Professor Terence T. Lee

Singapore won early kudos for its ‘gold standard’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic back in February 2020. It was praised globally for its ability to activate an effective contact tracing system. Riding on this success, the government introduced ‘TraceTogether’, a mobile phone app to enhance contact tracing efforts, using a technology that leverages the Bluetooth feature on smartphones to track proximity between users and record their physical encounters. This paper contends that the roll-out of the app is a form of ‘technological opportunism’ to enhance greater bodily surveillance over its citizens during a time of crisis. The low number of downloads of the app initially (at 20%), before persuasion-coercion strategies were applied to lift the take-up rate to 90%, belies the assumption that surveillance is genuinely widely accepted. This paper details key responses to the app in Singapore, and the government’s decision to make it mandatory during the heart of the pandemic between 2020 to 2022. It considers the implications of technological opportunism, taking advantage of a pandemic to continue in the journey of turning citizens into what Michel Foucault would refer to as ‘subjectified bodies’ to be traced, tracked and codified.

Civil society in Singapore has existed in the interstices of society with frequent instances of conflict with the government. The ruling People’s Action Party government has had a long history of quashing its political opponents, and this same approach has influenced how the government deals with social-political dissent, ranging from human rights groups being gazetted and their funding source curtailed, to opposition politicians and free speech advocates sued for libel and contempt of court. This paper examines how the Singapore government has made two significant moves towards online media that appears at once restrictive and accommodating towards dissent. The first is the increase in legal and regulatory burdens on the media, while the second is a perceptibly generous invitation for media freedom advocates to discuss and debate about such legal frameworks. We contend that this dualism, far from signalling inclusive governance with a firm hand, only affirms the Singapore government’s authoritarian tendencies towards media freedom advocates. This paper juxtaposes the evolution of narratives of dissent between the 2013 Amendment to the Broadcasting Act to the 2019 public debate on the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA). We explore the dynamics of resistance and posit that, even with the enlarged space for free speech in Singapore, the practice in public discourse points to further curtailment of such free speech.

This article offers a personal commentary on the influence of Tom O’Regan, my Honours supervisor in the 1990s. Among many other things, he was a major contributor to the ‘cultural policy debate’ in Australia. More than offering an explanation about the subject, O’Regan had warned of the need to strike a balance when debating culture and critiquing cultural policy, and not fall into polemical traps. Making a case for policy independence, he urged academics to participate collaboratively and cooperatively in cultural policy-making processes, instead of primarily engaging in cultural criticisms. I write as well of my firsthand experience of how his cultural policy writings transcended scholarly rationale into the actual policy domain during my time as a media policy professional in Singapore. His ability to apply policy thinking beyond academia underscores why he was – and will remain – a giant of media and cultural studies in Australia and beyond.

The wealthy and ‘smart’ city-state of Singapore was one of the first to develop a mobile tracing app called TraceTogether during the coronavirus outbreak. It then pivoted towards developing a wearable tech device in order to reach all 5.7 million residents, brushing off concerns about privacy and surveillance. This article tracks the development of TraceTogether and engages in critical debates that have ensued around the use of the app, namely around the twin implications of privacy protection and the conduct of surveillance in a panoptic and auto-regulatory society that privileges socio-political discipline and control. With health crises and pandemics becoming more commonplace, more people around the world are being persuaded to wear some loss of privacy to trust ‘smart’ technologies to aid us in fighting enemies that are deadly and invisible. Singapore could already be offering a glimpse of how this can be done now, and in the future.

This article analyzes the impacts of the Australian Federal Government’s food labeling reforms on the formation of food practices and the market for local food products. It considers how the inclusion of product and ingredient origin information blurs the distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ food products, and foregrounds different ‘support local’ behaviors. Findings from the study highlight the influence of structural and cultural factors, complemented by the strategic use of media tools, in shaping how food labels function as mechanisms to mediate domestic and transnational food practices. Retail concentration, support for the ‘buy local’ discourse, and the mediating influence of supermarket food media are presented as key factors that underpin the diffusion of and the demand for branded products and local food products in Australia. The impacts of the food origin labeling regulations on Australia’s highly concentrated grocery retail sector and export markets for Australian food products are also discussed.

This empirical study of Australian supermarket magazines examines how the mediatised representations of branded products are used to construct relations to food and (re-)establish its functional and symbolic values. It contends supermarket magazines are corporate-owned and -controlled sites of communication and cultural production that bring to light the shifting (power) relations between consumers, food producers and supermarkets. The first section of the paper highlights the role of mediatised representations, product positioning and differentiation strategies and cultural intermediaries in mediating the functional and symbolic values of branded products. Using data generated from the analysis of Coles and Fresh, the next section outlines the communicative orientations of mediatised representations in supermarket magazines and identifies four types of relations to food practices. A communication model of supermarket foodscape mediation is presented to illustrate the mediatory influence of supermarket magazines on the formation of food practices and food relations.

This Special Issue of Global Media and China responds in part to Stuart Hall’s famous 1996 invocation, ‘Who needs identity?’ – to study ‘specific enunciative strategies’ utilized within ‘specific modalities of power’ so as to consider identity discourses of the present and of the future. This issue draws upon empirical observations presented and debated at the 2019 Chinese Internet Research Conference held in Singapore in May 2019, as well as theoretical contributions in identity politics and social media, the chosen site or ‘modality of power’. This editorial and critical essay reflects upon, complemented and supported by the papers in this issue, the critical and conceptual frameworks that are emerging to critique the global and local complexities, diversity and dynamics resulting from the deeper integration of social media into the everyday lives of Chinese Internet users. It presents an overview of the 2019 Chinese Internet Research Conference proceedings in terms of how social media is used to wrap personal politics into a widening range of identity groupings around gender, class, citizens, pop culture and religion in ways that signal the future of newer forms of identity politics among Internet users in China. Since social media posts and exchanges, while geographically sourced and situated, often transcend their boundaries, the arguments presented here goes beyond China and are global. The shareability of identity mediated by individual, state and public discourses on social and ‘anti-social’ media during the COVID-19 pandemic within China, Singapore and Australia leads to novel ways of understanding identity politics in globalizing China and strategic uses of Chinese identity.

Common perceptions and literature on media in Singapore suggest an authoritarian government that either silences or co-opts public media, using repressive laws that are passed unopposed, given the People’s Action Party (PAP) government’s super majority in Parliament. In practice, laws in Singapore are not simply crafted to maximise their effects in silencing political criticism but are also carefully debated – at times with the PAP’s strongest opponents – in public, to rationalise their implementation even before such laws are applied. In studying public discourse surrounding four recent pieces of media legislation, this article argues that the Singapore government strives not just for its right to pass laws at will but is equally concerned with building its legitimacy to govern using these laws. This sophisticated practice, in line with Foucault’s concept of governmentality, seeks to govern by convincing the citizenry to consent the suppression of their own socio-cultural and political freedom.

In April 2017, 'Belle' Gibson was found guilty of contravening the Australian Consumer Law because she sold her recipe book and mobile app using deceptive business practices. Using the 'Belle' Gibson saga as a case study, this paper examines questions of communication ethics and the effect that technology has on our ethical behaviours and practice. It contends that technology has altered our perceptions of authenticity and credibility as well as our social relations and sense of 'intimacy' with online strangers.