Welcome

Here's where you can find out more about my work. My research and writing focus on:

Hate propaganda and democracy

How religious intolerance and hate propaganda threatens freedom and equality around the world.

Media freedom and censorship

How journalism around the world struggles to serve the public interest in the face of external and internal threats.

Singapore media and politics

Authoritarian resilience and the People's Action Party's hegemonic control of political expression.

Latest

My chapter, The Scourge of Disinformation-Assisted Hate Propaganda, appears in Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age (MIT Press).
On the way: I have been invited to write the chapter on "Hate Propaganda" in the Routledge Companion to Media Misinformation and Populism edited by Howard Tumber and Silvio Waisbord.
Media and Politics in Southeast Asia, co-authored with Gayathry Venkiteswaran, has been published by Cambridge University Press.
I am currently working on a chapter "The power and precarity of the cartoonist's pencil", for Precarity in Journalism, a volume edited by Linda Steiner and Kalyani Chadha, drawing on my research for the book, Red Lines.

RED LINES

  • Red Lines: Despots, Dollars, Dogmas, and the Censorship of Political Cartoons is in its final stages. To be published by the MIT Press (English) and Urban Comics (French), this is a global study of 21st century censorship as experienced by political cartoonists around the world. It will be produced entirely in graphic form, in collaboration with comic book artist Sonny Liew. Visit our website. I was interviewed about my research on cartoon censorship by the Center for Media at Risk, University of Pennsylvania.

Scenic Route

On hate propaganda and free speech

This timely work provides an essential warning against the misuse of perceived religious-based bias and an unmasking of the real motives of those who incite manufactured offense.” – Publishers Weekly Best Books 2016. Read the review.
An Indonesian translation, Pelintiran Kebencian, is out.
"Divisive Disinformation and the Hate Spin Dilemma" – Transcript of my public lecture at the Center for Media at Risk, University of Pennsylvania, October 2018.
Meeting the Challenge of Hate Propaganda – Submitted to Singapore's Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods. Videos here.
 The 20th anniversary issue of Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism published essays by its editorial board. "Journalism in a Climate of Hate" can be read here.

On media freedom and independence

DOWNLOADABLE

  • In my article in Journalism, I argue against misguided moral relativism in journalism studies. Journalism has a shared normative commitment to democracy. “Diversity around a democratic core: The universal and the particular in journalism”  is in issue 14(4) of the journal.
  • UNESCO's report, World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development, is here. My chapter on media independence in Asia is here.
  • Visit my e-learning website explaining freedom of expression.
  • Sustaining Independent Journalism is a publication based on an Asia Journalism Forum conference I organised. A free PDF is available on Scribd.
  • My MediaAsia blog hosts my talks and essays on media issues in Asia, focusing on journalism and freedom of expression.

Singapore media and politics

LEE KUAN YEW'S LEGACY

I've written a chapter on Lee Kuan Yew's philosophy on media, "Neoliberal 'good governance' in lieu of rights: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore experiment", for the volume Speech and Society in the Digital Age, edited by Monroe Price and Nicole Stremlau (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Another media regulation is "Aligning media policy with executive dominance", in The Limits of Authoritarian Governance in Singapore's Developmental State,  edited by Lily Zubaidah Rahim and Michael Barr (Palgrave MacMillian, 2019).

MY BLOGS ON SINGAPORE

Air-Conditioned Nation  — Essays on Singapore politics and society.
Freedom From The Press — On media in Singapore. Formerly Journalism.SG.

My teaching
I offered a new course for PhD and MPhil students, Freedom of Expression and Censorship, in Semester 1 of 2019/20. Details here.
 I supervise doctoral and MPhil research in the broad area of media and politics.
I spent Fall 2018 on sabbatical at the Center for Media at Risk at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School, where I taught a PhD course on censorship.
September 2018: I spent a week in Berlin teaching Studienstiftung scholars, who are selected from Germany's top tertiary students, together with Marcel Machill of Leipzig University.

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