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2 To blog or not to blog in
Singapore By Alex Au
SINGAPORE - When Time magazine named "You"
as its Person of the Year for 2006, the award was
particularly apt in the case of Singapore.
Last year, Singapore's bloggers and
Web-based writers signaled that they were a force
to be reckoned with. And in a state where
government control over the mainstream media has
been a fact of life for more than four decades,
Singapore's freewheeling blogosphere is set to
have significant political and social
ramifications.
In a
poll conducted last year by the state-run Media
Development Authority (MDA), it was found that
half of all teens between the ages of 15 and 19
maintained a weblog. About 46% of the next age
bracket of 20-to-24-year-olds did likewise. Many
of Singapore's blogs are relatively innocuous
diary-type spaces, including the popular Xiaxue
(xiaxue.blogspot.com). But others, such as "Mr
Wang Says So" (mrwangsaysso.blogspot.com) and
independent filmmaker Martyn See's "No Political
Films Please, We're Singaporeans"
(www.singaporerebel.com), take on hard social and
political issues.
It's still altogether
unclear what direction the Internet revolution
will take in Singapore. While there have been few
moves toward legally protecting Internet-based
writers, there haven't yet been any official signs
of a comprehensive clampdown, despite an
accelerating migration of readers from the
traditional media to the digital medium. Freedom
of expression over the Internet is being put to
the test in neighboring Malaysia, where two
bloggers are being sued for their postings by the
politically influenced New Straits Times
newspaper.
The Singaporean authorities
have been stealthier in their tactics. Some of
Singapore's veteran bloggers remain wary of the
so-called Sintercom saga of 2001. In the months
leading up to that year's general elections, the
MDA insisted that the politically oriented
Sintercom website register with it for "engaging
in the propagation, promotion or discussion of
political issues relating to Singapore".
Once registered, Sintercom editors could
have conceivably been criminally liable for
content posted on the site, should the government
or senior politicians happen to have taken
affront. Instead of complying with the
heavy-handed order, and considering the country's
long track record of politicians resorting to
prohibitive criminal and costly civil lawsuits to
stifle criticism, Sintercom instead opted to close
itself down.
Many wondered whether 2006
would see a replay, or worse, of that experience,
particularly considering the more recent
proliferation of politically oriented websites and
blogs. Last April, Lee Boon Yang, the minister for
information, communication and the arts, fired a
warning shot at all Singapore bloggers when he
told the semi-official Straits Times: "To help
bring some order to this chaotic environment, we
have made it a requirement for political parties
and individuals who use websites to propagate or
promote political issues to register with the
MDA."
A few weeks later, electioneering
began in earnest, but rather than self-censor
their content, bloggers' political coverage
increased. The boldest ones were those that had
been set up specifically for election coverage,
but in defiance of the MDA had anonymously hosted
their sites abroad. Notably, the MDA did not force
any site to register during the election season,
and some interpreted the inaction as a tacit
government admission that it was left with few
options against a rising tide.
Anti-government sentiments The
political content on many blogs was overwhelmingly
anti-government, a fact recognized by People's
Action Party (PAP) politicians after the
elections, which, as usual, the party swept in
resounding fashion.
"I know that something
has gone wrong when more than 85% [of the
bloggers] write negatively about the PAP,"
ruling-party member of Parliament Denise Phua told
a public forum. The government should figure out
how to "manage this channel of communication", she
added, a remark that itself brought down a ton of
digital bricks on her head.
Two months
later, optimism about freedom of speech over the
Internet would be tempered. The government
objected strenuously to a column written by a
well-known blogger, "Mr Brown", published in a
print daily newspaper, in which it was alleged
that the government had withheld adverse economic
data from the public until after the elections.
The newspaper promptly ditched "Mr Brown" from his
regular column. Bloggers saw that as heavy-handed
punishment for controversial postings in the
blogosphere.
Media observers such as
Associate Professor Cherian George of Nanyang
Technological University thought the incident
should be interpreted narrowly. Lee Kin Mun, whose
nom de plume was "Mr Brown", was after all
free to continue his blog on which the offending
article was posted; it was his print column that
was discontinued.
This reinforced the
theory that the government was making a
distinction between mass media - print and
broadcasting - and media on the digital fringe,
including blogs and websites with smaller
audiences. The government has appeared to keep the
mainstream mass media on a shorter leash, for fear
they may ape the activity over the Internet, but
allowed considerable more leeway to Internet-based
writers.
This may simply be because the
available instruments of control are more
sophisticated and reliable when it comes to the
mass media. The Singaporean government does not
pre-censor the media, but simply makes sure that
editors have a keen sense of what should and
should not be reported when doing their jobs. Much
of the character of reporting and commentary in
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