Mr Brown, the new age rebel in the online regime.
The advance of technology and the shift from the electronic age to the information age has brought much changes to society. One well known personality in Singapore is the infamous Mr. Brown who used to write a weekly article for the ‘Today’ Newspaper before he was apparently axed for ‘crossing the line’ with too controversial articles. He’s now a celebrity blogger of some sort who released podcasts for people’s entertainment. I mention this as apart from his usual humorous takes on life in Singapore, he touches commonly on politics and the actions of the ruling political parties in Singapore. And Mr. Brown is just the first and most outright example for me when it comes to how the Internet and this mass media can change politics in Singapore, and how likewise, politics can change the Internet and mass media. Along with the Internet has come greater accessibility and conveying of information, yet it also allows for censorship of information.
As mentioned above, Mr. Brown is just one form of political humor that has spawned out from the Internet. We receive political humor in our emails in the form of videos, audio files all the time. We have Mr. Brown podcasts that have touched on various political matters, such as government’s actions in regards to politician James Gomez’s genuine mistake of forgetting to submit his application form to run for constituency. We have various spoofs of National Day songs or even original songs such as the one by Dick Lee or Hossan Leong that have been widely circulated, which ridicule some government policies in a subtle manner.
In addition to political humor, we have blogs, informative websites, file-sharing websites as another avenue. During the 2006 elections, the large number of blogs were set up specifically in regards to the elections to comment on the ongoing events. Recently, the SDP website posted the courtroom dialogues between MM Lee Kuan Yew and Dr. Chee of the SDP during the defamation lawsuit, seemingly with the intention of drawing attention to the incoherent responses given by MM Lee.
But yet at the same time, politics can affect the Internet and mass media. With the Internet as the medium and just a few Internet Service Providers in Singapore, it allows for censorship of websites. At the moment, no political websites that I know of have been censored, however, the government has shown its capability and power in banning websites by barring Singaporeans from accessing various pornographic websites. Hence, if need be, the government can simply bar access to political websites too. Though, ways around the barring of websites exist, I believe that the general population would not know how to do so.
Also, as there are a few Internet Service Providers, it is possible for the government to track down the IP addresses of people who post undesirable information on websites or blogs. As seen in the actions of the Japanese animation company that tracked down illegal downloaders of their animations, it is possible for the Internet Service Providers to give out the IP addresses to identify these people. Hence, it would be foolish to think that we are truly anonymous online. As we have seen, the government has been known to sue individuals who have posted undesirable information on their blogs, such as Gopalan Nair. (Though this was not done under anonymity, as stated above, anonymity is not truly possible.)
In line with being unable to be truly anonymous online and liable to being sued for undesirable information posted. There is a government policy in Singapore that prevents anonymity in regards to the mass media. Any article sent in to the media requires identification in the form of their full name, IC number and address.
Hence as can be seen, it works both ways in regards to how politics and the Internet/Mass Media shape each other in Singapore. I do wonder if any government agency will be alerted about this blog post after I click ‘Publish’.
