3 results
9 - Social Media and Changes in Political Engagement in Singapore
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- By Natalie Pang
- Edited by Aim Sinpeng, Ross Tapsell
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- Book:
- From Grassroots Activism to Disinformation
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 08 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 21 October 2020, pp 167-191
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Summary
Singapore, an island city-state with a population of 5.6 million, reports some of the highest percentage of social media users in Southeast Asia. According to a report on digital users by We Are Social (Kemp 2020), 88 per cent of Singaporeans are online and 79 per cent are active on social media. With fast internet speeds, a highly educated population and a burgeoning digital economy, Singapore's socio-political landscape is really like no other in the Southeast Asian region. While other countries are characterized by highly diverse national versus regional dynamics, structures and institutions, Singapore's one-party led city-state allows for a far more controlled and top-down approach to shaping social media discourse. Singapore's place as a geopolitical powerhouse too is a factor; not just in the region and as a key member of ASEAN, but in terms of its strong relationship with larger powers like China and the United States. This international outlook is especially important for Singapore, which has significant and important diplomatic ties with other countries and a large English-speaking population. Big tech companies like Facebook and Google maintain their large and growing Southeast Asian offices in Singapore, and numerous international dignitaries, academic and business conferences and delegations flow through Singapore which debate the nature of social media discourse and disinformation. To give one example, in 2020 Reuters and Facebook announced an Asia-wide media verification programme and Third- Party Fact-Checking Program based in Singapore, focusing on English language content (Reuters 2020).
Nevertheless, the local context remains key to understanding how social media discourse has evolved in Singapore. This chapter will analyse how key events in Singapore's socio-political history shaped the use of social media for civic and political engagement. In the context of Singapore, events that have engaged citizens on a massive scale in terms of civic and political engagements have been elections. For this reason, the analysis undertaken in this chapter is through the lens of elections in shaping how social media has been used in the country. This chapter argues that the internet, largely through bloggers, was originally a burgeoning tool for alternative news and views in Singapore. It was in this context that social media was adopted.
10 - Mediating Community in Bukit Brown
- Edited by Mike Douglass, Simone Shu-Yeng Chung
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- Book:
- Hard State, Soft City of Singapore
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 29 June 2020, pp 233-250
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Summary
Abstract
This chapter seeks to illustrate the authors’ initiative of deploying mobile communication technologies through the ‘iBBC’ app to locate and reference tombstones of prominent historical personalities in Singapore's Bukit Brown Cemetery. The densely vegetated, 80-year-old former Chinese municipal cemetery filled with more than a hundred thousand graves has been largely neglected, and the traditional Chinese inscriptions written on many of the tombstones are inscrutable to many contemporary visitors. As part of the process of digital interventions, iBBC helps visitors obtain encyclopedic information immediately on-site by using Augmented Reality (AR) to recognize selected tomb monuments. Such interventions are critical in sensitizing the public to the cemetery's cultural heritage.
Keywords: digital heritage, Augmented Reality (AR), computer-mediated community, heritage engagement, Bukit Brown Cemetery
Introduction: Locating Bukit Brown Cemetery
A municipal cemetery established in colonial Singapore for the ethnic Chinese community almost a century ago, Bukit Brown Cemetery has been the final resting place for a number of prominent Chinese community leaders and public personalities. With the passing of time, public knowledge of the location of these sites was gradually lost as tropical jungle reclaimed the premises. On 18 November 2017, the Singapore Heritage Society (SHS) launched the Bukit Brown Wayfinder Trail to direct users to some of the more prominent ethnic Chinese community leaders and public personalities buried at the Bukit Brown Cemetery. Before the development of the WayFinder Trail, there have been several attempts to support the effort to save Bukit Brown Cemetery from being redeveloped, including developing guided walks for the public in the cemetery. Many of the tombs are either severely weathered beyond recognition or, if identifiable, are often marked with vestigial cultural-linguistic references that are unfamiliar to the contemporary public. More than the heritage value inherent in the cemetery, however, it was the government's announcement of an eight-lane expressway project that would destroy the cemetery that attracted public interest in the site. Since its announcement, citizens and civil society groups have taken action, from advocating for alternative development plans to volunteering to document the cemetery, in light of its impending end.
This chapter details one of the many attempts to support this activism and engagement of the public with the cemetery using iBBC, a mobile application (app) purposed to harness innovations in AR to assist the general public as they navigate through a densely forested area of tombstones.
6 - The social element of digital libraries
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- By Natalie Pang, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
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- Book:
- Digital Libraries and Information Access
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 08 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 30 September 2012, pp 83-96
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Summary
Introduction
Since the 1990s much interest has been generated in digital libraries. This has led to several digital libraries conferences and journals, such as the International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries, the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries and the International Journal on Digital Libraries. Other than researchers, library practitioners have also shown much enthusiasm in digital libraries, with various initiatives by libraries to make digital libraries widely accessible, digitization projects and the development of document management systems. Over the years, digital libraries have broadened in their conceptualization and offer different connotations for both practitioners and researchers, although these meanings may not always be mutually exclusive.
Such a broad conceptualization of digital libraries is not accidental, according to Borgman (1999). She offered the explanation that research on digital libraries had attracted a large number of scholars from various disciplines, such as information retrieval, library studies, archives and computer science. This community, consisting of practitioners and researchers, has worked at different stages of the life cycle of digital libraries, in both theoretical and applied aspects. This has further led to the emergence of several definitions of digital libraries, as shown in Table 6.1. In Borgman's (1999) paper, more sources discussing each definition can be found, but for the purposes of this chapter only those that are the most encompassing of the core elements of each definition are selected.
In addition to the definitions provided by communities of both researchers and practitioners, Borgman (1999) also pointed out that none of these definitions recognizes the many digital databases that exist on the world wide web, CD-ROMs and the hidden web such as LexisNexis. Some of these databases may be viewed as ‘incomplete’ content collections, given that they may not be organized around the information needs of specific communities, and lack standards and cataloguing. Moreover, the world wide web is not an institution and therefore would not fit in with the definition of library practitioners. However, since Borgman's paper, various institutions have initiated projects to carry out large-scale digitization and made the results available on the world wide web.