Hi there, this is my 3rd blog post on current affairs for the holidays. This blog post is regarding a system initiated by the government, where a meet-the-people's session would be held online. The link for this article is http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_684143.html. Enjoy! :D
Summary of the article: Recently, the PAP initiated a new system, which is the meet-the-people's session online. This system allowed residents to speak to the ministers in their constituency, without having to go to the nearest town council. People could provide their feedback and suggestions through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. This would not only provide convenience, but also save time.
I feel that the system to use social networking sites to provide feedback and suggestions is truly a good idea as it provides convenience from residents within the constituency. It could also help the PAP in the next general election, as more people would vote for the PAP for initiating this new system for them. However, with advantages definitely comes disadvantages. These disadvantages are not of the system, but the flaws of social networking sites.
Some common problems of social networking sites that have little or no relation to the Meet-The-People session online are cyber-bullying and addiction to the Internet. Also, there is a case of disturbance online like spamming and posting of vulgar stuff. This is the true problem that this initiative is facing.
Firstly, the problem of spamming. Spamming refers to the continuous posting of irrelevant stuff by an individual. In this case, spamming is occurring since people are posting trivial matters that does not concern the ministers on their walls. For example, a person could be posting on the social networking sites of his personal problems like stating that his house's toilet has broken down or that his house is poorly situated. This is a personal problem, what could the posters of these messages want the ministers to do? Hire a plumber? Thus, if the people living in a certain constituency want to report to their minister about a problem that they are facing, they should think of how many people are involved and not only for themselves. Such examples include telling the ministers of faulty lights or a lift that broken down. They could also report about the lack of facilities in that area.
Next, there is the problem of the posting of vulgar and abusive stuff on the ministers' wall. Some people in Singapore, due to the recent General Elections 2011, dislike their ministers since they did not hope for them to win. For example, if a person voted for the workers' party and in the end, the PAP won, they might be quite angry with the PAP, with a sense of dislike. They would thus, make use of this social networking sites to curse at the PAP with a fake name, so that these PAP members would not be able to track down who the culprit was. This is a common problem faced by the ministers.
Overall, this idea was quite a good initiative that the PAP made and would definitely garner more support in the next General Elections. As long as these ministers are patient, the problem of spamming and the posting of abusive stuff might not seem so major in the end. By not paying attention to these people, the problem is actually solved.
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