9 - Social Media and Changes in Political Engagement in Singapore

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.