTV footage and Ms Francis ez-link card details, it added.

In the statement, an SMRT spokesman also said that the railings of the train tracks visible in

the picture do not match those at Lakeside MRT.

Ms Francis, who is a content producer at citizen journalism website Stomp, took the picture

and posted it on Stomp on Wednesday morning. She said she had boarded a train at Lakeside

MRT at 10.15pm the night before.

She told The Straits Times that after the train pulled into the station, the doors on the opposite

side to the platform swung open first. Finding this strange, she took a picture through the

closed doors in front of her. Then, when the doors in front of her opened, she entered the trainand took another picture of the opposite doors, one of which remained open until the train

pulled into Chinese Garden, the next stop.

She added that two other people were in the same carriage as her: a Chinese man in T-shirt

and bermudas, and an Indian man.

Yesterday, Ms Francis met SMRT staff at Lakeside MRT to assist in their investigations. She

showed them where she was standing when she snapped the picture, and described what she

was wearing that night to help them spot her in CCTV footage.

SMRT staff asked if the ez-link card she gave them to check was her only one, and if she had

used it to enter Lakeside MRT on the night in question. She said yes.

Straits Times, 22 June 2012, So, was door of moving MRT train open?, by Rachel Chang

What I failed to notice in that story was the newspapers mention of Samantha Francis as a

content producer. Actually, even if I had noticed it, I probably wouldnt have attached

much significance to it. Like many others, I thought Stomp operated on the basis of ordinary

people out there sending pictures and newsy bits to the Stomp office, where a small staff

might sift through them and choose which to upload onto the site. Certainly, that was the

impression that I had of it, and I think SPH wanted people to see it that way. Why else wouldthey call Stomp their citizen journalism portal?

That said, Stomp had never acquired any reputation for important breaking news, let along

anything resembling the concept of journalism. My brief forays into the site often led to me

fleeing from so many pictures of car wrecks, cats in trees and migrant workers on their day

off.


11/16

Now, it turns out that Samantha Francis/wasabi was no ordinary outsider submitting stuff

gratis to Stomp. She was on their paid staff!

On discovering this, Mr Patrick Daniel, editor-in-chief of Singapore Press Holdings Englishand Malay Newspapers Division, sent a letter on Sunday to Mr Tan Ek Kia, the interim chief

executive of rail operator SMRT, apologising for the incident.

The content producer, Ms Samantha Francis, was also sacked by SPH, which owns Stomp, on

the same day.

The 23-year-old had initially claimed that she took the photograph at Lakeside MRT station

last Tuesday night. But following investigations by SPH, she eventually admitted that she had

taken the image from a post on social networking site Twitter. The original tweet has since

been removed.

Straits Times, 25 June 2012, Editor-in-chief apologises to SMRT over Stomp picture, by

Amelia Tan

So another falsehood is exposed. Apparently not everything on Stomp had been submitted

voluntarily; they had staffers whose job was to take other peoples twitter images etc and put

them up under anonymous names as if those other people had submitted them! Not only were

the news being faked, the whole process was being faked and the public misled.

Meanwhile however, youre going to see blame being focussed on Francis, deflecting

responsibility from the higher-ups at SPH. In fact, if you read the above quote carefully,youd notice that SPH is claiming credit for unveiling the truth (following investigations by

SPH, she eventually admitted . . .). Eh? Wasnt it SMRT that investigated and proved the

picture to be a fake?

Nor is anyone within official circles going to revisit their claims that only SPH (and its twin,

government-linked Mediacorp) stands for responsible journalism. But the damage has been

done. From now on, anytime the government tries to paint new media as untrustworthy,

theyre going to have this incident thrown back at them like so many cream pies. Pflaphtt.

Oh, and by the way, why arent we hearing anything about damages? If a blogger had tried

to pull the same stunt, would SMRT or any government-linked body not have been quick tosend lawyers letters and so forth?
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12/16

Smarter online government-people engagement

Published 20 November 2011media,politics and government18 Comments

On the one hand, with so many people now using the internet to voice their opinions, the

government realises that it can no longer ignore what is being said. It can no longer ignore the

expectation that opinions so aired should be acknowledged and acted upon. On the other

hand, on many issues, the views springing from the ground are multifarious. One cannot

please everybody. Moreover, many opinions are either not knowledge-based or suffer from

little prior deliberation. Even with all the will in the world, it is very hard to engage seriously

with those who want something without first thinking through what they want.

In Singapore, the problem is compounded by a history of government attempts to paint the

digital sphere as unworthy of engagement. Hard though engaging may be, it is made doubly

so because the government must first swallow its pride, repudiate its previous stance and

stand penitent before its digital citizens.

Still, it is not obvious that the messageinternet engagement is inescapable has sunk

in. As recently as last month, character assassination continued.

In an addendum to the 2011 Presidential Address last week, [the Ministry of Law] noted that

the proliferation of New Media has brought about new challenges to the rule of law and it

will review legislation to deal with harmful and unlawful online conduct.

The Ministry of Information, Communications & the Arts (MICA) also raised concerns on

lies and misinformation online. Operating under a cloak of anonymity, some content

creators also resort to lies and misinformation, noted MICA in its addendum to the 2011

Presidential Address issued last week.
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New Asia Republic, 21 Oct 2011, Impending crunch on New Media? by Donaldson

Tan. Link

This position is appealing to those who continue to hold the view, even if subconsciously,

that being the body with data and experience, the government has all the right answers. It also

appeals to those ministers and bureaucrats who find dealing with opinionated people verytroublesome. Lurking somewhere in their wish list would be a situation where government-

friendly media would crowd out independent-minded Joes and Janes. That way, the

government can engage with digital media without having to sufferthe Joes and Janes who,

since they have been pushed to the inconsequential margins, can be safely ignored.

It would be extremely foolish to hope for such an unrealistic outcome. Every day wasted

waiting for miraculous salvation is another day more for citizens to write off the government

and the party in power.

Yet, the central problems remain. How does one respond to demands that pull in multiple

directions? How does one engage with those whose demands do not spring from knowledgeof the issues involved?

Two kinds of digital-speak from the public

Half a day spent at GovCamp 2.0 gave me the time to crystallise some thoughts. The seeds

were planted by something that keynote speaker Jane Fountain said. Without recording what

she said, I cant regurgitate it, but I scribbled into my notebook three expressions she used

which were pivotal: Civic virtue, Mob rule and Filtering.

My thoughts (not quite original, as noted above) now run like this:

Public demands are, very roughly, of two kinds. The first points to specific failings, which

arent supposed to have happened, e.g. a pothole in a road has not been fixed for months; a

called ambulance took an hour to arrive; or my daughters teacher was proselytising in class.

Dealing with these should not be difficult. It needs a mechanism to monitor such complaints,

rectify the shortcomings, and some kind of central portal that issues brief statements

explaining what went wrong and how it has been fixed. It does mean, however, a serious

effort to establish a listening mechanism whose scope is wide enough to pick up digital

demands from a huge variety of internet platformsbut Im pretty sure crawler robots can

be designed to automate the task. It may also be necessary for another mechanism to spot

patterns in demands/complaints, as a more birds-eye view will reveal underlying systemicflaws that cause similar problems to surface again and again.

The second kind of citizen-speak has to do more with policies. It is far more difficult terrain

with a cacophony of opinions. Policy development is necessarily knowledge-intensive and

redesign is heavily contingent on available resources and value-judgements, since trade-offs

are inescapable. Trying to respond to individual demands by digital citizens is probably futile

and may risk a descent into mob rule.

A better path for government to take is to focus on engagement with civil society when it

comes to policy areas. Non-profit groups, as Jane Fountain pointed out, often contain within

them individuals with deep knowledge and decades of experience of their fieldsI believeshe was referring to this when she spoke of civic virtue. Civil society people may be more
http://newasiarepublic.com/?p=33833http://newasiarepublic.com/?p=33833http://newasiarepublic.com/?p=33833


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knowledgeable than the scholar types in the ministries who have never been outside the Civil

Service. As well, like-minded individuals working together are often capable of digesting

reams of data if the government would only release them.

Engage civil society as proxy for discordant individual voices

The solution now emerges: Firstly, release more data, in raw form so that civil society can

process them in novel ways, draw new insights and add to their knowledge (and the

knowledge of society at large), and secondly, develop more respectful engagement with non-

government organisations (NGOs). By NGOs I dont mean only those that the government

deigns to register and recognise, but all groups, however small, of citizens and residents who

have expertise and interest in engagement.

Civil society groups are also more understanding of the trade-offs that may be necessary in

policy formulation. They are also filter beds that sift out crazy ideas and thus may make more

meaningful dialogue partners with the government.

Yet, I suspect, difficult as dealing with outspoken individual netizens may be, dealing with

NGOs is just as hard, because this government has spent the last 40 years on a crusade

against NGOs. Wanting a monopoly of power, our government has been intolerant of

alternative centres of power and influence such as independent media and trade unions, and

autonomous NGOs with their own supporters. Those it managed to tame and co-opt, it couldlive with on the clear understanding who is boss. Others, like LGBT equality group People

Like Us, it would refuse to even recognise their existence. Draconian laws are passed to

inhibit NGOs funding and growth. A climate of fear comes in useful to scare talent away

from them. Academics are warned not to get political by involvement with advocacy

groups if they want tenure or even contract renewal. Once in a while, like when Vincent

Cheng et al organised among friends to help migrant workers in the 1980s, a confection of

allegations is whipped up to justify detention without trial.

And now we want the government to engage with NGOs? Stand naked with an admission of

previous wrongs? But its the only workable path forward, in the digital age, when

responsiveness has to be the non-negotiable norm, yet dealing with a disorganised digital

rabble may be impossible.

Engagement must be visible to the digital public

At this point, I hasten to add that there is one more mindset the government must jettison. Onthe few occasions when the government has engaged with NGOs, the government has been

quick to state its expectation that such engagement must be behind closed doors. Their

position seems to be that if the dialogue is to continue the NGO must accept the

confidentiality of it, most probably to avoid embarrassment for the government should it need

to make a policy U-turn.

In the new age, this is self-defeating. If the cacophonic individual netizens are to be even

partly placated, they must see that those among their peers who are organised in collectives

and NGOs are being listened to. Many individuals will understand that no government can

respond to each and every demand made on blogs, forums and social media. But if there is no

visible engagement with civil society groups even, then disgust will only escalate.


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In other words, engagement with civil society groups must take place openly online as much

as it does face-to-face. Proposals and counter-proposals have to be visible to the digital

public. Robust criticisms of government policy must not be confined to conference rooms but

must also be allowed to be aired.

One huge benefit will emerge from this. When individuals see that the way to get engagementis to participate in civil society, it will encourage more to join. Healthy civil society can only

strengthen Singapore as a whole and add resilience to our communities.


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