Proposed platform for Citizen Journalism in Singapore

 

Aim:

To establish a platform where ALL Singapore residents can effectively be their own journalists telling their own stories  – and getting heard by everyone. Citizen Journalism : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

 

This platform can also serve as a news source for other blogs/websites/mainstream media.

 

Background & Premise:

If you look at most of Singapore’s alternative news blogs, you would find that they are BIG on commentary, but very small on breaking news. Most blogs rely on news provided by the mainstream news companies for news, which they then offer alternative views on. Where international news is concerned, there are many sources. Where LOCAL news is concerned, it’s just SPH and Mediacorp. Or rather, it’s just, the State sanctioned news that gets through.  

Many people agree that we need INDEPENDENT journalists who are thorough enough and have the integrity to report truth as it is, but both money and willing journalists are lacking in this small country. Occasionally, bloggers have become news makers eg. With TOC breaking news about the stranded workers. Or occasionally , we have bloggers exposing their 2-timing lovers. People with genuine news that goes unreported in the mainstream news either just complain to their coffeeshop network, or else they blog about it, but their blog remains undiscovered by the high-traffic online news blogs.

 

Methodology:

We need a system where, when something happens to you, you no longer need to wait for a talented journalist to tell the world your story – you can do it yourself.

 

My proposal is to have a website (call it http://www.getnews.org.sg/ ?) where people can post their stories directly, under standard preset categories  – Finance, Education, Housing, Kenna Dumped etc.  People have to be allowed to post directly, so that voice and power remains in the hands of the public. We have preset filters against the list of vulgarities. We do not want to have moderators to delete anything, and open up the potential for abuse of power. Similar to the Wikipedia concept.

To enable readers to read interesting news, and not empty rants (since there WILL be a lot of these), viewers can rate articles according to 1. Recommended Read Index     2. Empty Rant Index.
So stuff that rates highly on the Recommended Read Index will be listed right on top, and featured in the “Recommended Reads Section” and Empty Rants will be listed right at the bottom. All this is done automatically. Very much like the You-tube / Amazon etc rankings of stuff.  

Viewers also rate the piece as a 1. News  or   2. Views   . So that people who want to read News and not personal opinions can do a Filtered Search for what they want.  We’ll put up a request on the submission page for News rather than Views (cos most blogs are doing that already!)

 

To cater to the internet-illiterate, we can have a NewsLine, where we have a 1800 number for people to call. Either we have people answer the calls to post, or we have some automated system that recognizes voice and converts them to text and posts them automatically, or we can have a voice mail system which gets posted on the web as “audio-posts”. Sort of a news radio. The same listener ratings apply as they do for text-posts above. Video posts also welcome.

 

We can have an office where people who feel they need to talk to someone personally can come down. For security and protection, we can have screens for people who want privacy (the Catholic confessional concept)

 

There will be NO copyright. All stories can be reproduced, and hopefully can go viral, if it’s really important stuff

 

Marketing :

We can get supportive, high-traffic websites to market the website to the internet-savvy people.

We can get supportive local magazines to advertise

We can get NGOs to distribute name cards to vulnerable groups like

We can get supportive shops to display our cards

(I hate this but…) We can spam mailboxes

(I hate this too) but we can distribute flyers outside MRTS

 

Funding:

We need funding to pay people to answer the phone, meet some people, maintain the website.  We need funding to maintain the website. We need funding for marketing. Donors can choose where they want their money to go.

 

While unfortunately, we need to depend on generous angels in the start-up phase, eventually, the Obama model would be ideal.

 

We limit all donations where the donor can be known to $200. Donations through credit card online, internet transfers, checks, cash , whatever.  Anything above $200 MUST be anonymous (Hmm not sure technically how) . The reason is that we do not want to get to the point where big donors manipulate the running and content of the blog. No advertising revenue.

 

All donations are must be listed and receipt acknowledged publically on the website, for transparency and accountability. Any member of the public can do the maths at anytime, and we’ll get auditors too.

 

Challenges:

Slander

How do we prevent/minimize slander? If we make it non-anonymous eg. Must post NRIC in order to publish, then we are silencing people who need to be heard because they will be in danger if their employers know.  But making it anonymous might allow baseless slander.

Of course, the counter argument is that if several independent reports come in on the same event, that will increase its reliability, and that will be determined by the viewers themselves. Viewers can link similar news posts together, and viewers can rate the reliability. Very much like how viewers rate movies.

Also, the “slandered” would have the right to reply. Viewers judge the truth for themselves.

In the case of really important/critical info, I’m sure the professional journalists from the mainstream news would step in to do their job of verifying info before publishing it on the mainstream media.

 

Funding

This was supposedly the biggest issue that websites in Singapore face, in trying to be of high quality, or so Mr PN Balji said.

How do we technically enable anonymous funding? And balance it with accountability?

 

Spam, Empty Rants and Offensive language 

 

 

Can we really do without dedicated moderators? Given that the top recommended posts would be viewer determined, and viewers like to see “sex” more than “disabled crazy old man”, will the stuff that really needs attention , get it? Or will this be just an archive, and other news blogs with editors etc must sieve through the pile for gems, and headline them in their own blogs?

 

Volunteers and Feedback:

Hopefully, we can have a system to support and encourage citizen-journalism, not just amongst the internet-literate, but amongst all the people of all stratas of our society.

 

Today, this is just an idea.

Tomorrow, who knows? If you’ll like to be part of the team to MAKE IT HAPPEN, do leave a comment or email me at mathialee@yahoo.com

If you have comments, suggestions, or criticisms (I’m hoping SUGGESTIONS would come along with CRITICISM), please also leave a comment or email.

 

I can’t wait to hear from you!!!

Mission (Im)possible: State regulation of the Internet

I  read today that 17 of 28 AIMS recommendations were taken up by MICA

Mainstream News from :

SPH: Political films’ ban to ease
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking+News/Singapore/Story/STIStory_324323.html

Mediacorp: Progress, a step at a time
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/296409.asp

 

 

 

 

Comments :

http://www.sgpolitics.net/?p=1444    http://www.sgpolitics.net/?p=1827      http://www.sgpolitics.net/?p=1166 (Ng E-jay)

http://www.yawningbread.org/ (Alex Au)

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/01/govt-accepts-17-of-26-aimss-recommendations (TOC writers)

http://singaporerebel.blogspot.com/ (Martyn See)( He’s the guy who survived 15 months of police investigation for the making of banned short film ‘Singapore Rebel’, deemed to be an illegal political film under the law. He made ‘Zahari’s 17 Years’, a documentary on an ex-political detainee, and ‘Speakers Cornered’, a chronology of brief scenes from a street corner standoff between pro-democracy activists and the police. )

 

In China today, when an event happens that their government does not allow their mainstream state-controlled media to report on, citizens are feeding photos and news directly to bloggers. This happens a lot with planned events, such as marches and demonstrations, where people can prepare to be citizen-reporters with their cameras and phones.  I’ve had the privilege of being in the company of China students here, and I’ve seen first hand how that works.

Photos are taken, and almost immediately put up on the first line of blogs/ forums. Overseas-Chinese immediately download these articles and put them up on their own blogs. The first line of blogs based in China are almost immediately blocked off by the government , such that people in china cannot view them. But the second line of bloggers have already made sure that these articles have gone viral.  News that NEVER sees a mainstream publishing house. The news gets reported on the internet almost in real time.

And months and years after the event has happened, the game of cat and mouse between the government censors and the articles mushrooming all over still continues – because people MAKE SURE such info never dies. On the government’s part, it’s like trying to catch the wind. Silly and futile.  

 

I was puzzled about how our State would enforce the regulations it was setting. For example, Zhahari’s “17 years” (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=2022589417781119779&hl=en-GB) was banned but made it to the internet.(Watch also Singapore Rebel, a banned film the Martyn was investigated 15 moths for  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_DRoUOcupo)

 Dr Lee however said that “There is a difference from giving such films the privilege to circulate freely in Singapore, to saying that those who want to watch it, you go to the dark reaches of the Internet and watch it.” I think those of us who are Internet-literate are scratching our heads wondering where the “dark reaches of the Internet” are. The last I heard, porn was banned in Singapore. The last I checked, every male above 13 has Internet porn at home.

Words like “the dark reaches of the Internet” would probably be respected by some readers of the print media, because the fact is, most readers today still fall into the generation who fear the internet, and are not savvy with its power.  Given that the Gen Y and beyond feel more comfortable shouting online than off, I do not think that activists for internet de-regulation have to do much – they just have to wait 10 years for the age demographics to shift.

How do you criminalise films (or anything)? When they can be hosted overseas by people overseas.

How can you criminalise civil servants speaking up? When the Internet offers wonderful identity cover, of when information could be passed on to people posting from overseas?

These are not rhetorical questions I’m asking. I’m genuinely wondering. Because what’s making their laws effective right now, is not the State’s ability to enforce the law, but the ignorance and apathy that the older generation have towards the internet, that is according the State this power. Power can only be, if there are subjects are willing to be subjects.

 It reminds me of the King from the Little Prince, who was the only person on his planet. When the Little Prince came, the Little Prince couldn’t be bothered to be a subject. Can this person be called a King? ( http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/chapter10.html )

Of course, it’s only fair for me to add that Today, in the way it placed its news articles, has once again answered that important question of how the State intended to live up to it’s promise of making the internet a “safer” place : Seoul gets tough with online Cassandras. (  http://www.todayonline.com/articles/296419.asp ). Of course they could just clamp down on the hardware, shut down internet providers, and go the North Korea way. But that would of course, be the end of Singapore as we know it.

 

I do understand the need for restrictions on free speech, to be honest. If you notice, I NEVER blog about what goes on with my work or workplace (beyond stuff you can find for yourself in the public domain). And I wouldn’t like anyone else I’m working with to do the same. Let me give you an example why. In R&D, intellectual property is your biggest product and asset. One of the criteria for patenting stuff is that it must not be public information you’re patenting – and anything publically published is public info. So if a member of the R&D team actually blogs about what we do, that would effectively sabotage our ability to patent. That can cost MILLIONS of dollars, and a lot of everyone’s work. 

I don’t blog, not because there is a technical way of preventing me from doing so, but because I choose not to, after being convinced of the reasons. I also have faith in the feedback and management system in my institute. Should one day this mechanism breakdown, and human safety becomes compromised and ignored despite attempts to address them, then that is when the internet becomes really important – for whistle-blowing.  At such a point, it would be ethically wrong not to bring it up.  And I believe the management knows that, and that keeps power within organizations in check, nowadays.

In the past, where top management knows they have the State’s backing and media censorship, they can get away with a lot more. They know it can’t be done today, and that keeps them clean. The relationship between the media and government was supposed to be one of checks-and-balance , but it has been the case in few countries. With the New Media, the media can finally live up to its intended role.