Singabloodypore

• Tracy McVeigh
• The Observer, Sunday 3 May 2009

 

Burma has been judged the worst country in the world for online restrictions in a report looking at the repression faced by bloggers.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which has compiled a list of the 10 worst countries to be a blogger, says it wants to shame those governments which are most aggressively attempting to curtail and censor web activity.

Bloggers inside Burma proved invaluable in passing out information during the September 2007 uprisings, leading to the ruling military junta blocking the internet completely for a period.

Iran, where a young blogger died in prison last month, was named as the second-worst country. Omid Mir Sayafi died in Tehran's Evin jail, which is known to hold political prisoners, after being arrested for allegedly insulting Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a blog he posted.

The "roll of dishonour" goes on to name Syria, where internet cafe owners were ordered to report on customers; Cuba, where 21 bloggers are in jail; Saudi Arabia, where an estimated 400,00 sites are blocked; Vietnam; Tunisia; China, where the most comprehensive online controls are in place; Turkmenistan, where the nation's first internet cafe was guarded by troops; and Egypt where more than 100 bloggers were detained last year alone.

All of the countries have burgeoning blogging cultures despite extensive monitoring, censorship and repression by the authorities

INTERNET DISCOURSES AND THE 2006 GENERAL ELECTION
Working Paper No.150
August 2008

By Terence Lee and Cornelius Kan

ABSTRACT

Singapore’s technological prowess as one of the most networked city, society and nation is reflected in most statistical data. Indeed, Singapore is relentless in its pursuit of making technological and Internet history/ies. In its latest Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) master plan, Singapore plans to integrate all aspects of info-communications into a single ultra-fast broadband platform that will be capable of delivering ultra-fast Internet. This paper provides a brief update on the extent of technological and Internet deployment. More importantly, it looks at how the Internet has further developed by analysing the events surrounding the 2006 General Elections in Singapore. Each election in Singapore is arguably a key regulatory milestone for the Internet because new rules are either invoked via new or revised legislation or new warnings issued to keep a lid on the effectiveness of new technologies. While Singapore has undoubtedly made ‘history’ in its regulatory approaches and strategies in managing the liberatory impulses, with outright censorship of racial, religious and pornographic – and, since 11 September 2001 (9/11), terrorist-related – websites making headlines around the world, it has also been able to score impressively in the technological competencies of its citizens. In the discussion that follows, we examine the current state of the Singaporean blogosphere and considers if the regulatory landscape has been altered following pressures brought about by blogs and other alternative websites. It argues that the implementation of both overt and subtle controls of alternative political websites as well as heavy-handed actions by the authorities to rein in on errant Internet users and bloggers, along with the occasional talking-down of the significance of the Singaporean blogosphere, have accentuated the ambivalence that the Internet in Singapore has (re)presented.

the complete pdf file can be downloaded here.

Arbitrarily Combining the Social Network Approach with the Ethnographic Approach

Paper presented by Steven McDermott (aka soci) at the Communication Networks on the Web 18 - 19 December 2008, Amsterdam School of Communications Research, University of Amsterdam. Event sponsored by the European Science Foundation.


Arbitrarily Combining the Social Network Approach with the Ethnographic Approach

The presentation made at the Communication Networks on the Web, 18-19 Dec 2008 in Amsterdam by me. The two day workshop was sponsored by the European Science Foundation.


Arbitrarily Combining the Social Network Approach with the Ethnographic Approach

The Singapore blogosphere 2008 a detail of two factions, the red lines refer to links between the factions. A detail from a larger image that contains 1239 nodes.

[All 1,239 of the Networked Singapore Blogosphere 2008]

By Lin Quan Zhong

SINGAPORE - When Lee Hsien Loong four years ago followed in his father's footsteps as Singapore's prime minister, many hoped he would break with Lee Kuan Yew's authoritarian tendencies when the younger man encouraged citizens to "feel free to express diverse views, pursue unconventional ideas, or simply be different".

It's now apparent that hopes the younger Lee's government would take a more relaxed approach to political criticism and open debate were set too high. While Singapore's restrictions on the mainstream media are nothing new, legal action recently taken against a foreign blogger who criticized the island state's justice system has raised fears that those tight controls are now being applied in cyberspace.

Contains 1,239 sites. This is by no means the final say on the matter, merely my current position. I have recently received the data and I have begun running a few social network analysis diagnostics on the hyper link network extracted last month.

Key players if attempting fragmentation are:
1. wordpress.com
2. flickr.com
8. creativecommons.org
12. facebook.com
13. blogdrive.com
15. photobucket.com
20. ads.blogdrive.com
21. multiply.com
26. feedburner.com
30. nus.edu.sg
32. friendster.com
37. sgblogawards.omy.sg
127. apple.com
190. chatter.flooble.com
250. zaobao.com
567. exchange.nus.edu.sg
621. weikiat.net
752. clappingtrees.com
766. yourtypingbiz.info
809. hrc.org

The vast majority of the sites in the list are corporate owned, higher education or state owned media initiatives. The only exception of a US owned - The Human Rights Campaign [which is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality] and weikiat.net a personal blog.

So is the 'insurgency' so often referred to by the PAP that it requires a 'counter-insurgency' a myth?

For those very few out there who might be interested I thought it only polite to inform you of what I have been up to for the last few months. Well I have provided a summary below and at the end of the article you can get the address to email me if you want access to the entire document. You might have to wait a few days so please be patient.

Summary

This paper analyses the socio-political implications of blogs in Singapore. The study is situated within the wider framework of the internet being heralded as the greatest force for democratisation the world has ever seen (Pitrodi 1993), and at the same time another means of disseminating propaganda, fear and intimidation (Rodan 1997). Pitrodi's claim that the internet will create democracy is founded on an increase in political participation that it allows. Here it is argued that the increase in political participation that the internet allows does not necessarily result in democratisation. The non-democratic nature of Singapore society inhibits the development of an online Habermasian public sphere. However, rather than acting as a tool for the dissemination of propaganda, fear and intimidation, the internet acts as a means of reinforcing the dominant ideology of social cohesion or survivalism. My specific research questions are: How involved in creating a counter public based on an alternative ideology is the Singapore socio-political blogosphere? Which blogs are central to this process? Which blogs are more interconnected? Are there cliques? What styles of discourse appear in the Singapore socio-political blogosphere?

The 'authoritarian' nature of the Singapore regime is outlined by applying non-democratic theory. The normative ideal of the Habermasian public sphere is applied to blogs in general and then to the Singapore socio-political blogosphere. It explores the extent to which the internet is being used by Singaporeans to construct a public sphere open to all.

This ethnography of the Singapore socio-political blogosphere looks in detail at how the social events are experienced and in turn shaped by social actors. As a researcher with extensive experience of living in Singapore and as a member of the Singapore socio-political blogosphere for over four years, I question how the Singapore socio-political blogosphere is developing in relation to the dominant ideology of 'survivalism' in Singapore.

The textual data that is analysed is collected using two overlapping approaches. The first is a list compiled by the bloggers within the network and the second approach utilised online software for creating maps of online social networks. The data, analysed using Fairclough's (2003) critical discourse analysis approach is that of a corpus of twenty-nine articles written about an event that occurred within the Singapore socio-political blogosphere in July of 2006.

Hines (2000) argues that there is a place for an ethnographic approach “as a means to question assumptions inherent in the predictions of radically different futures”. The methodological considerations of doing an online ethnography are investigated including an attempt to overcome the technologically determined focus of previous research. The researcher is clearly visible within the network of bloggers being analysed and also appears in the textual data. The IP addresses and real names of those involved are not made known unless they appear in the textual data. The Singapore socio-political blogosphere in terms of the styles or characters being used by bloggers in their texts are wide and varied with bloggers shifting between styles, akin to a 'citizen' style.

Although Singapore socio-political blogosphere is close to the Habermasian ideal of the public sphere, it is a flawed one at present in that it does not provide an alternative to the dominant ideology of 'survivalism'. I uncovered a total of eight different styles of discourse employed by the various bloggers within the corpus of data. A politician style of discourse occurred 49 times, personal 39, citizen 28, academic 22, journalist 19, activist 10, expert 9 and priest 1. The most dominant form of ideology was that of social cohesion which scored 127 occurrences followed by a discourse of globalism (48) and anti-globalisation (22).

Those blogs that do engage in creating a public based on an alternative ideology are Diary of a Singapore Mind, Heavenly Sword, MrBrown, Xenoboy, Singapore Election, A Writers Blog, i-Speak, Molly Meek, e pur si muove and Post Hoc Ergo. The frequency at which such discourse occurs is very limited. The blogs that are more interconnected with at least 10 or more incoming links from within the Singapore socio-political blogosphere are Singabloodypore, Singapore Angle, Yawning Bread, MrBrown and e pur si muove. Careful scrutiny of the map generated during the data collection period indicates that there are no cliques.

This study of a single event provides limited support to the position that the non-democratic nature of Singapore society inhibits the development of an online Habermasian public sphere. However, rather than acting as a tool for the dissemination of propaganda, fear and intimidation, the internet acts as a means of reinforcing the dominant ideology of social cohesion or survivalism.

To gain access to the complete paper you can either email and I can send you the document or I can provide you with the password to access the document here.