ORCID Profile
0000-0001-8113-5860
Current Organisation
Murdoch University
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Publisher: University of Melbourne
Date: 12-2022
DOI: 10.46580/P69378
Abstract: In the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore rolled out TraceTogether a contact-tracing mobile app that uses proximity sensing to track the movements of its population. TraceTogether was initially voluntary, and used solely for contact tracing. By December 2020, the system became mandatory. This sparked a mass adoption that made TraceTogether possibly the most successful application in Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative. When it emerged in January 2021 that the data had been used by the police for criminal investigation, images of a totalitarianism sprang to mind, where technology permits the state an invasive awareness of the movement of in iduals. In this paper, we defer from common arguments that Singaporeans are intrinsically trusting of the government or have been conditioned to accept ‘Big Brother’ modes of surveillance. Instead, we argue that the success of TraceTogether reflects a Singapore society that, through the rationalisation of surveillance, willingly participates in their own surveillance. In uncovering the genealogy of media discourse that surrounds TraceTogether, we highlight that it is the regular practice of voluntary surveillance, of subscribing oneself to the apparatuses of state control, rather than specific technologies, that characterises the Singapore surveillance state. We describe a matrix of reason, layered-on and normalised through media discourse, that exemplifies what Foucault has termed ‘governmentality’, which asserts a government’s power of control not over, but within, citizens.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 10-06-2019
Abstract: 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.
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Date: 2020
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-08-2020
Abstract: 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.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 16-08-2023
Publisher: Monash University
Date: 27-09-2022
DOI: 10.54377/4021-D80B
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 15-07-2023
No related grants have been discovered for Howard Lee.