����Vlog

Lianhe Zaobao, 30 Mar 2018, To combat online falsehoods we need to restore mainstream media to former “glory” (summarised translation)

Nicholas Fang, MD of Blackdot Media and Professor Lim Sun Sun, Head of HASS at SUTD, were the final expert witnesses to present evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods.

Both spoke in their personal capacities. Both experts agreed that fact checking efforts needs to be stepped up as a critical bulwark against online falsehoods.

Prof Lim added that the most ideal situation is for multiple stakeholders to engage in fact checking, and this includes media and technology companies as well as civic society organisations and groups. She noted that in the preceding weeks, many witnesses had highlighted the importance of media literacy as a solution to online falsehoods. However she explained that this would not be easy to achieve because the dramatic transformations in our media landscape mean that media literacy is an increasingly multi-faceted competency.

She also stressed that for media consumers to be completely discerning, they need to constantly learn new apps and new technological affordances, they need to understand industry shifts in the forms of mergers and acquisitions among media and technology companies that have implications for how users’ personal information is shared, and they need to keep up with different emerging media genres as well.

Prof Lim shared that as a media professor herself, she finds it challenging to constantly keep up with all of these changes, let alone the average media consumer. Hence she argued for more resources to be poured into media literacy education in order to make it more sophisticated so as to better help consumers adapt to the increasingly complex media landscape.

Students have completed the first half of HASS 02.201 Film II – Production Studies.

Fake news may be a growing scourge but a team of SUTD students is raring to stamp it out!

The parliamentary Select Committee to study the problem of deliberate online falsehoods and to recommend how Singapore should respond has invited local scholars to submit proposals. Some of the invited scholars disclosed that they will share their views on the media literacy of the general public, the motives of fake news creators, and the social costs of deceptive information.

Find out how our alumnus Shaun Lim (Class of 2015) married his interests in HASS with his background in engineering to chart an unconventional yet exciting path for himself.

Dr J. Casey Hammond has been awarded a Taiwan Fellowship for 2018 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan).

Lianhe Zaobao, 21 Jan 2018, 50 “Influencers” Promote Singapore’s Budget; Young Netizens Feel “Insulted” (summarised translation)

In an effort to reach out to younger Singaporeans, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) has paid for over 50 social media “influencers” to post on Instagram to promote the Budget process. However, this move has triggered controversy among internet users, who questioned and ridiculed the action.

In a report that appeared the day before yesterday, AFP News said that Singapore had sparked mockery with Instagram ‘influencers’ for budget. Regarding this, Prof Lim Sun Sun, Head of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the Singapore University of Technology and Design said in an interview that internet users’ criticism may stem from the fact that these influencers “lack real understanding of the budget details”, and some even misspelt the name of the Ministry of Finance, giving the impression of being unprofessional.

“For these influencers who rarely comment on current affairs, they may be unable to convey the gravity of the Budget process. I do not think that our young people are apathetic towards politics; therefore they may feel insulted when the Budget is conveyed to them in such a superficial manner.”