Political Activism through Facebook and Online Games in Singapore

Krems.
The final speaker in this EDEM 2010 session is Marko Skoric, who shifts our focus to Singapore and away from explicitly political spaces: rather, his interest is in investigating emerging platforms for online sociability and entertainment - like Facebook and (online) games. Such spaces constitute a third place for their users to gather.

Facebook has a substantial civic potential, and several studies have documented that potential, focussing both on everyday generic use of Facebook and on specific political pages within it. Similarly, various civic activities are happening in online games and immersive 3D environments; such games can also act as labs for practicing civic skills - through deliberately serious games but also through others.

Traditional media in Singapore remain relatively tightly controlled by the government, but there are relatively few restrictions on the Internet; because of its relative youth as a nation, Singapore also has relatively weak civic traditions. This has led to the emergence of a number of notable civic activities organised through online and social media in recent years - a student protest against censorship in 2008, a gay rights protest in 2009, and a women's rights action in 2009, for example.

How are such activities related to Internet users' overall activities - does Facebook use and online game playing correlate with the intensity of people's political participation? Marko and his colleagues carried out a representative survey of Singaporean users; at the time, some 65% of the 18-25 year old group were Facebook users, and 61% were playing online games. Facebook users appeared to be more politically active, and intensive users were also more active both online and in traditional ways.

Users who were active in civic gameplay were also politically active more generally in online environments. And there was a correlation between online and traditional political participation - meaning that political activity online does not undermine offline activism, but that the two appear to reinforce one another. Additionally, online-active users were also paying more attention to traditional media - so again, such use does not appear to undermine traditional media.

So, people are not simply 'wasting their time' online - there is a link between online and offline political participation. Indeed, online participation seems to be adriver of offline participation - and in the process, use of traditional media also appears to be strengthened. However, it will be necessary to investigate more closely how specific platforms impact - to move away from a focus simply on 'social media' as a generic category, in other words, but

Technorati : EDEM 2010, Facebook, Singapore, e-democracy, online games, participation, social media
Del.icio.us : EDEM 2010, Facebook, Singapore, e-democracy, online games, participation, social media