Launched in June 2006, Straits Times Online Mobile Print (also known as STOMP Singapore) is an online portal showcasing news presented to the world by the citizens or man on the streets. As it suggests, the website works by showcasing user-generated news items in the form of text, videos or photographs. It is managed by Singapore Press Holdings (of The Straits Times). In the beginning of STOMP, the idea was to attract the younger generation of Singaporeans, who were not drawn towards the boring style and design of The Straits Times. The intention was to draw upon the media-sharing attitude of the new generation using a social interface platform (Han, 2014b). However, in recent times, this social platform for sharing news, videos and photographs is being increasingly misused. More and more cases of doctored photographs and videos are coming up and that has put the dignity and reliability of STOMP in question (AsiaOne, 2012). While STOMP does have a team of editors who are responsible for what gets posted on the site, STOMP and its real purpose has been increasingly demeaned. More often than not, STOMP pictures and other posts showcase misogynistic, racist and sexist themed posts. According to an article published in The City Lab, STOMP is simply assisting the government in spreading fear amongst people of being “STOMP”ed if they do anything out of line. Instead of spreading awareness amongst the masses with respect to the real issues, STOMP is only serving as a mockery instrument, mocking those, outsiders (Kirk, 2014). Several other media houses and people are hence asking the same question – why aren’t the regulators or the government doing anything about it. STOMP being a licensed site has to follow certain guidelines as prescribed by Internet Code of Practice. Since there has been no breach of conduct where the code is concerned, there is no action being taken against STOMP (Han, 2014b).
In passages to follow, an analysis on STOMP’s strengths, weaknesses etc (SWOT Analysis) will help us find the right place from where to begin and reframe the PR campaign on the same basis.
TWO: SWOT analysis:
Strengths:
- STOMP was established to bring in citizen journalism with the intention of freeing up the media, which is regulated (hence not completely free) by the Singapore Government.
- STOMP has a strong finance base, what with Singapore Press Holdings behind it backing it up.
- STOMP has gained much popularity amongst the Singaporeans. According to Mimi Kirk, “STOMP had a total of 1.2 billion page views and 18 million unique visitors” (2014).
Weaknesses:
- With respect to the STOMP popularity, there is more cynicism than regard. In recent years, the kind of videos and posts being posted on STOMP has turned the public against the website rather than supporting it (Loh, 2014a).
- With the incidences of more sexist, racist and bullish videos being posted, the number of controversies is also on a rise.
- A few videos and pictures that were doctored have also caught STOMP in the negative light of it all.
Opportunities:
- There have been several campaigns before in order to stop STOMP. For example: a campaign website called as change.com has launched a petition against STOMP. Started by Robin Li, the petition has already passed the 21,000 signature mark (mUmBRELLA.com, 2014).
- While their focus is on getting as many people to sign their petition and submit it to the government for action, our petition will focus more on spreading mass awareness, inside and outside of Singapore and attract more and more government authorities to our cause.
Threats:
- While there are sites such as theonlinecitizen.com which are based on similar idea as that of STOMP, that is, open forum for citizens to write and post, none of these sites offer to post such slanderous videos and photos. Moreover, any attempt at making such sites was blocked by the government as was the case with the Breakfast Network (Han, 2014b). Thus, STOMP is the only site that the government has put up with posting such salacious content.
THREE: Goals of the PR
General Goals
- Enhance the number of people associated with our campaign.
- Spread awareness about our campaign.
- Create awareness amongst the masses about our campaign point, that is, the cyber-bullying nature of STOMP.
- Get people to commit to our cause.
FOUR: Objectives of the Campaign
- The span of our awareness campaign will be a year from the starting date.
- Lastly, the main objective of our PR campaign would be to get the government to initiate and establish certain regulations that would stop STOMP from publishing bullying posts on the web.
FIVE: Target Audience
While our goals and objectives are all in place, the thing is that without our target audience, we cannot move ahead. For our PR campaign, our target audience would be teens, their parents and government officials. It has been seen that teenagers are the ones most actively involved in such websites that provide user interface to publish posts. By letting the teenagers understand the harmful effects of cyber-bullying, by getting them to admonish the STOMP culture, we can create an anti-STOMP movement. Secondly, why we chose the parents of the teenagers is that parents impact the most on teenagers aside from their friends. Therefore, once the parents are aware of the inimical effects of STOMP, they too can guide their kids about the ills that hide in the garb of a social interface journalist website like STOMP. Lastly, the government has been extremely reticent when it comes to taking action against STOMP. By making them understand the magnitude of the problem, we will inspire these officials to take the required action.
While our target audience is decided, we need to char out a plan to grab their attention. For the same, the first and most important step is to get the attention of the teenagers. For the same, shopping malls and retailers make for the best spots. Performing street plays or simply showcasing posters about our campaign will help grab their attention. Furthermore, organizing parties themed on our campaign, educational fairs etc will prove to be second step towards spreading targeted awareness. For parents, sending in free mailers along with the morning dailies or through grocery stores at the time of billing will help send a message to them. On similar lines, performing street plays in official canteens (after permissions taken) or in the office premise (during lunch time or after office hours) will surely get their attention. Thus, we can achieve total awareness amongst our target audiences.
SIX: Problem with STOMP
The problem with STOMP is that it is focusing more on trying to do moral policing through online media. STOMP is suffering from a backlash from the citizens now for the videos it posts. In the name of citizen journalism, people are uploading photos and videos of others behaving badly in public. While the supporters claim this to be freedom of speech and expression, the truth is that the increased incidences of such posts have led to a spread of xenophobia amongst the masses (AlJazeera, 2014). The truth is, all of this started with the new campaign by STOMP in a bid to teach some internet manners to people. Naming their campaign as “don’t be a facebook idiot”, the campaign focused on posting offensive (or what they thought as offensive) videos on STOMP portal in order to shame and flame the perpetrators (Han, 2014a). With that started the work of the citizen journalists, posting whatever their morals said was not right such as photos of people covered in paint travelling in a metro etc. Instead of putting their foot down, the editing team of STOMP too is abating with such videos and photos (Loh, 2014b).
So far, the government has done nothing to take any sort of action against STOMP. On being interrogated, the Media Development Authority (MDA) stated that it is not in its power to influence the content of any of the websites. The MDA can only react and take action if there is a breach in the code of conduct for online media (The Straits Times, 2014).
SEVEN: Strategy
In order to stop such salacious and slanderous videos from being posted on STOMP and by STOMP, a few strategies need to be formed such as
- Meetings need to be fixed and presentations made to the management of STOMP. Thus, we can ask them to bring a change in their content policy, telling them about the ills they are abating within the society.
- Bring about a social revolution asking people to not participate in STOMP’s citizen journalism campaign.
- Teach kids in school about the ill effects of STOMP and instead get them to post meaningful posts with journalistic ethics online.
- Ask the government to make up regulations banning such posts that promote xenophobia, racism or other ills.
Reference List
(2012). Stomp staff sacked over false 'MRT open door photo. AsiaOne. Retrieved from http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Motoring/Story/A1Story20120625-355071.html
(2014). Campaign Launches to Close Stomp. mUmBRELLA. Retrieved from http://www.mumbrella.asia/2014/04/campaign-launches-close-stomp/
(2014). MDA responds to anti-Stomp petition. The Straits Times. Retrieved from http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/more-singapore-stories/story/mda-responds-anti-stomp-petition-20140417
(2014). Singapore’s Shame Addiction. AlJazeera. Retrieved from http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201404141124-0023641
Han, Kirsten (2014a). Can stomp really teach good internet behavior?. Singapore Scene. Retrieved from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/portal-trolls-really-teach-good-behaviour-062414846.html
Han, Kirsten (2014b). Why Does Stomp Even Exist?. The Independent. Retrieved from http://theindependent.sg/blog/2014/04/14/why-does-stomp-even-exist/
Kirk, Mimi (2014). How Singapore Got Hooked on the Internet of Public Shame. City Lab. Retrieved from http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/04/how-singapore-got-hooked-internet-public-shame/8777/
Loh, Andrew (2014a). Shut down Straits Times portal petition draws support. The Online Citizen. Retrieved from http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014/04/shut-down-straits-times-portal-petition-draws-support/
Loh, Andrew (2014b). Zero tolerance for intolerance? Try STOMP. Wordpress. Retrieved from https://andrewlohhp.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/zero-tolerance-for-intolerance-try-stomp/
