Political Internet

• lotus999

  9 Mar 09, 20:21

  correct, it may not be effective as those pap ministers are very boring!

  Political Internet
  PAP steps in
  Merely switching to the new media to deliver the same type of messages may not work with young Singaporeans.

  By Seah Chiang Nee, littlespeck.com
  Mar 7, 2009
  
  CLEARLY conceding that Singapore’s new generation has moved away from its old media strategy, the government now wants to make its first move into Internet politics.
  
  Until now, it has enthusiastically embraced the digital revolution for economic development, but shunned – and even rubbished – it as a political platform.
  
  This may soon change.
  
  Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in an interview that his government would actively engage and leverage the new media in the next election, due in 2012.
  
  It could lead to the gradual dismantling of long-standing media policies instituted by his father, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, since independence.
  
  No one expects that his People’s Action Party (PAP) will resort to the liberal, free-swinging politics associated with many websites.
  
  It will likely be a gingerly entry, a cautious use of the Net to engage in political issues with the rising number of web-savvy citizens. The bigger impact will come years later.
  
  According to the Prime Minister, the authorities have already built up some capabilities.
  
  “(It) is the way the new generation operates. It is going to happen in politics, too,” he said with some caution. “We are still learning. It is not easy to make this transition.
  
  “It is like going from sea to land or vice versa.
  
  “You are changing your medium and you need to get comfortable with it. And we are working hard at it.”
  
  Several years ago, the then group editor of The Straits Times, Cheong Yip Seng, expressed concern at the number of young people who have stopped reading newspapers.
  
  His paper went online and multimedia, and now operates one of the most read forums.
  
  For many years, the Internet has been rapidly gaining popularity among young Singaporeans and has been responsible for much of Singapore’s progress.
  
  It has also become the main channel for public discussions on politics and current affairs.
  
  Who are the participants? More than 80% are young, anonymous and anti-government.
  
  The government’s political absence has effectively isolated it from the young population, leading one commentator to observe: “The PAP is losing this important war by default.”
  
  So why is it acting now? There are two reasons.
  
  First is the changing generation of Singaporeans and, second, the PAP has seen how effective the new technology was in helping the opposition in last year’s US and Malaysian elections.
  
  Prominent blogger Gerald Giam believes that until now the PAP did not see a need to use the Internet because it had firm control of newspapers and television.
  
  Ironically, it’s the government which was the main catalyst for a Net-savvy population. For years, it had invested heavily on wiring up the island with broadband cable and educating its youths for the information age.
  
  Singapore has more than 100,000 Internet users. Some 70% of homes have accounts, with 4.11 million people – or 99% of the population – being able to gain access anywhere in the city.
  
  At last count, some 64% of the 15-19 age group are on the web, blogging or podcasting, operating some 120,000 blogs.
  
  The younger ones (between 10 years and 15 years) are more avid users, with nine in 10 going online.
  
  Among adults aged 20 to 24, just under half (46% ), do so, while 18% of the 39-49 age group are bloggers. It’s been a tremendous transformation.
  
  PM Lee, however, injected a reality, too. “There is still a place for traditional media to be the trusted source of information,” he said.
  
  Since independence, his father had relied on newspapers and television to maintain the PAP’s hold on the populace. They’re used to disseminate and explain government policies in a positive way.
  
  Having their role eroded could result in a loss of political leverage, hence the decision to move online. But this has long-term implications.
  
  The Internet is just another means of communication, faster and more effective, but nothing more.
  
  Merely using it to transmit the same message, especially if delivered by dull bureaucrats in officialese, will not win young readers.
  
  It needs articulate skills that few Singaporean leaders (unlike Lee Kuan Yew and his past cohort) and civil servants have.
  
  In his interview, PM Lee apparently realised it. Moving forward, he said, what is needed are young MPs who are comfortable with the new media landscape.
  
  A future requirement for politics will not only be a bright mind, but communication skills capable of winning over young voters, something not many in the PAP adequately possess.
  
  Many of the leaders today are scholars – untested politicians or untrained communicators – who have had successful careers in the professions, business, the civil service and military.
  
  Debating ability or tech-knowhow was never a PAP entry requirement for MPs.
  
  But the ruling party is rich, efficient, and has tremendous resources. Despite rising public unhappiness, the perception of the majority is that the country is well run.
  
  The online decision to fight the next election will have a positive impact for it, however slight.
  
  If the message – as well as the mode of delivery – can be changed to move closer to young Singaporeans, it can continue in power for a long time, some analysts believe.
  
  Reason – the youths, including the angry ones, are generally serious and rational about the country if injected with a sense of real participation.

• Fantagf

  9 Mar 09, 20:25

  Think it is a good idea to educate the young ones to identify propaganda.

• LordoftheLamers

  9 Mar 09, 20:54

  Yup. PAP members need to start doing rap, talking trash, doing smack and wearing baggy clothes and wear giant gold chains and skate! All on the internet!

• Chris88110

  9 Mar 09, 22:42

  Originally posted by Fantagf:

  Think it is a good idea to educate the young ones to identify propaganda.

  
  From your point of view anything for PAP=propaganda

• mancha

  9 Mar 09, 23:02

  Check out "Merlion kena struck by lightning" thread by AndrewPKYap in ChitChat.

  I think the regulatory measures warned of by Vivian Balakrishna have already reached sgForums.

• alwaysdisturbed

  9 Mar 09, 23:10

  Originally posted by mancha:

  Check out "Merlion kena struck by lightning" thread by AndrewPKYap in ChitChat.

  I think the regulatory measures warned of by Vivian Balakrishna have already reached sgForums.

  
  why do you say that?

• baikachuchu

  9 Mar 09, 23:18

  In their bid to "engage" the public with new media,I hope they do not use that as a chance to impose regulations to curtail the wide variety of topics discussed on the internet.

  If that happens,it would only be a matter of time b4 we experience something similiar to China blocking access to wikipedia from its people.

  Maybe oneday,anybody hoping to set up an internet forum locally will have to seek permission and buy a license from the local authorities.Maybe a restriction on the type of topics discussed will be thrown in for good measure too?

  Afterall,Singapore is unique,the freedoms experienced in another country might not be applicable to us in our unique environment.

• mancha

  9 Mar 09, 23:22

  Originally posted by alwaysdisturbed:

  
  why do you say that?

  Mods highlight the word Singapore.
  i.e. stay clear of mentioning that word?

• AmosAtlantis

  10 Mar 09, 10:54

  No need to worry. SGForums is hosted overseas, at least it's better than hosting in Singapore, whereby there are strict internet regulations and rules.

  The government wants to take control over new media and the internet like the way they are doing over the newspapers and television?

  I suggest they dream long long ... ...

• Snookerlover

  13 Mar 09, 16:24

  Just do it.

• Hawk Eye

  13 Mar 09, 17:00

  Originally posted by baikachuchu:

  In their bid to "engage" the public with new media,I hope they do not use that as a chance to impose regulations to curtail the wide variety of topics discussed on the internet.

  If that happens,it would only be a matter of time b4 we experience something similiar to China blocking access to wikipedia from its people.

  Maybe oneday,anybody hoping to set up an internet forum locally will have to seek permission and buy a license from the local authorities.Maybe a restriction on the type of topics discussed will be thrown in for good measure too?

  Afterall,Singapore is unique,the freedoms experienced in another country might not be applicable to us in our unique environment.

  Thats what i might think so.

  Who knows if in future we might have our own nation wide intranet? If they can imply rules to the media, they can do it in the virtual world too!

   

  And they might just again... telling lies on the internet...

• poker69

  16 Mar 09, 01:44

  Originally posted by AmosAtlantis:

  No need to worry. SGForums is hosted overseas, at least it's better than hosting in Singapore, whereby there are strict internet regulations and rules.

  The government wants to take control over new media and the internet like the way they are doing over the newspapers and television?

  I suggest they dream long long ... ...

  
  can block rite?

• pearlie27

  16 Mar 09, 14:01

  Would Sg netizens be as ingenious? A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors By MICHAEL WINES, New York Times Published: March 11, 2009 BEIJING — Since its first unheralded appearance in January on a Chinese Web page, the grass-mud horse has become nothing less than a phenomenon. A YouTube children’s song about the beast has drawn nearly 1.4 million viewers. A grass-mud horse cartoon has logged a quarter million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted 180,000 more. Stores are selling grass-mud horse dolls. Chinese intellectuals are writing treatises on the grass-mud horse’s social importance. The story of the grass-mud horse’s struggle against the evil river crab has spread far and wide across the Chinese online community. Not bad for a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very much like an especially vile obscenity. Which is precisely the point. The grass-mud horse is an example of something that, in China’s authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has surely done that. It has also raised real questions about China’s ability to stanch the flow of information over the Internet — a project on which the Chinese government already has expended untold riches, and written countless software algorithms to weed deviant thought from the world’s largest cyber-community. Government computers scan Chinese cyberspace constantly, hunting for words and phrases that censors have dubbed inflammatory or seditious. When they find one, the offending blog or chat can be blocked within minutes. Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, who oversees a project that monitors Chinese Web sites, said in an e-mail message that the grass-mud horse “has become an icon of resistance to censorship.� “The expression and cartoon videos may seem like a juvenile response to an unreasonable rule,� he wrote. “But the fact that the vast online population has joined the chorus, from serious scholars to usually politically apathetic urban white-collar workers, shows how strongly this expression resonates.� Wang Xiaofeng, a journalist and blogger based in Beijing, said in an interview that the little animal neatly illustrates the futility of censorship. “When people have emotions or feelings they want to express, they need a space or channel,� he said. “It is like a water flow — if you block one direction, it flows to other directions, or overflows. There’s got to be an outlet.� China’s online population has always endured censorship, but the oversight increased markedly in December, after a pro-democracy movement led by highly regarded intellectuals, Charter 08, released an online petition calling for an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. Shortly afterward, government censors began a campaign, ostensibly against Internet pornography and other forms of deviance. By mid-February, the government effort had shut down more than 1,900 Web sites and 250 blogs — not only overtly pornographic sites, but also online discussion forums, instant-message groups and even cellphone text messages in which political and other sensitive issues were broached. Among the most prominent Web sites that were closed down was bullog.com, a widely read forum whose liberal-minded bloggers had written in detail about Charter 08. China Digital Times, Mr. Xiao’s monitoring project at the University of California, called it “the most vicious crackdown in years.� It was against this background that the grass-mud horse and several mythical companions appeared in early January on the Chinese Internet portal Baidu. The creatures’ names, as written in Chinese, were innocent enough. But much as “bear� and “bare� have different meanings in English, their spoken names were double entendres with inarguably dirty second meanings. So while “grass-mud horse� sounds like a nasty curse in Chinese, its written Chinese characters are completely different, and its meaning —taken literally — is benign. Thus the beast not only has dodged censors’ computers, but has also eluded the government’s own ban on so-called offensive behavior. As depicted online, the grass-mud horse seems innocent enough at the start. An alpaca-like animal — in fact, the videos show alpacas — it lives in a desert whose name resembles yet another foul word. The horses are “courageous, tenacious and overcome the difficult environment,� a YouTube song about them says. But they face a problem: invading “river crabs� that are devouring their grassland. In spoken Chinese, “river crab� sounds very much like “harmony,� which in China’s cyberspace has become a synonym for censorship. Censored bloggers often say their posts have been “harmonized� — a term directly derived from President Hu Jintao’s regular exhortations for Chinese citizens to create a harmonious society. In the end, one song says, the horses are victorious: “They defeated the river crabs in order to protect their grassland; river crabs forever disappeared from the Ma Le Ge Bi,� the desert. The online videos’ scenes of alpacas happily romping to the Disney-style sounds of a children’s chorus quickly turn shocking — then, to many Chinese, hilarious — as it becomes clear that the songs fairly burst with disgusting language. To Chinese intellectuals, the songs’ message is clearly subversive, a lesson that citizens can flout authority even as they appear to follow the rules. “Its underlying tone is: I know you do not allow me to say certain things. See, I am completely cooperative, right?� the Beijing Film Academy professor and social critic Cui Weiping wrote in her own blog. “I am singing a cute children’s song — I am a grass-mud horse! Even though it is heard by the entire world, you can’t say I’ve broken the law.� In an essay titled “I am a grass-mud horse,� Ms. Cui compared the anti-smut campaign to China’s 1983 “anti-spiritual pollution campaign,� another crusade against pornography whose broader aim was to crush Western-influenced critics of the ruling party. Another noted blogger, the Tsinghua University sociologist Guo Yuhua, called the grass-mud horse allusions “weapons of the weak� — the title of a book by the Yale political scientist James Scott describing how powerless peasants resisted dictatorial regimes. Of course, the government could decide to delete all Internet references to the phrase “grass-mud horse,� an easy task for its censorship software. But while China’s cybercitizens may be weak, they are also ingenious. The Shanghai blogger Uln already has an idea. Blogging tongue in cheek — or perhaps not — he recently suggested that online democracy advocates stop referring to Charter 08 by its name, and instead choose a different moniker. “Wang,� perhaps. Wang is a ubiquitous surname, and weeding out the subversive Wangs from the harmless ones might melt circuits in even the censors’ most powerful computer.
• AmosAtlantis

  16 Mar 09, 14:42

  I think that the only way for Singapore government to "control" the internet is to create a nation-wide intranet like that of a company's. Then it can be fully controlled by them.

  But it's almost impossible to gain total control over the internet. The internet doesn't belong to Singapore government. It belongs to the world.

• angel7030

  16 Mar 09, 16:01

  Originally posted by poker69:

  
  can block rite?

  
  can, why cannot, they can enblock houses, why not internet? they already can block up youporn and others sites you guys like to visit one...so you think cannot meh.

• Miracles&Prophecies

  18 Mar 09, 15:28

  More shits to come to the internet this time from PAP. Yay!

• Miracles&Prophecies

  18 Mar 09, 15:30

  Originally posted by AmosAtlantis:

  No need to worry. SGForums is hosted overseas, at least it's better than hosting in Singapore, whereby there are strict internet regulations and rules.

  The government wants to take control over new media and the internet like the way they are doing over the newspapers and television?

  I suggest they dream long long ... ...

  sgforums is hosted in US. God bless US! hahahahhahahhahahahaha. When PAP members have nightmares they usually revolve around sgforums lol....maybe.....

• AmosAtlantis

  18 Mar 09, 15:57

  The Singapore Government have no control over websites and networks that are hosted overseas, especially in the western and russian countries.

  As long as we are using a local Internet Service Provider, the government can control Singtel and Starhub and M1.

  But if we go and sign up with other internet service provider overseas, then the Singapore Governent can't do anything about it.

  Luckily for us, SGForums are hosted overseas. The Singapore Government have no control over SGForums.

• Hawk Eye

  19 Mar 09, 11:07

  Originally posted by AmosAtlantis:

  The Singapore Government have no control over websites and networks that are hosted overseas, especially in the western and russian countries.

  As long as we are using a local Internet Service Provider, the government can control Singtel and Starhub and M1.

  But if we go and sign up with other internet service provider overseas, then the Singapore Governent can't do anything about it.

  Luckily for us, SGForums are hosted overseas. The Singapore Government have no control over SGForums.

  
  You mean we can subscribe to ISP from other country? How to do it? I think we still need to bypass local gateway before we can use other country's ISP services right?

   

  Anyway, govt here can still block access to sgforums.

• AmosAtlantis

  20 Mar 09, 16:51

  Originally posted by Hawk Eye:

  
  You mean we can subscribe to ISP from other country? How to do it? I think we still need to bypass local gateway before we can use other country's ISP services right?

   

  Anyway, govt here can still block access to sgforums.

  
  Yup we can subscribe to ISP from overseas, but that is only if someone is desperate enough to do so, using wireless, not Wireless@SG.

  Ya government can block access to SGForums, so people in SG can't visit the forums anymore. Got to think of an alternative way then...