Voices of Freedom

The following article is posted here for my own records as it does refer to an issue that has from time-to-time been mentioned in passing in the Singapore Blogosphere - namely that it tends to be dominated by the usual suspects, middle-class, educated, males and there does seem to be a lot of 'journalists', lawyers, postgraduate students, undergraduate students, and IT experts dominating the sg blogosphere. So where is the marginalised Singaporean?

Blogs and podcasts enable a powerful and authentic voice for marginalised communities sidelined by mainstream media

Nathalie McDermott
Wednesday May 30, 2007
The Guardian

Prisoners cannot podcast because they do not have access to the internet, but if they could the material would be fascinating. It would be authentic, raw and compelling without being sensational. Instead of the stock answers we hear from prisoners in television soundbites, you might hear "Jamie" own up to the fact that he has never told his kids he is inside because he is so ashamed, and that they think he is at work. Or about how "Bruno" only gets a buzz from crime and feels "the butterflies when I'm on a bit of work", and has never held down any other job. You'd hear prisoners talking to each other, intimately and frankly, from a shared position of trust and common knowledge.

I worked in a prison for three years, training offenders to run a talk radio station, and the thing that struck me most was how much better the content was than anything I have ever heard - or produced when I was a journalist - on mainstream media about prison issues.

People would come to visit the station, listen to the programmes and chat to the prisoners. Without fail, whatever their views on the criminal justice system, they would invariably leave with an entirely different perception of serving offenders and how we as a society deal with crime.

Thrilling tool

This is the power of simple conversation. Citizen journalism - real people speaking to real people through podcasts and blogs - means that we can have those conversations online, and this is what makes it such a thrilling tool for positive social change.

There is a lot of debate in the media about the term "citizen journalism". Many conventional journalists prefer "user-generated content" or "social media" to set it apart from what they have been trained for years to do, which is fair enough I suppose, since the two are distinct. Citizen journalism is content - text, photos, audio and video - that is generated by the public and sometimes, but rarely, makes its way into a mainstream newspaper or broadcast bulletin. It is mostly found in blogs or on networking sites such as MySpace. The main difference between the two mediums is that citizen journalism cuts out the middle man, and the story is told from a position of first-hand knowledge and partiality.

The reason that this can be more engaging is that someone at the centre of an issue can get more out of their interviewees because of the trust that comes from shared experience, background or culture. So while there will always be a need for trained journalists to sift through and select information for cogent analysis, when it comes to really getting to the bottom of an issue, it makes sense to go to the source and hear the people who are directly involved - unedited and without time constraints or word limits.

So how can positive social change be achieved through an abundance of disorganised chat on the internet? I run an organisation that trains marginalised groups and voluntary and public sector organisations to podcast, allowing them inexpensively to produce audio or video from their perspective. They can do and say what they like, as long as it is legal. Campaigners and charity workers do not have to wait for the media to take an interest in their issue - they can produce material themselves that will be of interest to their target audience, as opposed to mainstream media, which must appeal to a much wider audience.

However, most of my time has shifted towards working with marginalised groups because there is something that worries me about the digital revolution. When I surf through blogs, podcasts and content sharing sites such as YouTube and MySpace (examples of internet technology known as web 2.0), it is the same familiar demographic that is generating the content. For example, Al Gore's citizen journalism channel, Current TV, launched recently in the UK and Ireland. My concern is that, powerful as some of the content is on Current TV and sites like it, the people producing it are, on the whole, privileged, confident and articulate members of society who already have a voice and are more accurately represented in newspapers and broadcast media to begin with.

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Singapore - Straits Times Decreasing Traffic

Found On Singapore Election
When The Straits Times started charging for access all those years ago it was the wrong move. Why pay to access the reporting of a mass media outlet that is ranked either 147th or 154th in the world depending on your ranking source. The paper is losing revenue as are so many other newspapers around the world. The 20 - 30 generation are going online to get news that matters to them. Not news filtered by a process of 'self-censorship' or by a regime that demands control over all that is written.

Simply no longer charging visitors to view your advertisements and state-controlled press releases is not going to turn the fortunes of the ST around over night. Trying to isolate yourself from the global market of media and cultural production by charging your readers and hoping that they show loyalty to you was mis-guided. But until the Straits Times journalists are able to compete on the global playing-field without the dead-weight of self-censorship and state control - all the technology in the world will not alter the image of the Straits Times as a state owned and controlled propaganda outlet.

FROM Tuesday, visitors to The Straits Times' (ST) website will not have to pay to read the latest breaking news from Singapore and the world.

They can also post their views - in real time - on the reports they read.

One other major change: The site will drop its 12-year-old name, The Straits Times Interactive, or STI, and go with the cleaner 'straitstimes.com'.

Since becoming a subscription site in 2005, it has been offering only a small buffet of material for free:

1. ST's online forum letters;
2. Multimedia features, such as video news reports and podcasts;
3. A restricted selection of 20 reports from the print edition.

All other content, including breaking news and material picked up from the print edition of the newspaper itself, has been available only to subscribers in the past two years.

Explaining the move to open up more free-access content, ST editor Han Fook Kwang said: 'There's a great deal more we can do in the website to leverage on the award-winning talent in The Straits Times newsroom of writers, photographers, artists and designers. I think we've a good product and we want to make it available to more people in cyberspace, and to use the technology available on the web to make it an even better product.'
Here is the real reason ....

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Singapore Filtering Internet

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Singapore's media ranked 154th

In advance of World Press Freedom Day, on May 3rd, Freedom House has released several critical tools to highlight data from its annual survey of global press freedom, and to help explain the newest findings in their historical context. The current edition of the survey, Freedom of the Press 2007, points to improvements in several countries such as Italy, Nepal, Colombia, and Haiti; however, it shows mixed trends in Africa, as well as a continuation of a longer-term pattern of decline in press freedom in Asia, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union.

Freedom House
04 May 07http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=362


Singapore
Status: Not Free
Legal Environment: 24
Political Environment: 24
Economic Environment: 21
Total Score: 69

Media freedom in Singapore is constrained to such a degree that the vast majority of journalists practice self-censorship rather than risk being charged with defamation or breaking the country’s criminal laws on permissible speech.

The Singapore constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and expression in Article 14, but it also permits restrictions on these rights. Media freedom in Singapore is constrained by the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act, the Defamation Act, and the Internal Security Act, all of which allow authorities to restrict the circulation of news deemed to incite violence, arouse racial or religious tensions, interfere in domestic politics, or threaten public order, national interest or national security.

The government proposed a series of amendments to the Penal Code in 2006 that would cover offenses committed via electronic media. The draft amendments would not only provide jail terms or fines for defamation, “statements that would cause public mischief,” and the “wounding” of racial or religious feeling, they would also make it a crime for anyone outside the country to abet an offense committed inside the country, thereby allowing the authorities to prosecute internet users living abroad. Singaporean students studying overseas are the presumed targets of this amendment.

The Singapore government is quick to sue critics under harsh criminal defamation laws. In May 2006, for example, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, First Minister Kee Kuan Yew, filed criminal charges against the publishers of opposition newspaper The New Democrat, which is published several times a year by a committee of the Singapore Democratic Party.

The lawsuit started with an unsigned story that described as “secretive and non-accountable” the ruling party’s handling of a corruption scandal at the National Kidney Foundation.

Foreign media in Singapore are also subject to restrictive laws. In August, after the Far Eastern Economic Review published an interview with opposition party leader Chee Soon Juan, FEER and four other foreign publications were advised that they needed to post bonds and appoint legal representatives in order to continue to operate in Singapore. When FEER did not comply, its circulation permit was revoked, thereby effectively banning the publication. Meanwhile, on September 14, the Prime Minister and his father filed defamation suits against FEER over the article.

Nearly all print and broadcast media outlets, internet service providers, and cable television services are either owned or controlled by the state, or by companies with close ties to the ruling party. Annual licensing requirements for all media outlets, including political and religious web sites, have been used to inhibit criticism of the government.

Approximately two thirds of the population had access to the internet in 2006. Nonetheless, the government restricts internet access and Singapore has zero-tolerance for bloggers who challenge the government in any way. Prior to the May 6 Parliamentary elections, the Communications and Arts Minister warned bloggers and website managers that they do not have the right to back a particular candidate’s program or to express opinions on political issues. These same rules were applied to other new media, including podcasting and videocasting.

On April 26, the opposition Singapore Democratic Party was ordered to withdraw a podcast from its website. In June, popular blogger Lee Kin Mun (aka “Mr Brown”) was informed by state-owned Today newspaper that his weekly column, which had satirized the high cost of living, would be suspended. On November 6, a judge ordered Yap Keng Ho, a member of the opposition, to remove from his blog a video of himself speaking in public during the general elections.

Source
150
Cote d'Ivoire 68 NF
Malaysia 68 NF
Maldives 68 NF
United Arab Emirates 68 NF
154
Afghanistan 69 NF
Djibouti 69 NF
Gabon 69 NF
Singapore 69 NF
158 Iraq 70 NF
159 Bahrain 71 NF
Oman 71 NF
161 Chad 74 NF
Togo 74 NF
Venezuela 74 NF

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Growing Number of Asian Blogs Offers Alternatives to Mainstream Media

I have posted this article here as it is a position and an argument that is very close to my own.

And the MrBrown affair gets yet another mention.

By Claudia Blume
Hong Kong
25 April 2007

Blume report - Download 717k
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Asia's blogging community is growing rapidly, as more people get access to the Internet. In countries with a controlled media environment, blogs promote free speech and offer alternative sources of news and information. But some governments in the region try to limit access to the new media. Claudia Blume reports from VOA's Asia News Center in Hong Kong.

Millions of people in Asia have taken to blogging in recent years, creating personal Web sites that often take the form of an online diary. The word blog derives from Web log. China alone is estimated to have up to 30 million bloggers.

As elsewhere in the world, the region's collection of blogs on the Internet is diverse and amorphous. But in Asia, a survey by the U.S. software company Microsoft estimates that nearly half of those who are online have a blog, compared to just eight percent of U.S. Internet users.

Most people create blogs to share their lives and interests with friends, family and a few strangers. Many use text and photos, but also sound and video. Others blog to exchange information, create networks or express opinions about a wide range of issues.

In this music video, posted on the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube, two young Malaysians say an ironic 'thank you' to Indonesia for being responsible for last year's haze, the pollution that spread from Indonesian forest fires. The bloggers' criticism is an opinion that their governments would not express.

For some people, blogging has become a powerful tool for freedom of expression. Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on online media at the University of Hong Kong, says a small percentage of people in the region create blogs to tell a wider audience what the mainstream media are not reporting.

"Some of these people who are creating media such as Jeff Ooi in Malaysia, a number of bloggers in China, basically there are people one could cite in any given country around the region, who are developing rather large audiences because they are saying something fresh or more direct than [what] people are getting from their traditional media sources," said MacKinnon.

News of the famous nail house in the Chinese city of Chongqing, where a couple tried to block the destruction of their home earlier this year, was first spread on blogs. When mainstream media were told to remain silent on the case, a Chinese blogger who calls himself Zola traveled to Chongqing and continued to report about it.

Isaac Mao, a well-known Shanghai-based blogger and software architect, says Zola's action was a milestone for Chinese bloggers.

"So it means once the traditional mainstream media, if they fail to work, grassroots media can take over the niche or they can take another role - to report some social events from different angles," said Mao.

In countries with a highly restricted and regulated media environment, such as China, Vietnam, Burma and Singapore, blogs can provide different, independent information and viewpoints. While the quality and trustworthiness of blogs varies greatly, they are becoming popular sources of information in places where the mainstream media lacks credibility.

"People may now welcome this diversity of news but that's precisely because I think one thing to remember is a lot of people are already very skeptical of mainstream media in their own countries, precisely because they are aware that most mainstream media in their countries are [one] either owned by the state or they are highly restricted and therefore are not really free to provide independent and diverse news," said Roby Alampay, the executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance.

Alampay says some blogs are created by professional journalists who post online what they are not allowed to publish in their day-jobs. Last year, for example, a Singaporean journalist whose column in a government-controlled newspaper was suspended after he criticized high living costs in the city-state was able to post the controversial story on his blog.

A number of Asian governments view bloggers as a threat. The Malaysian government has announced plans to set up a unit to monitor and counter what it calls lies and slander being spread on the Internet. Roby Alampay says governments across the region try to block, filter and monitor cyberspace.

"Censorship is becoming an issue all over Southeast Asia and I think it's safe to assume that most countries exercise some form of blocking and censorship or harassment of websites," Alampay added.

In Thailand, the military government recently blocked access to YouTube when an offending video clip of the Thai king appeared on the video-sharing Web site. It also suspended a popular political online chat room in April. In Malaysia, the government-linked New Straits Times newspaper recently filed defamation suits against two well-known bloggers.

Vietnam and China are particularly notorious for censoring the Internet. MacKinnon says that's why it would be impossible for anyone to create an opposition press through blogs there.

"You are not going to see a pro-democracy, anti-communist party-press emerging through the Chinese blogosphere. The Chinese government is able to prevent that from happening," said MacKinnon.

She said it would be over-simplistic to assume that the existence of blogs will suddenly bring about a democratic revolution in countries such as China.

Isaac Mao, for example, describes the cat-and-mouse game involved when bloggers want to outwit technical blocks imposed by government censors.

But MacKinnon says blogs offer the potential to open up the media in ways not possible before the spread of Internet access.

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Singapore: Zahari's 17 Years

The complete video that has been banned in Singapore is now available here to view.



And this time I know who uploaded it.

The story has also been covered by More4 News in the UK.
More4 News: Singapore bans "Zahari's 17 Years"

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Government plans to force bloggers to register

Reporters Without Borders alerted me to the ongoing issue north of Singapore's borders. In an article published elsewhere I have even read that the government of Malaysia feels that getting Malaysian bloggers to register is legitimate because Singapore makes bloggers register.

He said: “We might follow some other countries who register bloggers as well. That’s what Singapore is doing as well. It’s much better if we can have a list of active bloggers … We want to know who are the bloggers.” TechWack

Now either he has been in touch with the Singapore authorities and has access to information that we are not yet privy to or he is simply telling a lie. As far as I am aware no blogger in Singapore has been asked to register with the government. Yes the law exists to make those engaged in political activity register during the elections but I am not aware of anyone being asked to do so. Well not since sintercom a number of years ago.

MALAYSIA

Government plans to force bloggers to register

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about a statement by the deputy minister of energy, water and communications, Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor, on 4 April that, in order to prevent the spread of "negative or malicious content," bloggers will soon have to register with the government.

While claiming they do not intend to censor bloggers, they have warned that bloggers are not above the law when they "disturb peace and harmony" in Malaysia.

"This measure could jeopardise online free expression," Reporters Without Borders said. "It could push many bloggers to opt for anonymity or censor themselves out of fear of reprisals. The deputy minister's statement once again demonstrates the government's desire to exercise improper control over the online flow of information inside Malaysia. The obligatory registering of blogs is a measure that so far has only been adopted by countries such as China that violate Internet users' rights."

The political parties and the government control most of the media in Malaysia. The most popular blogs serve as a counter-weight, offering political comment that is often critical of the government. Science and technology minister Kong Cho Ha said on 4 December that he wanted to "create strict laws to control abuses on the Internet" and to dissuade "bloggers from advocating disorder and chaos in society."

On 19 January, Reporters Without Borders took up the cause of two Malaysian bloggers who are the target of libel suits by members of the staff of the New Straits Times, a Malaysian newspaper. Jeff Ooi, who writes one of the country's most popular blogs, Screenshots (http://www.jeffooi.com), has been sued for refusing to take down 13 posts which the newspaper's staffers consider to be defamatory.

Ahiruddin Attan, who produces a blog called Rockybru (http://www.rockybru.blogspot.com/), says he is being sued over a post in which he accused some of the newspaper's journalists of being agents of the Singaporean government.


Read our weekly "blog review" and create your blog with Reporters without borders : www.rsfblog.org

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Some Asian Governments Want to Control Those Pesky Bloggers

From Asia Sentinel
Imran Imtiaz Shah Yacob
04 April 2007
Will the online gadflies be able to outsmart the authoritarian impulses of their rulers? They have so far.

In a sign that the ubiquitous critics and observers harrying governments and other institutions from behind the relative impunity of their computer screens are starting to bite, Thailand ‘s Information and Communications Technology Ministry on Tuesday ordered its staff to shut down websites deemed to be violating the orders of the junta that seized power in September or insulting the Thai monarch.

The move appears to be directed at growing numbers of anti-coup activists who use Web sites and blogs to snipe at the junta-directed government. One site, for example, is being used to organize a petition drive directed calling on the powerful Privy Council and former premier, Prem Tinsulanonda to be removed from the council. The site, www.saturdayvoice.com, is planning to locate outside the country because of the pressure, according to press reports.

The spokesman for the Council on National Security, the ruling junta, said the campaign against Prem was ''inappropriate''. Since Prem was appointed president of the Privy Council by the King, the spokesman told the Bangkok Post, it was improper to do anything that could be deemed as insulting to the King

Not only in Thailand, but across much of Southeast Asia, the rise of bloggers and independent all-Internet news sites has caught governments in a quandary. What has long been predicted is coming to pass, particularly in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, each of which has begun to take action. The ability of bloggers to circumvent press laws and national borders is frustrating for countries that at least putatively consider themselves parliamentary democracies.

Thailand’s leaders in particular seem to be feeling the heat as their government stumbles from crisis to crisis and protesters continue to multiply. Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the information minister, said he had been given authority to block websites by the junta.

But other governments are having trouble figuring out the blogosphere as well. Singapore and Malaysia in particular have staked their future on high technology. The Malaysian government is actively promoting Internet access even in remote village areas. So far, Malaysia has refused to censor the Internet although it appears to be trying other methods of limiting access. The governments are thus learning that limiting access to some kinds of information is difficult without limiting access to all of it.

In the meantime, this newfound freedom of speech and expression, which is not available through the subservient local media, is regarded as an avenue to challenge the established system on issues ranging from race relations to economic mismanagement. Although China over the last decade has got most of the publicity in Asia for Internet censorship, having passed scores of regulations attempting to harness free speech on line, but there are these unsettling developments elsewhere:

Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Paiboon Wattanasiritham said on March 28 that the Thai government has set up a national committee to place controls on television, film, magazines and websites to ensure a "safe and creative media.” The committee will be tasked with putting tight controls on media content to ensure items that it deems to be inappropriate for young people are not published. While Paiboon said the controls are aimed at Internet pornography, few in Thailand had any illusions that they could and would be used against critics of the government. One Bangkok group told the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission that as many as 32,500 websites are being blocked by the police and another 13,500 by the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, with 11% of the blocked sites categorized as "a threat to national security."

In Singapore, long known for its tight grip on the media and low tolerance for dissent, bloggers are now in the cross hairs. The government announced recently that it is reviewing the code that governs competition in the print and broadcast media markets to include new media. As long ago as 2006, the weekly column of popular blogger Lee Kin Mun, alias "Mr Brown", in the daily newspaper Today was axed after he criticized a member of the government. The blogger has received several warnings since. The government also has also gone after news, podcasts or videos on the Web. Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) activist Yap Keng Ho was fined S$2,000 in November 2006 for posting a video of an illegal gathering of his party on his blog. After he refused to pay, he was jailed for 10 days.

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Host Not Found

Dissidents must be protected from internet censorship, argues Hari Kunzru in an essay for a PEN anthology, Another Sky.

Saturday March 31, 2007
The Guardian

"Sometimes the 'Don't be evil' policy leads to many discussions about what exactly is evil. One thing we know is that people can make better decisions with better information. Google is a useful tool in people's lives. There are extreme cases, we're told, when Google has saved people's lives." Sergey Brin, Google founder, interviewed in Playboy, September 2004

As the internet enters its second decade as a mass medium, it's worth looking back at one of the old saws that was bandied around in the covered-wagon days, when Californian sages made gnomic pronouncements about the future and the rest of the world repeated them at dinner parties. "The net treats censorship as damage and routes around it." These are the words of John Gilmore, radical libertarian, Sun Microsystems employee number five and bona fide west-coast guru-gazillionaire, and for much of the last 10 years they've been repeated as part of the founding story of the internet, along with a gloss about the net's inception as a military communications network designed to withstand partial destruction by nuclear attack.

In a technical sense, Gilmore (who was talking to a Time magazine journalist in 1993) has been proved right. The internet has provided an efficient conduit for people to share all manner of information other people don't want them to, whether those people are government whistle-blowers, child pornographers, political dissidents, intellectual property pirates or terrorists. From the Drudge Report to beheading videos, censorship is being successfully circumvented around the globe. Looked on from the neutral standpoint adopted by network engineers, this is proof of a robust system. Ethical or political judgements about the content of the information flowing through the networks aren't relevant. It's all data. We should celebrate.

However, around the world, people have also discovered that, despite the abstractions of network architecture and the nostrums of boosters who predicted a "new economy" free of material constraints, the internet is also a physical thing, which has its existence on real telephone lines, internet service provider (ISP) routers, undersea fibre-optic lines and hard drives humming under tangible desks. And it's used by people sitting in real offices with real doors that can be broken down by all-too-real police if the information they're sharing contravenes local laws - and in some cases even if they don't, but some foreign power strong-arms their government, as happened in Sweden in May 2006, when US diplomats incited a police raid on an ISP hosting a popular file-sharing service called the Pirate Bay. The internet's ability to route round censorship has the character of an ideal rather than a reality, a theoretical property.

No one understands this better than the Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who in April 2005 received a 10-year prison sentence for "divulging state secrets abroad". A translation of court proceedings showed that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong), a subsidiary of the American search corporation, had given information to Chinese state investigators allowing them to link him to re-postings on foreign-based websites of an internal message the authorities sent to his newspaper regarding coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

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The Queer Sensibilities of Singapore's Wordscape

From Xenoboy in Singapore

The media is in overdrive. Spinning and spinning. Telling us the reasons why we have to pay 55% more to the Ministers and the top civil servants, of that stream known as the Administrative Service. No one expects an objection from the media. But not even a "concern" has been raised this time.

Instead, its a monopolistic narrative that calls upon the hallowed traditions of the Singapore Wordscape. The sense of crisis, of siege that will soon befall the Government if they are not paid more. That there will be a vacuum in Government. That the talent will leave or will not come. And without the talent, the Government suffers. And if the Government suffers, Singapore suffers. And if Singapore suffers, the Singaporeans suffer most of all.

This sense of impending doom, of competitiveness, that forces the Government to review salaries, forces them to accept the ignonimity of accepting 55% more money. It almost makes this salary review become noble. A form of noble-ness that is almost surreal. It is a review that becomes a ceremonial sacrifice by these talents to accept this necessary money. It is for the sake of Singapore that they make this sacrifice. Ultimately. It is for the good of Singapore. They take this 55% not because they need it, $290 is enough after all, but because the survival of Singapore needs them to accept this. So the narrative rolls across the Singapore Wordscape.

And the citizens look on, listening to and watching as this narrative embraces the Singapore Wordscape. Formulating their indignations, their counter-narratives, mostly in silence. Forming words, mostly in silence. Only in new media does dissonance surface. That this narrative, flattening the Singapore Wordscape with its moral loud-hailing, is perhaps only one side of the picture, one side of the fence, one level above in the hierarchy of political meanings in Singapore. But it is new media after all, where lies and truths are enmeshed in an adulterous embrace.

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Reframing the ‘global’, the ‘digital’ and the ‘local’

Introduction

by Chua Siew Keng

Introduction (8:2) Reframing the ‘global’, the ‘digital’ and the ‘local’ — communication theories and Asian perspectives Chua Siew Keng.

In the last decade of the last century/millennium there has been an explosion of the ‘global’ and the ‘digital’ communications within the geopolity of the Asian region. From a universalised discourse, ‘globalisation’ has become increasingly contested in relation to both economic and communications development. Linked to the ‘digital’, the term ‘global’, from the perspectives of communication scholars in the Asia and the Australasian region, is in need of being reframed, if not redefined. This reframed globalisation may articulate a politics of communication that critiques and reshapes the old theme of cultural imperialism but it does not render the latter entirely obsolete. The ‘international development’ era of communications has morphed into the ‘global’ era with continuities and change. Whereas the international era had projected communications from the top down within the modernisation project of progress and development, in the reframed global era there needs to be ‘careful consideration of the democratic potential of the new communications media ... along with limits placed by global markets’. There can be ‘globalisation from below’ (see Sosale’s article), contextualising the global within the history of the local. ‘Asia’ as a region, too, has been subjected to contestable boundaries. As a designation for a geopolitical terrain, it has expanded during the past two decades to include the countries of Australasia, comprising Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific nations, from the perspectives of the scholars within the region.

Indeed one Indonesian scholar-journalist has made out a strong case for considering Australia as the ‘white tribe of Asia’ (Hardjono 1993). New Zealand scholars have increasingly aligned their perspectives more with Asia than with the ‘West’. This turn against the West in communication theories within the region has been active in contesting globalisation as applied to Asian and non-western media studies. From another angle, the technologising capability of the ‘new’ digital communications has also contributed to the rhetoric of globalisation to link it with ‘modernisation’ and ‘development’. Scholars in the Asian region have also begun to demystify the new digital communications technologies and have called into question what may be regarded as new. In Japan, the most economically developed nation in Asia and the most technologically advanced country in relation to communications development, the rhetoric of the digital can be critiqued. Jungbong Choi discusses the limits of such a rhetoric about new communications, such as digital television, in the Japanese situation. His article ‘Embedding digital television in an IT economy: The case of Japan’ explores the tension between public service broadcasting and the commercial consumption of the digital potential of the medium. He locates the economic discourse of the new communications within its social and cultural contexts. Choi attempts to ‘situate Japan’s launch of digital TV within the larger campaign to reshape economic structures and sociocultural domains in correspondence with the fast-changing configurations of information capitalism’. Goode and Little explore the tension between the political economy of digital television and cultural issues through the investigation of the term ‘local’ as it applies to content production.

They argue that the issue of local content ‘may be more under threat’ as a result of digital television. They question the accepted contours of local culture as ‘national’ culture in relation to global imports, and suggest that in effect what may emerge is a ‘localisation’ which is hybrid in nature, comprising an amalgam of imported features and everyday local realities.

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Singapore: Government sets rules of engagement in face of new media

By Hasnita A Majid, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 22 March 2007 1957 hrs

Government sets rules of engagement in face of new media

SINGAPORE: The government will continue to set political agendas and rules of engagement in the face of the new media, and will not be dictated by online petitions or polls.

And while it will try to balance the diverse interests of the society when it comes to issues of sex, nudity and violence online, it said it would not hesitate to prosecute those who post seditious or racially offensive content in cyberspace.

Singapore has a diverse community with different races, languages and religions living in harmony.

But it is also here where the fault lines lie.

Speaking at a Foreign Correspondents Association lunch on the government's approach to the new media, Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said with the internet, these fault lines are even more exposed to foreign influence in the form of religious extremism and terrorism.

However, there is no need to suppress the new media.

He said: "We are not going in with our eyes closed. Generally, we adopt a 'light touch approach'. Although there is much offensive and untrue material in cyberspace, there is no need, nor is it practical, to pursue each and every transgression.

"All we need is the government to selectively target those who pose a clear risk to the real world. Consequently, we have seen no need to suppress new media unless specific laws are broken by posting seditious or racially offensive content which has come to our attention and gained traction in our society.

"Race and religion are sensitive and volatile issues that tug at the visceral feelings of people. We have a few such cases in the previous year and we have not hesitated to prosecute them in court."

Similarly, when it comes to alternative lifestyle, sex, nudity, violence or coarse language in cyberspace, the government will practise what is called 'ceremonial censorship' – drawing a line in cyberspace but taking into account the evolution of society.

Dr Balakrishnan feels the most potent impact the new media will have on politics is that politicians will find it hard to lie in future as there will always be citizens who will publish the truth in blogs or online.

He said: "Fortunately for us in Singapore, we run a clean system, and therefore we have nothing to hide. That is the reason why we can have our cake and eat it too, and that is why we do not fear the new media."

The government, he said, would seize the economic opportunities that the new media revolution presents by investing in infrastructure, promoting new e-services and overcoming the digital divide.

It will also use the new media to reach out to the public.

"So what really keeps me awake at night is the excitement of being able to live through a revolution. Just like you, I stay at the side and watch it all happen in our lifetime," added Dr Balakrishnan.

Despite the abundance of information in cyberspace, he said there is still a need for journalists in the mainstream media like television, print and radio, to provide the public with accurate, responsible and credible sources of information.

- CNA/so

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Panel to Study Impact of New Media

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By Ong Soh Chin

AN ADVISORY panel will be set up to look into the new media's long-term impact on tech-savvy Singaporeans.

Senior Minister of State (Information, Communications and the Arts) Balaji Sadasivan announced this in Parliament on Saturday.

He noted that Singaporeans had taken well to the Internet.

But it was equally important to study the long-term social, ethical, legal and regulatory implications of the new media.

Details of the new high-level committee will be announced only later, he said.

For the present, however, a three-pronged approach to managing the new media was working well, he told MPs.

The approach comprised a light-touch regulatory framework, self-regulation by the industry, and public education.

With this approach, 'there is currently no need for a separate Internet Code of Ethics', he said.

'This light-touch regulatory approach has served us well in regulating online content, helping to facilitate the growth of the industry while allowing us to act if we find harmful content that threatens our social values, and racial and religious harmony.'

He was responding to Ms Penny Low (Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC) and Nominated MP Siew Kum Hong who queried the existing regulatory framework for policing the Internet.

Internet service providers are regulated under the Media Development Authority's (MDA) Class Licence Scheme along with an Internet Code of Practice.

The former requires service providers to block objectionable sites. Content providers that deal with politics or religion also have to register when notified to do so.

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