Other social media

 

“I have never seen this kind of activism from Singaporeans. We are a passive and obedient lot when it comes to things like politics and freedom. But football is life. No, I am sorry, football is MORE than life” – From a popular Singapore blog, ‘Mr Brown’

The World Cup broadcasting fiasco was open slather for discussion in the online community. The reaction from various blogs and citizen news websites was swift and equally scathing as the Facebook group.

Mainstream media

Although the mainstream press gave the issue solid coverage throughout, it was the blogs and citizen journalists that gave an accurate reflection of how the public were feeling.

Like SingTel and Starhub, the two major mainstream media organisations – Singapore Press Holdings and MediaCorp are government linked companies. Local media is highly regulated by the government. It is little wonder Singapore is ranked 133 out of 175 on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom index. With the high degree of self-censorship, there was always a limit to how critical local media could be towards the telecommunications companies.

Take this blog article  from the TODAY newspaper for example. Senior sports reporter, Ian De Cotta questions whether the members of the Facebook boycott group will actually carry out their promise:

 “Are they just doing the very Singaporean thing in bitching on anything and everything and just having fun doing so … and then sign up before match day?”

To De Cotta’s surprise, Singaporeans were made of sterner stuff.

Citizen journalism

In contrast, non mainstream media outlets such as Redsports were relentless in their scrutiny of SingTel and Starhub. The coverage from independent online news websites drew many comments and plaudits from frustrated football followers. Readers of websites such as Redsports became part of a wider public movement to bring shame on the rich telecommunications companies.

Leading citizen journalism website, The Online Citizen published a particularly thoughtful article. The article criticised the arrogance of the chief executives of SingTel and Starhub and discussed the worrying lack of transparency. More significantly, the football-loving public were urged to show solidarity against the cashed-up SingTel and Starhub.

“We can, for once, say enough is enough and take the road less travelled (in Singapore, at least) for once – boycott… the boycott would nevertheless drill the point through that consumers cannot be held ransom to ridiculous pricing, and that there are limits to abusing the willingness of fans to fork out a premium for their passion.”

Forums

For the thousands of Singaporeans who committed to boycotting SingTel and Starhub, there was still the small matter of gaining access to alternative World Cup coverage.

Specialist Internet forums such as the Hardware Zone attracted plenty of discussion about where to watch the World Cup. With so much input from the public, it was quickly established which bars and coffee shops would be showing the World Cup. People were happy to share their experiences of the various bars and restaurants in Singapore in order to help their Singaporeans fans out.

Many people took this a step further and suggested buying an antenna to watch the Malaysia or Indonesia networks broadcast. The most intricate details of which antenna to buy, how much it will cost and where to buy it from were available from forums such as the Hardware Zone. The effort and cost of buying the antenna may have cost more than $90, however clearly Singaporeans wanted to make a point.

There were also lots of online live streaming websites suggested. If anyone had a question, a tech-savvy football fan would be able respond within hours. This was citizen journalism at its most effective. It was about doing everything possible to spread the boycott far and wide. There also seemed to be a genuine willingness in the online community to help fellow football fans out without any favours in return.