Shobha Avadhani | National University of Singapore (original) (raw)
Papers by Shobha Avadhani
Television & New Media, 2015
This paper explores the practice of posting static visual online memes on social media by politic... more This paper explores the practice of posting static visual online memes on social media by political actors to convey messages that comment on the ruling party and its policies in Singapore. The paper presents a discussion based on semiotic analysis of popular memes and interviews with Singaporeans aged 18-24 to understand the ways in which circulation of memes influence the quality of political engagement. The results of the analysis suggest that the memes hold the potential for enhancing political engagement among a citizenry that is often seen as depoliticised and apathetic. Memes via their appearance on Facebook and other social media platforms socialise citizens to become critical of the status quo. Memes that attract youth’s attention follow general patterns of satirically commenting on the regime’s carefully articulated narratives of progress and efficiency and constructing subversive counter narratives infused with wit, sarcasm and parody.
With the widespread availability of information technology, young Singaporeans enjoy exciting pos... more With the widespread availability of information technology, young Singaporeans enjoy exciting possibilities for the consumption and production of media. Their government has introduced various initiatives through schools and public education campaigns to encourage more young people to acquire media production skills. This chapter reflects on the efficacy of these initiatives and their implications for the development of youth media production in Singapore. Two significant media education programmes and the media products that they have generated are assessed in detail. The chapter concludes that while state-led media production education programmes have succeeded in heightening young people's awareness of and competencies for media production, these should be complemented by private-sector-run programmes which afford young Singaporeans more room to exercise their creativity. At the same time, the current emphasis on imparting technical media production skills should be balanced by increased efforts to vest young Singaporeans with the critical literacy to consume and produce media in an informed, critical and discerning manner. Above all, however, the infusion of the existing national curriculum with media production education would be best served by a shift in the pedagogical approach that underscores the current education system, from one which is more hierarchical and individually oriented to one that is more heterarchical and collaborative in nature.
Journal of Creative Communications, 2013
Paul Clark, Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens. New York: Cambridge University P... more Paul Clark, Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012.
Science, Technology and Society, 2013
Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the ... more Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the limited yet important implications of the rise of the political twitterati1 for liberal democracy in Singapore. The phenomenon marks a significant development not in terms of facilitating mass upheavals or radical reforms as elsewhere in the world, but in terms of contributing towards the construction of counter narratives to the historically articulated and previously uncontested discourses of progress, efficiency, productivity and success that in part have legitimated the political establishment in Singapore. By critiquing the regime’s myriad narratives of accomplishments and constructing subversive counter narratives through ‘series tweets’ that were infused with wit, sarcasm, parody and satire, the political twitterati in Singapore has expanded the vistas of democratic participation while remaining loyal to the country’s non-Western liberal democratic framework.
Learning, Media and Technology, 2013
Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 2012
... J. Bennett and Edwin J. Delattre); (3) The Great Tradition in Education: Transmitting Moral V... more ... J. Bennett and Edwin J. Delattre); (3) The Great Tradition in Education: Transmitting Moral Values (Edward A. Wynne); (4) Character ... and Catherine Lewis); (6) Character and Academics: What Good Schools Do (Jacques S. Benninga, Marvin W. Berkowitz, Phyllis Kuehn, and ...
One must acknowledge the fact that there are other realms of political engagement that can lead t... more One must acknowledge the fact that there are other realms of political engagement that can lead toward a momentum for change. Youth utilize ICT to the maximum capacity. The social media has provided space for activism. In the Muslim Youth Survey (2011), youth in both Indonesia and Malaysia received much information through the television and the internet. In a study undertaken by Syed Arabi Idid, Abdul Rashid Moten and Saodah Wok (2011), the researchers focused on the amount of attention given to current news and political news, as well as to the extent of youth political participation in Malaysia. Findings indicate lack of interest in political news as well political activities. However, in terms of practice, the Malaysian youth did indicate that if one continues to vote in elections, one might be able to change something within the political system thus contributing to national politics through active political participation. More importantly, they also collaborated the fact that ICT plays a major role in their lives.
With the widespread availability of information technology, young Singaporeans enjoy exciting pos... more With the widespread availability of information technology, young Singaporeans enjoy exciting possibilities for the consumption and production of media. Their government has introduced various initiatives through schools and public education campaigns to encourage more young people to acquire media production skills. This chapter reflects on the efficacy of these initiatives and their implications for the development of youth media production in Singapore. Two significant media education programmes and the media products that they have generated are assessed in detail. The chapter concludes that while state-led media production education programmes have succeeded in heightening young people's awareness of and competencies for media production, these should be complemented by private-sector-run programmes which afford young Singaporeans more room to exercise their creativity. At the same time, the current emphasis on imparting technical media production skills should be balanced ...
Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the ... more Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the limited yet important implications of the rise of the political twitterati1 for liberal democracy in Singapore. The phenomenon marks a significant development not in terms of facilitating mass upheavals or radical reforms as elsewhere in the world, but in terms of contributing towards the construction of counter narratives to the historically articulated and previously uncontested discourses of progress, efficiency, productivity and success that in part have legitimated the political establishment in Singapore. By critiquing the regime’s myriad narratives of accomplishments and constructing subversive counter narratives through ‘series tweets’ that were infused with wit, sarcasm, parody and satire, the political twitterati in Singapore has expanded the vistas of democratic participation while remaining loyal to the country’s non-Western liberal democratic framework.
While pedagogy is predominantly viewed from the perspective of classroom instruction, educators w... more While pedagogy is predominantly viewed from the perspective of classroom instruction, educators worldwide invariably play a critical pastoral role of shaping the personal development of their students and nurturing in them life skills. With the avid use of participatory media by young people in peer interaction, educators need to be aware of the attendant risks and opportunities so that they may offer counsel and render appropriate advice. To this end, through interviews with 36 Singaporean male juvenile delinquents and youths-at-risk, this study explores how these youths utilise participatory media in their peer interaction. The findings indicate that for this vulnerable youth population, participatory media such as social networking sites can become a platform through which they are unwittingly drawn into criminal behaviour and post-rehabilitation, participatory media may offer an insidious route to recidivism. Participatory media complicates peer interaction by presenting risk factors such as network transparency, negative peer modelling, network seepage and network persistence, all of which have implications for these youths sliding further into delinquency and criminal activity. This article concludes with recommendations on the strategies which youths-at-risk can employ to avoid the risks of participatory media.
The institution of the school traditionally defines the roles and relationships of teachers and s... more The institution of the school traditionally defines the roles and relationships of teachers and students. However, the introduction of the social networking site Facebook into the teacher-student dynamic has the potential to change these constructs. "Friending" students is a deceptively simple act on Facebook, when the likelihood of spillover into the real-world setting of the school is strong. To investigate the impact of teachers’ perceptions of identity on their interaction decisions with students on Facebook, as well as the strategies they develop to manage dilemmas linked to these decisions, an in-depth study was conducted of 12 teachers who had varying levels of interaction with students on Facebook. The study employed open-ended individual interviews set in the context of a guided tour by participants through their Facebook profiles, and was informed by group interviews and participant observation in an atmosphere of rapport and reciprocity, A conceptual framework weaving together Turkle’s (1999) theory of identity as multiplicity and flexibility, Altman and Taylor’s (1973) Social Penetration Theory and Livingstone’s (2008) problematization of the risk-opportunity binary was constructed. This framework formed a lens through which data collected from the individual interviews was thematically analyzed.
6
Abstract
Three themes emerged that had a bearing on teachers’ interaction decisions: (1) the roles they chose to play as part of their teacher identity, (2) the level of vulnerability they felt as a result of the tension between competing forces of opportunities and risks of disclosure and privacy, and (3) the technological competence they possessed to manipulate the features of Facebook. The findings indicate that teachers selectively apply strategies in the face of anticipated and experienced dilemmas according to situations and students. It is argued that this has implications for teacher-student relationships in the real-world school setting, the integration of Web 2.0 technologies in the curriculum, and the institutional hierarchies of the school.
Keywords: Facebook, teacher identity, social penetration theory, risk, opportunity, online and offline social interaction, teacher-student relationships
Journal of Creative Communications 8 (2-3), 277-279
Asia Pacific Journal of Education
Journal of Broadcasting & …, Jan 1, 2012
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
Computers in Human Behavior, Jan 1, 2012
While extensive research has been conducted on young people's peer interaction via online communi... more While extensive research has been conducted on young people's peer interaction via online communication, the focus has been on mainstream youths, with marginalized youth communities being understudied. To help address this inadequacy, the current study conducted interviews with Singaporean male juvenile delinquents (n = 36) to understand the role of online communication in their peer interactions and the salient characteristics of such interactions. Our findings show that Facebook was the principal tool of online peer interaction. However, given the particular circumstances of juvenile delinquents, online social networking presents issues that may compromise efforts to rehabilitate them. These include extending the time and opportunities for unstructured and unsupervised peer socialization, peer endorsement of delinquent acts and the pressure of having to display group loyalty in the online space. Even after rehabilitation, youths who attempt to distance themselves from their delinquent peers are challenged by the persistence of their online social networks.
Conference Presentations by Shobha Avadhani
This paper explores political actors’ practice of posting static visual online memes on social me... more This paper explores political actors’ practice of posting static visual online memes on social media in Singapore to convey messages commenting on the ruling party and its policies. The paper presents a discussion based on semiotic analysis of selected memes, and interviews with Singaporeans aged 18-24 about their responses to memes, to understand how circulation of memes might influence quality of political engagement. Results suggest that while memes hold potential for enhancing political engagement among a citizenry that is often seen as depoliticised, youths’ perceptions of the memes do not allow for deterministic conclusions about their efficacy in this regard. Rather, the popularity of memes in general as devices of humour, cultural resonance and identity representations suggests that the appropriation of cyberculture for localized political means does have potential for socialising citizens to become critical of the status quo as part of a wider network of political action.
Television & New Media, 2015
This paper explores the practice of posting static visual online memes on social media by politic... more This paper explores the practice of posting static visual online memes on social media by political actors to convey messages that comment on the ruling party and its policies in Singapore. The paper presents a discussion based on semiotic analysis of popular memes and interviews with Singaporeans aged 18-24 to understand the ways in which circulation of memes influence the quality of political engagement. The results of the analysis suggest that the memes hold the potential for enhancing political engagement among a citizenry that is often seen as depoliticised and apathetic. Memes via their appearance on Facebook and other social media platforms socialise citizens to become critical of the status quo. Memes that attract youth’s attention follow general patterns of satirically commenting on the regime’s carefully articulated narratives of progress and efficiency and constructing subversive counter narratives infused with wit, sarcasm and parody.
With the widespread availability of information technology, young Singaporeans enjoy exciting pos... more With the widespread availability of information technology, young Singaporeans enjoy exciting possibilities for the consumption and production of media. Their government has introduced various initiatives through schools and public education campaigns to encourage more young people to acquire media production skills. This chapter reflects on the efficacy of these initiatives and their implications for the development of youth media production in Singapore. Two significant media education programmes and the media products that they have generated are assessed in detail. The chapter concludes that while state-led media production education programmes have succeeded in heightening young people's awareness of and competencies for media production, these should be complemented by private-sector-run programmes which afford young Singaporeans more room to exercise their creativity. At the same time, the current emphasis on imparting technical media production skills should be balanced by increased efforts to vest young Singaporeans with the critical literacy to consume and produce media in an informed, critical and discerning manner. Above all, however, the infusion of the existing national curriculum with media production education would be best served by a shift in the pedagogical approach that underscores the current education system, from one which is more hierarchical and individually oriented to one that is more heterarchical and collaborative in nature.
Journal of Creative Communications, 2013
Paul Clark, Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens. New York: Cambridge University P... more Paul Clark, Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012.
Science, Technology and Society, 2013
Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the ... more Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the limited yet important implications of the rise of the political twitterati1 for liberal democracy in Singapore. The phenomenon marks a significant development not in terms of facilitating mass upheavals or radical reforms as elsewhere in the world, but in terms of contributing towards the construction of counter narratives to the historically articulated and previously uncontested discourses of progress, efficiency, productivity and success that in part have legitimated the political establishment in Singapore. By critiquing the regime’s myriad narratives of accomplishments and constructing subversive counter narratives through ‘series tweets’ that were infused with wit, sarcasm, parody and satire, the political twitterati in Singapore has expanded the vistas of democratic participation while remaining loyal to the country’s non-Western liberal democratic framework.
Learning, Media and Technology, 2013
Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 2012
... J. Bennett and Edwin J. Delattre); (3) The Great Tradition in Education: Transmitting Moral V... more ... J. Bennett and Edwin J. Delattre); (3) The Great Tradition in Education: Transmitting Moral Values (Edward A. Wynne); (4) Character ... and Catherine Lewis); (6) Character and Academics: What Good Schools Do (Jacques S. Benninga, Marvin W. Berkowitz, Phyllis Kuehn, and ...
One must acknowledge the fact that there are other realms of political engagement that can lead t... more One must acknowledge the fact that there are other realms of political engagement that can lead toward a momentum for change. Youth utilize ICT to the maximum capacity. The social media has provided space for activism. In the Muslim Youth Survey (2011), youth in both Indonesia and Malaysia received much information through the television and the internet. In a study undertaken by Syed Arabi Idid, Abdul Rashid Moten and Saodah Wok (2011), the researchers focused on the amount of attention given to current news and political news, as well as to the extent of youth political participation in Malaysia. Findings indicate lack of interest in political news as well political activities. However, in terms of practice, the Malaysian youth did indicate that if one continues to vote in elections, one might be able to change something within the political system thus contributing to national politics through active political participation. More importantly, they also collaborated the fact that ICT plays a major role in their lives.
With the widespread availability of information technology, young Singaporeans enjoy exciting pos... more With the widespread availability of information technology, young Singaporeans enjoy exciting possibilities for the consumption and production of media. Their government has introduced various initiatives through schools and public education campaigns to encourage more young people to acquire media production skills. This chapter reflects on the efficacy of these initiatives and their implications for the development of youth media production in Singapore. Two significant media education programmes and the media products that they have generated are assessed in detail. The chapter concludes that while state-led media production education programmes have succeeded in heightening young people's awareness of and competencies for media production, these should be complemented by private-sector-run programmes which afford young Singaporeans more room to exercise their creativity. At the same time, the current emphasis on imparting technical media production skills should be balanced ...
Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the ... more Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the limited yet important implications of the rise of the political twitterati1 for liberal democracy in Singapore. The phenomenon marks a significant development not in terms of facilitating mass upheavals or radical reforms as elsewhere in the world, but in terms of contributing towards the construction of counter narratives to the historically articulated and previously uncontested discourses of progress, efficiency, productivity and success that in part have legitimated the political establishment in Singapore. By critiquing the regime’s myriad narratives of accomplishments and constructing subversive counter narratives through ‘series tweets’ that were infused with wit, sarcasm, parody and satire, the political twitterati in Singapore has expanded the vistas of democratic participation while remaining loyal to the country’s non-Western liberal democratic framework.
While pedagogy is predominantly viewed from the perspective of classroom instruction, educators w... more While pedagogy is predominantly viewed from the perspective of classroom instruction, educators worldwide invariably play a critical pastoral role of shaping the personal development of their students and nurturing in them life skills. With the avid use of participatory media by young people in peer interaction, educators need to be aware of the attendant risks and opportunities so that they may offer counsel and render appropriate advice. To this end, through interviews with 36 Singaporean male juvenile delinquents and youths-at-risk, this study explores how these youths utilise participatory media in their peer interaction. The findings indicate that for this vulnerable youth population, participatory media such as social networking sites can become a platform through which they are unwittingly drawn into criminal behaviour and post-rehabilitation, participatory media may offer an insidious route to recidivism. Participatory media complicates peer interaction by presenting risk factors such as network transparency, negative peer modelling, network seepage and network persistence, all of which have implications for these youths sliding further into delinquency and criminal activity. This article concludes with recommendations on the strategies which youths-at-risk can employ to avoid the risks of participatory media.
The institution of the school traditionally defines the roles and relationships of teachers and s... more The institution of the school traditionally defines the roles and relationships of teachers and students. However, the introduction of the social networking site Facebook into the teacher-student dynamic has the potential to change these constructs. "Friending" students is a deceptively simple act on Facebook, when the likelihood of spillover into the real-world setting of the school is strong. To investigate the impact of teachers’ perceptions of identity on their interaction decisions with students on Facebook, as well as the strategies they develop to manage dilemmas linked to these decisions, an in-depth study was conducted of 12 teachers who had varying levels of interaction with students on Facebook. The study employed open-ended individual interviews set in the context of a guided tour by participants through their Facebook profiles, and was informed by group interviews and participant observation in an atmosphere of rapport and reciprocity, A conceptual framework weaving together Turkle’s (1999) theory of identity as multiplicity and flexibility, Altman and Taylor’s (1973) Social Penetration Theory and Livingstone’s (2008) problematization of the risk-opportunity binary was constructed. This framework formed a lens through which data collected from the individual interviews was thematically analyzed.
6
Abstract
Three themes emerged that had a bearing on teachers’ interaction decisions: (1) the roles they chose to play as part of their teacher identity, (2) the level of vulnerability they felt as a result of the tension between competing forces of opportunities and risks of disclosure and privacy, and (3) the technological competence they possessed to manipulate the features of Facebook. The findings indicate that teachers selectively apply strategies in the face of anticipated and experienced dilemmas according to situations and students. It is argued that this has implications for teacher-student relationships in the real-world school setting, the integration of Web 2.0 technologies in the curriculum, and the institutional hierarchies of the school.
Keywords: Facebook, teacher identity, social penetration theory, risk, opportunity, online and offline social interaction, teacher-student relationships
Journal of Creative Communications 8 (2-3), 277-279
Asia Pacific Journal of Education
Journal of Broadcasting & …, Jan 1, 2012
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
Computers in Human Behavior, Jan 1, 2012
While extensive research has been conducted on young people's peer interaction via online communi... more While extensive research has been conducted on young people's peer interaction via online communication, the focus has been on mainstream youths, with marginalized youth communities being understudied. To help address this inadequacy, the current study conducted interviews with Singaporean male juvenile delinquents (n = 36) to understand the role of online communication in their peer interactions and the salient characteristics of such interactions. Our findings show that Facebook was the principal tool of online peer interaction. However, given the particular circumstances of juvenile delinquents, online social networking presents issues that may compromise efforts to rehabilitate them. These include extending the time and opportunities for unstructured and unsupervised peer socialization, peer endorsement of delinquent acts and the pressure of having to display group loyalty in the online space. Even after rehabilitation, youths who attempt to distance themselves from their delinquent peers are challenged by the persistence of their online social networks.
This paper explores political actors’ practice of posting static visual online memes on social me... more This paper explores political actors’ practice of posting static visual online memes on social media in Singapore to convey messages commenting on the ruling party and its policies. The paper presents a discussion based on semiotic analysis of selected memes, and interviews with Singaporeans aged 18-24 about their responses to memes, to understand how circulation of memes might influence quality of political engagement. Results suggest that while memes hold potential for enhancing political engagement among a citizenry that is often seen as depoliticised, youths’ perceptions of the memes do not allow for deterministic conclusions about their efficacy in this regard. Rather, the popularity of memes in general as devices of humour, cultural resonance and identity representations suggests that the appropriation of cyberculture for localized political means does have potential for socialising citizens to become critical of the status quo as part of a wider network of political action.
This paper focuses on the implications of teachers‟ use of social networking sites like Facebook ... more This paper focuses on the implications of teachers‟ use of social networking sites like Facebook to mediate communication with their students in informal contexts. It discusses the implications of teacher selection of Facebook menu options for teacher identity and interaction with students. Earlier work on identity, social penetration, and risk and opportunity in online settings (Turkle, 1995; Altman and Taylor, 1973; Livingstone, 2008) is drawn on to develop a conceptual framework for analysing teacher strategies to control intimacy levels with their students. This paper draws on a study involving 12 secondary school teachers and their decisions regarding interactions with students on Facebook. It suggests that teacher selectivity of menu options, whilst enabling teachers to manage the dilemmas of merging their personal and professional identities in online social network environments like Facebook, also has the potential to generate „walled intimacies‟ whereby some students have access to teachers and others do not.
Keywords: Adolescents, teacher-student relationship, mediated intimacy, identity, Social Penetration theory, risk and opportunity
J. Fisherkeller (Ed.) International Perspectives on Youth Media: Cultures of Production & Education, 2010
Against the backdrop of what may be termed a muted but prolonged crisis in English language teach... more Against the backdrop of what may be termed a muted but prolonged crisis in English language teaching in Singapore, as well as current trends in digital discourses and practices, this paper critically examines the link between ICTs and pedagogy by tracing three broad streams of discussion: teaching through technology, teaching about technology, and teaching by technology. Sample lesson plans are presented to illustrate each stream. The argument is put forward that a strategic turn towards digital media can facilitate the application of the ‘pedagogical imagination’ and make us more reflexive about our relationships with texts, and that a critical focus on technology could help us break the paralysis caused by the dilemma of ICTs-for-ICTs-sake versus pedagogy-as-prime.
Singapore’s education system has been a central element in the city state’s discourses on nation ... more Singapore’s education system has been a central element in the city state’s discourses on nation building, and young people have been the target of some of the most intensive state campaigns in the post-independence period. Very early on, Singapore caught onto the notion of the technological society, and saw the school as playing a major role in its articulation. Macro level studies have identified the education system as a mechanism of transmission of national narratives. At the same time, research at the level of the school is conducted primarily with the aim of improving pedagogy, and studies of the role of technology in schools have been similarly oriented. This paper takes a micro level perspective to locate and interpret the role of the school in the emerging technological society in Asia. Based on a study that combined the principles of participant action research with ethnographic engagement in a median secondary school in Singapore, it argues that close examination of the discourses, artifacts and practices related to school curriculum allows for the exploration of the question of citizenship and democracy in a technological society. This paper tries to outline the salient features of the methodology used and discuss some of the tentative findings. In particular, this micro level approach draws out the significant role played by mediators in negotiating spaces for agency.