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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Regulating Online Hate Speech: The Singapore Experiment, Siyuan Chen Dec 2023

Regulating Online Hate Speech: The Singapore Experiment, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In Singapore, the introduction of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 (POFMA) generated considerable debate and feedback. One of the main concerns was whether the law would unduly restrict the freedom of expression. In focusing on the provisions of POFMA that could possibly apply to hate speech, this paper situates the criticisms within the larger framework of international human rights law and international practices and proposes some ways forward to improve the regulatory framework for online hate speech.


Infodemic: The Effect Of Death-Related Thoughts On News-Sharing, Amy J. Lim, Edison Tan, Tania Lim Dec 2021

Infodemic: The Effect Of Death-Related Thoughts On News-Sharing, Amy J. Lim, Edison Tan, Tania Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Research on the sharing of fake news has primarily focused on the manner in which fake news spreads and the literary style of fake news. These studies, however, do not explain how characteristics of fake news could affect people’s inclination toward sharing these news articles. Drawing on the Terror Management Theory, we proposed that fake news is more likely to elicit death-related thoughts than real news. Consequently, to manage the existential anxiety that had been produced, people share the news articles to feel connected to close others as a way of resolving the existential anxiety. Across three experimental studies (total …


Fake News, Epistemic Coverage And Trust, Shane Ryan May 2021

Fake News, Epistemic Coverage And Trust, Shane Ryan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article makes the case that a deficit or absence of trust in media sources to report on newsworthy items facilitates acceptance of fake news. The article begins by identifying the sort of fake news that is of interest for the purposes of this article. Epistemic coverage is then explained-in particular, how an individual's expectations about their epistemic environment can lead them to accepting or rejecting claims. The article explains that when an individual believes that mainstream media report on what is deemed newsworthy, it follows that an individual will have grounds to dismiss a newsworthy claim that has not …


Front Liners Fighting Fake News: Global Perspectives On Mobilising Young People As Media Literacy Advocates, Sun Sun Lim, Kai Ryn Tan Oct 2020

Front Liners Fighting Fake News: Global Perspectives On Mobilising Young People As Media Literacy Advocates, Sun Sun Lim, Kai Ryn Tan

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

With young people at the vanguard of technology adoption and media consumption, many governments are actively incorporating young people into their public education campaigns, and young people are enlisting themselves as media literacy advocates. This article reviews a selection of such media literacy programmes to unpack their key thrusts and components so as to identify best practices and learning points. It will also closely investigate one particular youth-led effort and chart its conception, execution and development.


Detecting Fake News In Social Media: An Asia-Pacific Perspective, Meeyoung Cha, Wei Gao, Cheng-Te Li Mar 2020

Detecting Fake News In Social Media: An Asia-Pacific Perspective, Meeyoung Cha, Wei Gao, Cheng-Te Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In March 2011, the catastrophic accident known as "The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster" took place, initiated by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The only nuclear accident to receive a Level-7 classification on the International Nuclear Event Scale since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986, the Fukushima event triggered global concerns and rumors regarding radiation leaks. Among the false rumors was an image, which had been described as a map of radioactive discharge emanating into the Pacific Ocean, as illustrated in the accompanying figure. In fact, this figure, depicting the wave height of the tsunami that followed, …


An Empirically Supported Taxonomy Of Misinformation, Mark Chong, Murphy Choy Feb 2020

An Empirically Supported Taxonomy Of Misinformation, Mark Chong, Murphy Choy

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Fake news, which includes both disinformation and misinformation, has been a challenge for many countries in the last few years. Disinformation has been present in modern history as part of the tool kit of PSYOPS for the military. Likewise, misinformation has been part of human history for a long time. Hoaxes, rumors, and urban legends—all of which can be classified as differing types of misinformation, although they are not commonly addressed as such—have been exploited by adversarial organizations for their own benefit. This study will propose a comprehensive taxonomy to tackle fake news, disinformation, and misinformation and assess the level …


Symposium On Pofma: Parliamentary Debates About Pofma – Hansard Beyond Statutory Interpretation?, Benjamin Joshua Ong Nov 2019

Symposium On Pofma: Parliamentary Debates About Pofma – Hansard Beyond Statutory Interpretation?, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The issue of a legislative response to falsehoods first drew public attention when the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods held its public hearings. This public attention was renewed when the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (“POFMA”), in Bill form, was unveiled. Questions arose among both the public and MPs about whether POFMA would grant the Government power to stifle academic research, journalism, or the expression of opinion, as well as whether it would be difficult for an individual to seek recourse against an allegedly wrongly made Direction.This post focuses not with the substance of these issues (important …


Evaluating Vulnerability To Fake News In Social Networks: A Community Health Assessment Model, Bhavtosh Rath, Wei Gao, Jaideep Srivastava Aug 2019

Evaluating Vulnerability To Fake News In Social Networks: A Community Health Assessment Model, Bhavtosh Rath, Wei Gao, Jaideep Srivastava

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Understanding the spread of false information in social networks has gained a lot of recent attention. In this paper, we explore the role community structures play in determining how people get exposed to fake news. Inspired by approaches in epidemiology, we propose a novel Community Health Assessment model, whose goal is to understand the vulnerability of communities to fake news spread. We define the concepts of neighbor, boundary and core nodes of a community and propose appropriate metrics to quantify the vulnerability of nodes (individual-level) and communities (group-level) to spreading fake news. We evaluate our model on communities identified using …


Falling For Falsehoods: A Diet For Prevention, Wei Teck Ong, Andree Hartanto Jul 2019

Falling For Falsehoods: A Diet For Prevention, Wei Teck Ong, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Consuming information in a discerning manner can help us resist dubious claims.


Singapore's Latest Efforts At Regulating Online Hate Speech, Siyuan Chen, Chen Wei Chia Jun 2019

Singapore's Latest Efforts At Regulating Online Hate Speech, Siyuan Chen, Chen Wei Chia

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The introduction of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) has been generating considerable debate and feedback. Some of the concerns raised include whether the bill unduly restricts the freedom of expression. In focusing on the hate speech provisions of the POFMA, this legislation comment situates the criticisms within the larger framework of international human rights law and international practices and proposes some ways forward to improve the regulatory framework for online hate speech.


Looking Beyond The Vague Terms In Singapore's Fake News Laws, Benjamin Joshua Ong May 2019

Looking Beyond The Vague Terms In Singapore's Fake News Laws, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Protection from Online Falsehoods andManipulation Act (Pofma), some criticised it for being too vague. Pofma contains words and phrases whose meaning is not explicitlyclear, e.g. statements that are “falseor misleading”, but does not define “misleading”. But case law gives us aclearer understanding of what “misleading” means


Whole-Of-Society Approach Needed Against Truth Decay, Eugene K. B. Tan Nov 2018

Whole-Of-Society Approach Needed Against Truth Decay, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In an age of pervasive informationflows, governments do not defeat fake news. It's the people as a society whodo.The threatof deliberate falsehoods, or more popularly "fake news", posesserious threats to the democratic wellbeing of societies. The marketplace ofideas increasingly suffers from truth decay, propagated online or offline,imperilling an already vulnerable information ecosystem. In turn,this compromises the functioning of a democracy, which is premised on citizenshaving a shared reality rather than multiple distorted realities.


Let’S Get The Psychology Of Debate Right, David Chan Apr 2018

Let’S Get The Psychology Of Debate Right, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the last few weeks, manySingaporeans have been exercised over the lengthy debate that ensued between anacademic and a government minister during a parliamentary committee hearing. Singaporean historian Thum Ping Tjinhad made a written submission to the Select Committee on Deliberate OnlineFalsehoods in which he asserted that the biggest purveyor of fake news inSingapore was the Government, in particular the late founding prime ministerLee Kuan Yew. When he appeared before it to flesh out hissubmission, he was questioned for over six hours by Home Affairs and LawMinister K. Shanmugam, a member of the committee, over his interpretation ofhistorical events such …