Limitations of New Media in promoting civil activism in Singapore in contrast to Malaysia

From The Newsroom Team

The recent arrest of a few unarmed, peaceful protestors at a candlelight vigil in Perak had sparked widespread outrage in Malaysia. This would be unimaginable a few years ago before the advent and proliferation of socio-political news site like Malaysiakini, The Malaysian Insider and the Nut Graph, to name a few.

The event, which was neither published in the print nor broadcast media, was given extensive coverage by the new media. A short clip by Malaysiakini uploaded on Youtube shows the protestors dressed in black holding candles in their hands be dragged away forcefully by the police.

The footage dealt the image of the police and ruling Barisan Nasional another mortal blow. While the mainstream media in Malaysia are effectively mouthpieces of the government like Singapore’s, young voters who are gleaned on the daily staple of news from the new media are the driving force behind the revolutionary changes sweeping through the political landscape.

Singapore’s activists, notably those aligned to the SDP, have made used of the New Media to publicize their cause too, but the impact generated is suboptimal for a variety of reasons:

1. The sites publishing their videos have a small readership and are unable to reach out to a greater audience. Malaysiakini has an online readership which is larger than the online versions of all the mainstream papers. Singapore news blogs run the risk of preaching only to the converted and unable to win new readers from the pool of mainstream audience.

2. Singaporeans are generally averse to politics, especially oposition politics. Though most young Singaporeans are net-savvy, they do not surf political blogs and show little interest in them. Singapore has few known socio-political blogs which are helmed mostly by amateurs unlike in Malaysia when prominent political commentators like Ong Kian Ming, Neil Khor and Tunku Abdul Aziz are regular contributors to news sites.

3. Singapore MPs have stayed largely out of the realm of civil activism to press for change in the system. The two elected opposition MPs are contented to air their views within the confines of Parliament. In the Perak candlelight vigil, one state assemblyperson, Jernice Lee and one MP, Teo Nie Ching, both in their 20s, are arrested by the police. These young leaders who are willing to take risks and walk the talk themselves are catalysts for awakening the political consciousness of the silent majority.

In contrast, Singapore’s civil activists face several daunting obstacles in their way, most remarkably by the lack of support from the general public who frowned on them as “troublemakers” out to destabilize society, a point harped on ad nauseum by the PAP and cleverly used by the mainstream media to influence public opinion.

With a new law passed to prevent onlookers from filming the “security operations” of the police, local civil activists will be further crippled if they are unable to get their event publicized.

Singapore New Media is still in the nascent stage and while it has shown promising signs of progress in the last one year moving from commentary-based to find facting-based sites like the Singapore Enquirer, it is too feeble to put up a stiff challenge to the monopoly of news coverage and dissemination currently enjoyed by SPH.

Without full-time properly trained journalists and money to sustain these sites in the long, they will probably either fizzle out or stagnate in the end. In this year alone, a few sites such as Singapurakini and Singapore Cafe have shut down due to lack of time by the blog owners to maintain it.

The new media revolution which has griped our neighbor across the causeway has yet to happen in Singapore. Until then, Singapore civil activists will always be fighting a losing battle on bended knees.

 

DAP politicians arrested at candlelight vigil (19 May 2009)

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