Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts Dr Balaji Sadasivan announced on 3rd April 2006 that podcasting of political content would not be allowed in the 2006 General Elections (GE).
Dr Balaji said: ‘The streaming of explicit political content by individuals during the election period is prohibited under the Election Advertising Regulations. A similar prohibition would apply to the videocasting or video streaming of explicitly political content’.
There are no plans to change the law on campaigning online during an election. Dr Chee Soon Juan, Secretary-General for the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, issued a media release in response.
Despite the advent of new media technologies such as podcasting and video streaming in recent years, it has failed to take on with the Singapore government. It was reasoned that this was to ‘ensure responsible use of the internet during campaigning as the free-for-all environment of the internet is open to abuse’.
However, with the increasing accessibility of the Internet, and how it has become a primary mode of communication for many people and how they read news, surely the Singapore government must realise the untapped potential in this media for reaching voters in future.
Posted by semiotik 