Blessed Christmas and Happy New Year!

Blogscapes wishes all shalom and a blessed Christmas and a happy new year 2009!

PAP and New Media

A few weeks ago, I talked about Obama’s Youtube communications method, as well as touched on the local government announcing its wish to engage more, especially the young, via new media.

There’s been recent information about how the use of  new media should be allowed by political parties as it helps put their message out there and reach the Internet-savvy young.

Earlier this month, the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMs) presented its report on Internet regulations, with recommendations made for laws on political videos and online election material to be relaxed.

Young PAP Chairman, Teo Ser Luck, together with his deputies will be looking into this.

What can they do to embrace and employ new media? How could they be successful? Would they be successful? What do you think?

MySpace Suicide Verdict is out

Some months ago, I blogged about MySpace Suicide victim Megan Meier who was driven to kill herself after she was cyber-bullied.

Well, the cyber-bully turned out to the the mother of a friend she had a falling out with. Lori Drew, 49, was recently handed the verdict, in what many see as the USA’s first cyberbullying verdict.

According to the article, Drew was “cleared of felony computer-hacking charges” but was found “guilty only of three counts of gaining unauthorized access to MySpace for the purpose of obtaining information on Megan Meier — misdemeanors that potentially carry up to a year in prison, but most likely will result in no time in custody.” 

This verdict is no doubt controversial, with many calling for tougher penalties. 

Somehow, the verdict does seem like a slap on the wrist. With cyberbullying on the rise, more needs to be done to curb it, and while the law may not be the only way, it is one key way that many are looking to for some guidance on how to handle it

Mumbai Terrorist Attacks and New Media

The deplorable recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai have made major news headlines all over the world.

For Singapore, the attacks have hit close to home as they have claimed the first Singaporean life due to a terrorist attack. Many mourn the loss of Singaporean lawyer, 28 year-old Lo Hwei Yen, who was shot execution-style while she was at the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai on her fateful business trip.

Discussions in cyberspace amongst locals about Lo Hwei Yen’s capture and her sad and untimely death played out since the time news broke about her capture as a hostage. 

We can only hope that more can be done to prevent such attacks.

While the attacks were still taking place, a different but altogether, hectic and frenzied activity was also taking place in the ‘parallel’ universe in cyberspace. Bloggers all over Mumbai were posting live updates of the situation, and this truly underscores citizen journalism as an alternative/complement/supplement to news coverage.

Some were uploading photos of the damage from the attacks on the luxury hotels, and many of these were also loaded onto Flikr. The micro-blogging site Twitter also saw a lot of intense action as Tweets on the attacks were sent – at one point 80 Tweets were sent within 5 seconds!

There were also reports of survivors who were trapped in the buildings getting information from their mobile phones and Blackberries – they were surfing for information, ironically, on what was happening in the very same buildings they were in, but were left out of (in terms of info received).

There’s a blog that collects all the social media representation of the event.

All this goes to show that while mainstream news would not be able to provide such comprehensive coverage in such a short time, the world got to know about the events in such a short time, and while they were unfolding too, due to the ubiquitous nature new media has taken on, and new media’s role in news coverage. 

And with that, globalisation has taken on a new meaning and added dimension.