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Update – press coverage:

• Free public servants to engage online (WEEKEND TODAY, 20th Sept 2008) – Alicia Wong features us in her article.
• Rules for political films still a hot potato (Straits Times, 20th Sept 2008) – Lynn Lee covers the forum and mentions us.
• How Should We Expand Political Space on the Web? Public Opinion Split (ZaoBao, 21st Sept 2008) – ZaoBao covers the forum. English translation in the comments.

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I was in the public forum today discussing the “Consultation Paper by the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS)”.

Near the start of the event, the chairman Mr Cheong Yip Seng mentioned that some “social media activists” gave some “thoughtful” and “constructive” feedback 3 days ago to the AIMS committee.

He was referring to the response given by 9 bloggers, including myself.

I won’t go into the forum itself, but when the forum ended, it turned out that the (mainstream) media and other attendees had many questions regarding our response.

Here are some of the frequently asked questions:

Are you the Bloggers 13?

No, we’re another group of bloggers.

Those who contributed to the response include Kevin Lim, Ivan Chew, Lucian Teo, Walter Lim, Kenneth Pinto, Vanessa Tan, Sivasothi N., Jude Yew and myself.

Who are you then? The “social media activists”?

We call ourselves the “media socialists“, but we normally don’t use that name because it gives people the wrong idea – we’re not socialists. We’re a group of academics, civil servants, consultants and designers who are passionate and actively involved in social media, or what many people call “new media”.

This means we’re not quite activists as well. Let us know if you can think of a better name for us.

Why did you send this collective response to AIMS?

Being passionate about social media, we have regular discussions on the subject, so when the AIMS paper came out, we naturally started discussing it. Eventually, one of us had the idea of compiling our responses together and sending it to AIMS, as it was a good opportunity for us to contribute to our society.

Your collective response seems to focus more on e-engagement, as opposed to online political content, protection of minors, and immunity for intermediaries. Why is that?

We see a lot more potential in how the government can engage citizens more deeply through social media, potential that we’re currently not harnessing.

As for the other areas, we support the recommendations on protecting minors and immunity for online intermediaries, and have nothing much to add there. And none of us are political bloggers, so online political content isn’t really our domain.

You had an interesting suggestion to have an online Hong Lim Park.

That was wrongly attributed to us.