[Ed: This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.]

‘The identity is not important. It is the message that is important’ - Mr. Baey Yam Keng (PAP-Tanjong Pagar), PAP New Media Capabilities Group.

In the online world, [the PAP is] clueless on how to engage; how to build an audience; how to persuade and convince; how to be interesting; how to demonstrate a personality.’ - Mr Wang Says So: Boxing With Shadows

Tracking the Antiestablishmentarianists

Akikonomu was the first to alert me to the article in the Straits Times about PAP’s covert anti-antiestablishmentarianist1 campaign in cyberspace. You should have no problem finding copies archived on the Internet, such as by Singapore Election Watch.

Here’s a list of press articles on this topic:

Let’s go through what has already been said. Mr Wang makes an excellent point about how PAP’s strategy of engagement this time round marks a radical departure from the public harangues dating back to the LKY era. His second point about the media leak, however, gives me pause to wonder: what is the motivation for the first source involved to blow the whistle?

I can only conclude that the only meaningful scenario is that the leak was deliberate. To do so is to send bloggers, forumites and commenters an oblique message that Yes, We Are Watching You. Whether or not such intentions are the impetus for some kind of sociological experiment or yet more Big Brother antics remain the parlay of conspiracy-land.2

If this deduction is correct, this only further emphasizes Mr Wang’s final analysis, that the PAP has fundamentally misunderstood how the blogosphere works and was completely ignorant of the importance of credibility online. Contrary to what Mr. Baey thinks, the egalitarian effect of anonymity and pseudonyms means that the only thing people can go by online is credibility. It’s taking the notion of street cred into cyberspace. mrbrown was a very different person online before he blogged about his family, and in so doing revealed his identity.

Why is this a monumental blunder on PAP’s part. mrbrown has already put his finger on it:

Waitaminute. I thought being anonymous is a bad thing and affects credibility? I mean, that is the reason why we are constantly told that the internet is less credible than mainstream media, right?

What he said. First we were merely online diaries of no significance whatsoever, then suddenly we became targets of ‘engagement’. Second we were not to be taken seriously for our lies and lack of credibility, then suddenly we are lauded for being pioneers in cyberspace, with mainstream media outlets stampeding into the blogosphere. Third we were whiners hiding being pseudonyms, now we are insurgents awaiting neutralization by anonymous agents, or plants. Yet another episode to file away in the morass of convenient self-contradictions espoused by the Establishment.

With this PR blunder, none of the establishmentarianists will be able to shake off the cloud of doubt that perhaps they themselves are merely mouthpieces of the Establishment.

There is a singular omission, however: while the article itself mentions the rebuttal of forum posts and comments, curiously neglects the possibility of running an entire blog which is serving merely as a front for the PAP Establishment. It then follows that having your own blog (or forum) is one of the last remaining bastions of credibility online. In this sense Sammyboy is far superior to Young PAP, Tomorrow.sg to STOMP, and Singapore Angle to P65. Why? Because of neutrality. We can be vitriolic and antiestablishmentarian, but we don’t do this out of affiliation to any particular party.

Why Antiestablishmentarianism Reigns Online

The natural question that arises is then why the majority of the blogophere has distinct leanings toward antiestablishmentarianism. Aaron Ng has said his piece about how it is primarily a reaction against the mainstream media, which, to put it mildly, has distinct leanings toward establishmentarianism. Based on my reading of the (much more chaotic) American blogosphere, this appears to be true also of American blogs.

To go out on a limb again, the democratic mode of governance practically demands an antiestablishmentarianist disposition online: it is simply an expression of the common citizen’s duty to keep the machinations of Government in check. In countries which guarantee and enforce the rights of a free press, the mainstream media typically illustrates the creative chaos that ensues when critics voice their opinions and have their opinions countered by their critics in yet another medium, and higher-order repercussions thereof. Naturally, this problem is exacerbated in a country like Singapore where the press is overwhelmingly pro-establishment.

Indeed, the conclusion that the blogosphere reflects the voice of the common person, which is so rarely championed by established mainstream media, should come as no surprise. But it is hardly a representative view. To this extent I can actually understand where the PAP committees are coming from, and that what they have done is inevitable.

Why? I invite you to try this for yourself. Imagine yourself in the PAP’s shoes, and consider the unpleasant facts that you have accumulated through the painstaking experiences of attempting to rebut or discredit them, and having the attempts fall flat and/or backfire spectacularly:

  1. Blogs are more than a passing fad, they are a force to reckon with.
  2. The stranglehold the PAP has on mainstream media alienates dissident voices, leaving them no alternative but to vent their frustrations online.
  3. The plethora of online opinions are skewed: establishmentarianists rarely venture out of their comfort zone to engage the antiestablishmentarianists, and the apathetic by definition wouldn’t even dream of doing anything one way or another.
  4. The near-universal accessibility of antiestablishmentarianist remarks online seriously compromises the effectiveness of the PAP’s media campaigns, which the antiestablishmentarianists consider propaganda.

What the only course of action be? To bring your media campaign of discrediting your opponents online. The collective force of groupthink brings to you this spectacularly obvious route.

Mrbiao makes a good case that the MPs’ hasty denial of propaganda milling is an example of the ignoratio elenchi fallacy since the definition of propaganda doesn’t care whether it is covert or overt. Kevin, however, points out that this specific kind of propaganda, whereby it is cloaked in guises that make it appear to be a real grassroots action, already has a name: astroturfing. Molly Meek cautions that such actions may have more than “clarification” modes, and that in its more nefarious form, astroturfing could be employed to incite deliberately the creation of seditious content, which could then be used as a convenient weapon for eliminating critics online by furnishing a legitimate reason to lock them up. Wayne Soon also worries about the same scenario at Singapore Angle Perspectives.

Which explains neatly the choice of vocabulary here, of PAP agents being “counter-insurgents”. As redbean wrote on My Singapore News:

Insurgents are dangerous especially of the terrorist kind. Would cyberspace critics and commentators, bloggers and forumers, be treated as insurgents?

Akikonomu also laments the dispensing with rules of engagement and the ‘black ops’ nature of the anonymous critiquing of critics. He also points out several examples in recent American political history of the furore raised several times when political parties in the US planted convenient journalists and activists to pursue and strengthen their own agendas.

It seems that the Establishment now wants to the same. It has only forgotten one thing, which is to consider the reactions of the online community. Loose-knit and deregulated as it is, the blogosphere still has some rules of engagement. One is that credibility has to be earned, not imposed. And credibility, once squandered, is incredibly difficult to win back. And as Aaron and Mr Wang had both pointed out, how long will it take for them to learn the lessons of the Bhavani v. mrbrown episode?

Tracking the Establishment

To be perfectly honest, I had known about this long ago. Not because I have informants in the PAP (oh, I wish!), but because I do occasionally inspect my IP logs.

It is clear that many of the government’s “cyberinspectors” are woefully ignorant of how to hide one’s tracks online. The deluge of IP address resolving to domains ending in .gov.sg and suspicious unresolvable addresses belonging to Singapore’s IP space are a dead giveaway. Why? Discounting the occasional bored civil servant who surfs Singapore blogs during break time, it’s hard to imagine any other reason to use a Government machine to access blogs. And most legitimate users would be using their own ISPs to surf online; IP addresses that resolve to ___.singnet.com.sg or ____.starhub.com.sg or ____.sg.super.net are most likely legitimate users.3

I have long had my suspicions; this merely corroborates the data I already have on hand.

Bottom line for bloggers and forum owners: If you want to Know who’s reading what you write, go read your IP logs. Those of you on Blogger and similar sites, get a website hits counter that logs IPs. If you want to know who of the commenters is a plant for the Establishment, look up the commenter’s IP address. It’s pretty trivial once you know how to use whois.

Here’s my message to the Establishment: You want us to know You are watching, but I know You are watching. You are the ones who escalated online debate to outright war with your fighting words first. Be forewarned.

Engaging the Establishment

Personally, I’m glad that the Establishment is leaving messages online. After all, it wasn’t too long ago when they thought New Media was a bunch of faddist crap. And it doesn’t really take that much brainpower to figure out who the establishmentarianists are; after that, it’s a simple exercise of tracing their online tracks and getting to know one’s frequent users. The effect of the abuse of trust shown by anonymous ‘counter-insurgency agents’ can be minimized by ferreting them out and ignoring them as part of the growing spam problem of the Internet.

Mr Wang concludes that “bloggers should not be afraid, angry or alarmed by the PAP’s new strategy. In fact, you can see this as your valuable opportunity to give feedback to the government via the Internet.” What he said.

The Establishment wants to play ball. I say: let them play. But let them learn the hard way that they cannot dictate the rules of engagement online without losing credibility completely.

Appendix: Other Links of potential interest

Footnotes
  1. I finally get to use an obscenely bombastic word like this. What fun!↩
  2. I refuse to call them conspiracy theories, since most of them are hardly rigorously deductive, and consist of little more than disparate facts connected by paranoia.↩
  3. This of course discounts the plants who bring their work home in reading blogs using their ISP-provided connection at home and doing their nefarious deeds.↩