Social Political Blogging: Singapore vs US

Recently, I did an interview with Jude Yew, a Singaporean PhD researcher about the impact of new (or social) media in the past 2006 general elections in Singapore. During the interview, we started teasing out the differences in the social political blogosphere between Singapore and US. Coupled with the observation on the netroots activity in the US Presidential Elections 2008 and the evolution of the Singapore blogosphere after the 2006 elections, some interesting differences emerge from that comparison. 

• Yearly Conferences in US vs Informal Gatherings in Singapore: I follow closely the US political scene (particularly the coming US Presidential elections in 2008) from the sites: DailyKos, Huffington Post and RealClearPolitics everyday.  In the case of DailyKos, they have an annual conference called the "Yearly Kos" where the readers and activists gather every year to discuss major social issues and political activism. In fact, the Democratic party in the US are now debating whether they should abandon their centrist approach in politics towards a more liberal agenda which is core to the party's values. As I was listening to Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKos in the recent "Meet the Press" videocast, some of the members of the DailyKos are working with political activists on the ground, for e.g. congressional and senate races.  In the case of Singapore, with our tight legislation on political parties, it is unlikely that any of the social political blogs can have a conference of such. However, since Singapore is a small country, it is actually easy to catch up informally with other social political bloggers (unless they are overseas) for a cup of coffee. Usually, we end  up discussing other things not related to what we write in the blogs.
  
• Lack of translation from blogs to reality: That comes to my second point. It is exactly the political climate in Singapore that there is a lack of translation of activism except for very few social issues (for e.g. the repeal of Section 377A and cat lovers) from blogs to reality. I share a common view with Alex Au (aka Yawning Bread) that there is an over optimistic view that the internet is the answer to the tipping point for political change in Singapore. In reality, it does not work for a few reasons. First of all, there is no direct translation of activity from social political blogs to the real world. Most of us (including myself) are armchair critics. If Martyn See's video is that effective, the political parties involved should all be helping those poor people out there. Has there been any action taken to help those poor people? Has anyone alerted the authorities that we need to help those people? It is the lack of action that convinces me that the social political blogs in Singapore do not have an influence in the off-line world, maybe until the next election where online videos of rally start circulating again in YouTube. Ultimately, the readership for blogs in Singapore is relatively small (it is far less than 50,000 unique visitors for the most dominant social political blogs) as compared to the US (about half a million unique visitors). In the US, the situation is in the reverse. During the democratic Senate race in US last year, the political blogs coupled with the marketing efforts of left wing democrats caused Joe Lieberman (a senator and ex-vice president nominee) lost the Democratic primary for his race to be a senator.
  
• Declaration of Non-partisanship in Singapore: This is the major distinction I see between the US and Singapore. In the US, you don't need to be so explicit to declare that you are an independent as compared to being a Republican or Democrat. In Singapore, the moderates have to declare themselves as non-partisan in Singapore before commenting on any social and political issue in the open. The reasons could be of the following: (i) fear of treading into dangerous territories or (ii) caution whether they have overstepped the moving goalpost - out of bounds (OB) markers. This follows exactly why we don't see the impact of the internet from the blogosphere to the real world, because Singaporean bloggers who writes about social and political issues tend to be commentators rather than activists (unless they are writing their own political parties blogs). Otherwise, they will be subjected to inflammatory remarks and provocations from the bloggers from the opposing side. In Singapore, political party membership constitutes a primary identity. Hence there is an inherent conflict of interest for a party member to join any non-partisan group (or a blog). Imagine anyone with a political party joins a non-partisan group blog, the person will be constantly be put in a position where his or her motives are being evaluated and worse, make clear of his intentions for each post. It also puts the other social political bloggers without political affiliation in the group (where a card carrying member joined) vulnerable to real world political tactics (for example, defamation suits).

In a recent article comparing the social media between Singapore and Malaysia, James pointed out some fundamental differences on how the bloggers handle their relationship with the government. He noted that the media socialists in Singapore do not take a confrontational approach and seek a middle ground with the authorities to evolve social media as a whole. We are still far from being able to take a step further in encouraging debate and diversity of views in Singapore. I should end with an interesting example that has turned up in the Singapore socio-political blogosphere recently. The Online Citizen (TOC) has recently started experimenting doing a multi-partisan blog (i.e. they got bloggers with different political affiliations to come together) as compared to Singapore Angle which is strictly non-partisan. The evolution of the TOC model will be interesting for the whole political climate in general. The situation may either evolve towards a more cordial political climate among different political parties or it can go exactly the opposite direction.

Comments

[Palisade, The]

Everybody knows there are some parameters that can't be breached by local bloggers. You can't delve too deeply into certain people. But there are others, like the requirement to sound nationalistic, to be 100% polite to party honchos and engage only in "nation-building" or "constructive" dialogue. But a heck of good the "nation building" papers have done for us.

Cordial debate isn't good, because cordiality invites indifference. For people to care, there needs to be a certain degree of aggression, antagonism and assertiveness, all of which are plainly lacking in Singapore blogs. You might care, but being polite about your cause won't further it greatly. Being polite only neuters the point about debate.

Football is popular in Singapore because it gives something for them to argue passionately and fight over. It fills an emotional void. It's never about the sport, the philosophy, or any intellectual element. The same goes for politics.

Local politics has become less than essential to Singaporean hearts, which might have something to do with the fact that it has become a bit of a travesty.

[Observer]

The problem is what Singaporeans are and Singaporeans not changing.

[Andrew Loh]

Hi Bernard,

About your point that there is a lack of translation from blogging to reality. This is premised on the assumption that we know what bloggers are doing in private. Some may indeed have "translated" from a virtual world into the real world.

I personally know a few bloggers who have done that - either in the political sphere or in the social sphere. Granted they are a minority but perhaps this is a seed that is taking root?

Translating it into reality does not only mean getting the political parties involved - as you mentioned on the issue of Martyn's video.

I think the translation here is that of bringing awareness to the issue. And perhaps that is the intention of Martyn?

As for TOC, cordiality is not necessarily the desired result to seek with our "experiment" of multi-partisanship.

I think what is more important is that different sides are able to come together in a single platform and allow the public to see things from different sides.

Whether the discussion is cordial or not is not the priority. The priority is whether we can get past the first step of being in the same room, so to speak.

And in this respect, I am rather glad that TOC has - to a certain extent - been able to do this.

Having said all that, I do agree with you that the socio-political blogosphere in singapore is not going to effect any significant changes in society.

It will take a generation or two. Some people are more optimistic (or idealistic). But having been out there on the ground with the WP, the truth is that the ground out there is a lot different from the ground in here, in this virtual world.

So unless there is some sort of translation or convergence between what is in here and what is out there, I am afraid we are preaching to the choir at the moment.

Perhaps this is something which TOC is trying to change - with a very very small effort.

Regards,
Andrew