-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
The “Doing Good Index 2018” made bold claims about charities or social delivery organisations (SDOs) needing to do more “to address the ‘trust deficit’ and spread awareness of their work [in Singapore]” (ST, Jun. 22), yet did not clarify what exactly constitutes that perceived “trust deficit”, and beyond broad platitudes offered few policy or practical recommendations. Neither is it constructive, in addition, to call on these SDOs to do more without understanding their manpower and resource constraints. The full report – published by the Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society (CAPS) – did not define what is meant by the “trust deficit”, and in fact explicitly mentioned that Singapore is one of three economies (alongside Japan and Taiwan) where public trust is “less of an issue”. Continue reading
Yet this assumption that media literacy is the long-term panacea for falsehoods in general remains unchallenged. And problematically too it also avoids the harder and more meaningful questions of how exactly to teach or to inculcate media literacy, and how the effectiveness of these programmes can be determined. After all, promoting such discourse can be unsettling, especially when notions of what constitutes “truth” are confronted. In the Singaporean context, however, the much-needed discourse on media literacy and public education can be guided by three related questions: First, the extent to which existing media literacy programmes been effective (or not); second, whether we are willing to re-examine traditional approaches to media literacy as we know it, while acknowledging instances of failure; and third, how we might involve teachers and their schools – who were hardly represented in this consultative process – more constructively in the future. Continue reading
Talk about trust – and the trust deficit – is not new. In a letter to The Straits Times after the haze last year consultant Mr. Devadas Krishnadas defined trust as “the confidence and conviction that the government is competent and committed to ensuring the well-being of Singaporeans”. At Singapore Perspectives 2012, a conference by the Institute of Policy Studies, academic Mr. Cherian George identified three barriers to building trust in Singapore: the credibility problem of the mainstream media, the lack of independent voices in public debates, and the conflict between national interest and interests of the dominant People’s Action Party (PAP). Continue reading
guanyinmiao's musings (Archived: July 2009 to July 2019) 