Representing harmony and diversity: media representations of multiculturalism and ethnicity in Singapore

This article investigates multiculturalism and ethnicity in Singapore. The study conducted a qualitative content analysis of articles appearing in the Straits Times newspaper over a three month period in 2010. It was found that multicultural harmony tended to be represented as unnatural, fragile, and requiring government intervention. There also tended to be a focus on distinct and fixed ethnic identities, reflecting an essentialist understanding of ethnicity. These beliefs about the nature of multiculturalism and ethnic identity were reflected in the coverage of three major social issues. These were the perceived needs to maintain the ethnic composition of Singapore’s population, efforts to prevent cultural corruption or neglect, and concerns about the impact of immigration on multicultural harmony.     

The Google voter: search engines and elections in the new media ecology

This paper explores key Internet search trends for electoral information vis-à-vis the broader media ecology in the UK and the US. An innovative methodology is introduced that maps the informational trajectories of key election events by combining Google Trends data linked to significant news events during the campaigns. While the research found spikes of search that suggested a seemingly trivial event in the US could drive voters to search out deeper information on related policy issues, the study did not find the same phenomenon in the UK. This invites a reflection on the opportunities available to Internet users/voters in the changing informational landscape and how scholars can leverage Google Trends records to better understand how voters seek information in new and evolving media ecologies.     

Social media in the 2011 Egyptian uprising

This paper uses Gallup poll data to assess two narratives that have crystallized around the 2011 Egyptian uprising: (1) New electronic communications media constituted an important and independent cause of the protests in so far as they enhanced the capacity of demonstrators to extend protest networks, express outrage, organize events, and warn comrades of real‐time threats. (2) Net of other factors, new electronic communications media played a relatively minor role in the uprising because they are low‐cost, low‐risk means of involvement that attract many sympathetic onlookers who are not prepared to engage in high‐risk activism. Examining the independent effects of a host of factors associated with high‐risk movement activism, the paper concludes that using some new electronic communications media was associated with being a demonstrator. However, grievances, structural availability, and network connections were more important than was the use of new electronic communications media in distinguishing demonstrators from sympathetic onlookers. Thus, although both narratives have some validity, they must both be qualified.     

Producing and reconstructing knowledge on China in Singapore: perspectives from the academics and mass media

In Singapore, intellectuals, especially those in media and education, are considered as the driving force of formatting public opinion over the social imagination of China and Chineseness. This article, largely based on oral histories of some Singaporean scholars and media professionals and memoirs of related figures, analyzes the choice and acquisition of their knowledge on China. Through the analysis and comparison of their construction of knowledge on China, this article also discusses the accuracy of their understanding of China and how such understandings were formed along with their personal experiences from domestic socialization, education, and professional accumulation. The authors consequently map out the process of how public intellectuals from mass media and academia transform their knowledge imagination of China into the professional opinions that help to reconstruct and shift Singaporean’s impression and understandings of China.     

Social media and organizational visibility: A sample of Fortune 500 corporations

This study explores the factors that drive organizational social media visibility. Using a sample of Fortune 500 companies and influential non-profit organizations, findings reveal that mainstream media coverage significantly affects social media visibility whereas organizations’ social media use patterns have limited impact on overall organizational visibility. Implications for both the practice of public relations and further theorizing about social media studies are discussed.     

Social media adoption among Turkish public relations professionals: A survey of practitioners

Social media is emerging as an important public relations tool and empowers two way symmetrical communications with publics and stakeholders. PR professionals are confronted with the swift rise of social media that forces practitioners to pay due and timely attention. They are not only excited about utilizing these tools together with conventional media, but are also excited about speaking directly to their publics and stakeholders without the involvement of any intermediaries. Through the perspective of UTAUT model, this paper examines the social media adoption of PR professionals in Turkey and how they employ social media tools both internally and externally. We employed a web-based questionnaire to 126 PR professionals who are members of the Turkish Public Relations Association. Findings reveal that Turkish PR professionals highly appreciate the importance of social media in recent PR practice. However, not all social media tools are equally adopted; e-mail is the most, and virtual world applications are the least adopted social media. It is also found that in the future, social networks are expected to be the most important social media, while corporate web sites get the second and mobile phone (PDA) applications get the third rank.     

Social media,temporality, and the legitimacy of protest

ABSTRACT

This article examines how the rise of social media affects the temporal relations of protest communication. Following a relational approach, it traces how regimes of temporality are constructed and transformed through the entanglement between media infrastructures, institutions, and practices. These regimes involve particular ‘speeds’ -the rate at which media content is renewed – as well as ‘temporal orientations’ towards present, past, and future. The article questions how specific temporal regimes enable or complicate protestors’ efforts to gain public legitimacy. A large body of research suggests that it is difficult to gain such legitimacy in the mainstream news cycle, in which protest is primarily covered from an ‘episodic’ perspective, ignoring larger protest issues. The present analysis suggests that despite the participatory affordances of social media, it has not become any easier to generate sustained public attention for structural protest issues. Drawing examples from three case studies, it demonstrates that the dominant mode of social media protest communication reproduces and reinforces the episodic focus of the mainstream news. While other temporal perspectives on protest are certainly developed in the alternative and mainstream news, as well as in activist social media communication, these do not fundamentally challenge the prevailing temporal orientation towards the present, towards the event.     

Social media and Umbrella Movement: insurgent public sphere in formation

The study examines the role of social media during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong that lasted from September to December 2014. By interviewing a random sample of 1011 respondents over the telephone before the end of the Umbrella Movement, it was found that social media had become an insurgent public sphere (IPS) in the protest movement. Data showed that acquisition of political news through social media was related positively to support for the Umbrella Movement and adversely with satisfaction and trust of established political authorities, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, the Hong Kong police, and the Chinese central government. The insurgent public sphere role of social media, its implications, and likely development vis-à-vis the state and the market are discussed.     

Protest avatars as memetic signifiers: political profile pictures and the construction of collective identity on social media in the 2011 protest wave

Protest avatars, digital images that act as collective symbols for protest movements, have been widely used by supporters of the 2011 protest wave, from Egypt to Spain and the United States. From photos of Egyptian martyr Khaled Said, to protest posters and multiple variations of Anonymous' mask, a great variety of images have been adopted as profile pictures by Internet users to express their support for various causes and protest movements and communicate it to all their Internet peers. In this article, I explore protest avatars as forms of identification of protest movements in a digital era. I argue that protest avatars can be described as ‘memetic signifiers’ because (a) they are marked by a vagueness and inclusivity that distinguishes them from traditional protest symbols and (b) lend themselves to be used as memes for viral diffusion on social networks. In adopting these icons, participants experience a collective fusion in an online crowd, whose gathering is manifested in the very ‘masking’ of participants behind protest avatars. These forms of collective identification, while powerful in the short term, can however prove quite volatile, with Internet users often discarding avatars with relative ease, raising the question whether they can provide durable foundational elements of contemporary social movements.     

Inclusion in Singapore: a social model analysis of disability policy

A rhetoric of inclusion and increased social spending within a global context of austerity cuts has dominated disability policies in Singapore today. However, there is a lack of academic works that take a critical disability studies view towards the analysis of disability in Singapore. This work aims to address this gap by adopting a critical social model-led analysis of disability policies in Singapore. The article examines the rhetoric of inclusion, how disability is defined and its implementation through various policies in Singapore. It will examine the underpinnings of disability in Singapore today and its impact on the lives of disabled people.     

From connective to collective action: internet elections as a digital tool to centralize and formalize protest in Russia

Over the past decade, an extensive body of literature has emerged on the question of how new communication technologies can facilitate new modes of organizing protest. However, the extant research has tended to focus on how digitally enabled protest operates. By contrast, this study investigates why, how, and with what consequences a heavily digitally enabled ‘connective action network’ has transitioned over time to a more traditional ‘collective action network’ [Bennett, W. L., Segerberg, A. (2013). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 47]. Specifically, the article scrutinizes the trajectory of the Russian protests ‘For Fair Elections.’ This wave of street protests erupted after the allegedly fraudulent parliamentary elections of December 2011 and continued into 2013. As is argued, the protests were initially organized as an ‘organizationally enabled connective action network.’ However, after eight months of street protests, Russian activists reorganized the network into a more centralized, more formalized ‘organizationally brokered collective action network.’ In order to implement this transition, they deployed ‘Internet elections’ as a cardinally new digital tactic of collective action. Between 20 and 22 October 2012, more than 80,000 activists voted online in order to create a new leadership body for the entire protest movement, the ‘Coordination Council of the Opposition.’ As the study has found, activists implemented this transition because, within the specific Russian socio-political context, enduring engagement and stable networks appeared crucial to the movement’s long-term success. With regard to achieving these goals, the more formalized collective action network appeared superior to the connective action form.     

Social media,small businesses,and the control of information

Much of the discussion regarding privacy and social media has focused on consumers of social media, but social media is also popular among businesses. This article explores the privacy tensions of small business owners using social media to disseminate and gather information to better engage and serve their customers while maintaining customer trust. Drawing on Communication Privacy Management theory [Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, Petronio, S. (2007). Translational research endeavors and the practices of communication privacy management. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 35(3), 218–222], we argue that there is a dialectical tension between control and engagement. As information is disclosed via social media, it creates new opportunities for engagement, surveillance, and commodification. Based on group interviews with small business owners, we identify the kinds of information that small businesses must manage as participants on social media platforms and the privacy rules they develop.     

Social media,political expression,and participation in Confucian Asia

This study reviews and analyzes the published empirical research on the role of social media in promoting political expression and participation in Confucian Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. In addition to providing a narrative review of the literature, our analyses show clear numerical estimates of the relationships among different types of social media use (i.e., informational, expressive, relational, and recreational), political expression, and participation in Confucian states. The findings reiterate the importance of the expressive use of social media, showing its moderately strong relationship with participation. The findings also show weak positive relationships with informational and relational uses. We also examine the role of political systems in these relationships and conclude that the strongest relationships are in democratic states, followed by hybrid and authoritarian systems.     

Social media,empathy and interpersonal skills: social work students’ reflections in the digital era

ABSTRACT

This paper examines second-year social work students’ (n = 19) reflections on empathy as part of an interpersonal skills course at a regional university in Australia. Students were asked to consider their personal, online and classroom experiences, before responding to a reflective learning prompt: ‘Online communication is killing connection: (the Facebook Like symbol) does not equal empathy’. Qualitative analysis of their responses identified tensions between students’ engagement with social media and their developing understandings of empathy. Students reported an ease and confidence in the use of social media, but were also aware of the risks associated with perceived anonymity, shifting boundaries and an absence of audial and verbal cues in establishing context and quality of communication. Their reflections also suggested that the range of stimulus material used in the interpersonal skills course—including podcasts—had increased their social media awareness and their desire to improve their online interpersonal skills. The implications for professional and pedagogical objectives, as well as curriculum design are discussed.     

Social media use and democratic engagement: a comparative study of Hong Kong,Taiwan, and China

Recent studies in political communication have found a generally positive role of social media in democratic engagement. However, most research on youth’s social media use in relation to their political engagement has been conducted in the context of American and European democracies. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining the effects of the uses and structural features of social media on democratic engagement in three different Asian political systems: Taiwan (young liberal democracy); Hong Kong (partial democracy); and China (one-party state). The findings showed that sharing political information and connections with public actors consistently predicted offline participation (i.e., civic and political participation) and online participation (i.e., online political expression and online activism) in the three political systems. Although social media use for news, network size, and network structure did not consistently predict political outcomes, they played significant roles in influencing different engagement in the three political systems. The comparative approach used in this study helped to demonstrate the role of social media in the democratic engagement of youth in three places with similar cultures but different political contexts.     

Making the news: environmental NGOs and their media visibility in China

This study was conducted to examine the factors that affect the media visibility of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGO) in China. Specifically, we examine the ways in which environmental advocacy and media use behaviors are related to the level of attention an ENGO receives from news media. Using data derived from a content analysis of 2158 media reports by 171 ENGOs across China and other sources, the results showed that ENGOs that have an official website and use Weibo garner more media attention than those who do not have a website or use Weibo. Most importantly, the results indicate differences between environmental activism and environmental consumerism in facilitating the media visibility of different types of ENGOs. Compared to government-organized ENGOs, grassroots ENGOs benefit more from participating in environmental consumerist advocacy and having an official website. The findings demonstrate the importance of using various strategies to increase organizational visibility in news media and highlighting the differences between using websites, Weibo, and WeChat in facilitating the media visibility of ENGOs in China.     

Corruption in the politicized university: lessons for Ukraine's 2010 presidential elections

This article argues that corruption is used on a systematic basis as a mechanism of direct and indirect administrative control from the state level down to local authorities and administrations of public and private institutions of higher education. Informal approval of corrupt activities in exchange for loyalty and compliance with the regime was commonplace in the former Soviet Union. This article explains how corrupt regimes maximize their position in terms of loyalty and compliance using the example of the 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine, which later became known as the Orange Revolution. The 2010 presidential elections and their aftermath pose new challenges to those aspiring to power. This article presents mechanisms by which political bureaucracies politicize universities in order to influence students and channel their electoral power during presidential campaigns.     

产业升级与空间布局：新加坡工业发展的历程与经验

新加坡通过不断调整工业政策和适时进行产业升级,用40多年的时间走完了发达国家100多年的工业化进程,并首创以工业园区为主导的开发模式,从而成为众多发展中国家学习的标杆城市。本文梳理了新加坡在不同发展时期的产业政策和空间布局的演变历程,并总结新加坡工业发展的经验,以期为当前中国的产业升级和城市发展提供有益的参考。     

Disability inclusive elections in Africa: a systematic review of published and unpublished literature

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities underscores the equal right of persons with disabilities to participate in political life. However, in Africa they are often unable to exercise their right to vote. This study sought to systematically review available evidence on inclusive elections in Africa. Findings showed that although most African countries ratified disability-focused legislation and proclaimed equal opportunities, the implementation of the legislation varies across the continent. Barriers to political participation can occur at any electoral stage and can be broadly categorised into three groups: lack of education and financial resources; stigma and negative social attitudes; and inaccessible physical infrastructure.     

Hybrid social and news media protest events: from #MarchinMarch to #BusttheBudget in Australia

Public protest events are now both social media and news media events. They are deeply entangled, with news media actors – such as journalists or news organisations – directly participating in the protest by tweeting about the event using the protest hashtag; and social media actors sharing news items published online by professional news agencies. Protesters have always deployed tactics to engage the media and use news media agencies’ resources to amplify their reach, with the dual aim of mobilising new supporters and adding their voice to public, mediatised debate. When protest moves between a physical space and a virtual space, the interactions between protesters and media stop being asynchronous or post hoc and turn instantaneous. In this new media-protest ecosystem, traditional media are still relevant sources of information and legitimacy, yet this dynamic is increasingly underpinned by a hybrid interdependency between traditional news and social media sources. In this paper we focus on an anti-austerity government movement that arose in Australia in early 2014 and was mobilised as a series of social media driven, connective action protest events. We show that there is a complex symbiotic interdependency between the movement and the traditional media for recognition and amplification of initial protest events, but that over time as media interest wanes, the movements’ network becomes disconnected and momentum is lost. This suggests that the active role traditional media play in protest events is being underestimated in the current research agenda on connective action.