Parodic Self-Censorship in Singaporean Online Discussion Fora

Canberra.
The final presenter in this session at ANZCA 2010 is Michael Galvin, whose focus is on Singaporean politics - and he begins by pointing to Manuel Castells's discussion of power and counterpower in the network society during his 2006 ICA keynote. Castells's proposition is that the development of interactive horizontal communication has contributed to the rise of 'mass self-communication', shifting the public sphere from the institutional realm to the new communications space.

Michael's study applies this thesis to the online site for citizen journalism of the Straits Times newspaper in Singapore, STOMP. While the Times is essentially an organ of the Singaporean government, which has long openly promoted self-censorship in the media, this site for horizontal interactive communication - according to Castells - should provide a space for the operation of counterpower; for Castells, this is a given and indeed a result of a 'natural law' of society.

STOMP, or Straits Times Online Mobile Print, was launched in 2006, and was an instant hit with users in Singapore; in 2008, it registered some 10 million page views. Users can send SMSs or MMSs to the 75557 mobile number to report public misbehaviour (wrongly parked cars, people kissing in public) and go to the online site itself to discuss current issues and upload their own content. The site is positioned as a 'safe platform' for Singaporeans to engage in public discourse, and says that any content that is not sexually or religiously offensive will be posted.

However, it is a site that is fraught with contradictions, and contributions may be subject to significant self-censorship before they are even submitted, given the political and media climate in Singapore. The research project examined discussion threads on the 'Talkback' forum on the site to test the nature of discussion on the site; by mid-2010, there were some 45,000 discussion threads on the site, sometimes with over 100,000 individual replies and over 1 million views. Operating on such threads are the extrinsic formal power of STOMP moderators who delete 'inappropriate' material, and the intrinsic informal power of self-censorship.

Users may apply smilies to their messages, and there is a sophisticated use of such emoticons to convey the hidden meaning behind apparently innocuous messages; euphemisms (e.g. 'drink kopi' for ending up in jail for making unacceptable political statements) are also used and understood widely. This creates a sense of parodic self-censorship. Indeed, there is a widespread use of euphemistic 'out of bounds' or 'OB'-markers in Singapore (a term borrowed from golf, notably).

For example, 'old sword' is a common term used for Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister (because of the saying that an old sword that still cuts well is still a good sword) - leading to all sorts of metaphors; 'FT' (foreign talent) is an ironic term for foreign workers; and 'white hotel' is code for Changi prison. Some of this links back to the image of the fool or trickster - users deliberately portray themselves as fools in order to get away with more critical statements about politicians and the Lee family. 'Fool' characters in this online discourse also serve to alert users to the attention of autorities and suggest that they stop before getting themselves into trouble.

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