Networks and minefields: When social media presents both opportunity and risk

By Kirsten Han

I’m sitting at the registration booth for the Transformative Justice Collective’s (TJC) event, trying to look welcoming and approachable, when three young volunteers come up to me. “Sorry, Kirsten, can we use this space? We need to make a TikTok video.” 

I make myself scarce; the event is winding up anyway. By the time I get home a few hours later, the video they shot promoting TJC’s merchandise — which we sell to try to recoup the cost of our events — is already getting likes and shares on TikTok and Instagram Reels.

This is how civil society activism functions in Singapore in 2025. In-person events are great if you can navigate the legal and logistical minefield: overly broad legislation that restricts freedom of assembly, authorities popping up to insist that permits are required for the most trivial of things, venues that balk at the idea of hosting an event perceived as “politically sensitive” or “controversial”, venues that don’t balk at the idea but have to charge hefty rates to stay afloat in an expensive city. But social media is indispensable. 

I often come across people — even some who have lived, or still live, in Singapore — who are under the impression that there’s no activism in my country. They assume that, because Singapore has a reputation for being a restrictive one-party state, the government’s control is so total that there’s almost no dissent on the ground. But while it’s true that Singapore is an authoritarian state where civil liberties are suppressed, there’s plenty of civil society activity. You just need to know where to look. And the place to look is online.

Space for expression is heavily restricted in Singapore. Public assemblies for a cause — as determined by the authorities in arbitrary fashion — are criminalised unless prior permission has been obtained from the police. The expansiveness of this law has led to police investigations, and sometimes even criminal charges, into actions ranging from a single person holding a smiley face drawn on a piece of cardboard to a group of Singaporeans delivering letters to the Prime Minister’s Office. There’s only a single park in the entire country where demonstrations can be held without having to first apply for a police permit, and even this space is still subject to other regulations, such as a ban on foreigners participating and restrictions on events that touch on issues of race and religion.

The mainstream media can’t be counted on, either. Two major companies control the bulk of Singapore’s traditional media outlets; both have close ties to the government and are known to largely toe the establishment line. Critical voices and stories aren’t given much space — if any — in local broadsheets or TV news.

In such a political environment, Singaporeans can only rely on our own efforts to generate public discourse on important issues that the state would rather obscure.

I’m an activist child of the Facebook era. My involvement in civil society began in 2010, a time when the social media network was making its presence felt in Singaporean politics. After decades of gatekeeping and censorship by state agencies and the mainstream media, Singaporeans suddenly had a space where we could disseminate information, engage in discussion and promote events — without interference and at scale. I volunteered at The Online Citizen, a citizen journalism website that promoted our original reporting and commentaries on Facebook. I started my own blog. When the 2011 general election came around and opposition parties realised that they could finally circumvent biased media reporting and directly address voters, many of us were optimistic about social media’s potential to be a game-changer in the push for true democracy. The election that year saw the lowest vote-share for the ruling People’s Action Party since independence, and a team from an opposition party won a mega-constituency (known as a Group Representation Constituency, or GRC) for the first time.

Looking back now, we were hopelessly naïve. The assumption that social media platforms would always be the domain of independent and dissenting views was, in today’s chronically online Gen Z parlance, “delulu”. The ruling party might have been caught on the back foot in 2011, but once they realised the potential of social media it was only a matter of time before they started dominating the game, as they’ve done with every space in Singapore. They are, after all, the ones with the ability and resources to make laws and regulations, to police and suppress, and to pay top dollar for polished online campaigns.

Today, social media platforms — no longer just Facebook but also others like Instagram and TikTok — are fraught spaces of contestation, surveillance and control. Singaporean activists — especially those working on issues related to Palestine, sexual violence, labour rights or capital punishment — fret about being shadow-banned, a practice in which social media algorithms down-rank, delist or even block content without any transparency. We know that the government is keeping a close eye on our social media channels, ready to pounce on any weakness, real or perceived. TJC has received multiple executive orders from the government under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), accusing us of spreading “false statements of fact”. Last December, our website and social media pages across Facebook, Instagram, X (previously Twitter) and TikTok were designated “declared online locations” under POFMA, introducing such onerous restrictions and conditions — for example, banning us from deriving “material benefit” from operating those platforms, requiring us to undertake the impossible task of completely separating our offline and online activities — that we decided to stop operating those pages for the duration of the two-year designation. On top of that, the collective and three of its members are subject to criminal investigations under POFMA — if charged and convicted, the penalties could involve heavy fines or even jail time.

Social media can also be weaponised by powerful politicians to direct harassment — coordinated or otherwise — against their critics. I’ve experienced this myself: a politician publishes a Facebook post full of insinuations and dog-whistles and, the next thing you know, you’re floundering under a torrent of condemnation and insults. Any clarification or rebuttal issued might reach some people but will generally be drowned out by the state’s much larger megaphone on social media and traditional news outlets. This isn’t just harmful to the target; it’s also a warning to others, a demonstration of the cost of dissent. No one wants to attract this sort of attention from the government.

Still, calls to “delete Facebook” and get off social media fall flat in Singapore. It’s just not an option, especially for those of us who have messages to get out there and ideas to communicate. We might be repulsed by Big Tech’s willingness to cosy up to authoritarians, and be highly sceptical of their opaque algorithms, but we ultimately still need these platforms because there aren’t many other options in this political environment. Social media is still the easiest, most low-cost way for under-resourced activist groups to reach a maximum number of people in a short amount of time. And it does still work: I’ve been repeatedly told by strangers I meet at TJC events that they learnt about our work and activities through Instagram.

The trick, then, is to maximise the use of social media platforms but not be held hostage by the whims of their algorithms. In choosing to temporarily ditch our “declared online location” pages, TJC has pivoted to mailing lists and broadcast channels on WhatsApp and Telegram — much more direct channels of digital communication that could potentially work out better in the long run. And, as people tire of the petty fights and AI slop taking over their social media feeds, there’s been a resurgent appreciation for more intimate in-person interactions. We’re rediscovering the beauty of small-scale workshops, of “underground” organising and quality time spent with friends and comrades talking about shared struggles.

Activism is, at the end of the day, all about connection: between struggles, between communities, between people. Social media has been key to Singaporean activism efforts and that looks set to continue even if online spaces are no longer as safe as they once were. But we no longer live under the illusion of it being the most promising path to a better future.

Kirsten Han is a Singaporean writer, editor and activist. She runs We, The Citizens, a newsletter covering Singapore from a rights-based perspective, and is a member of the Transformative Justice Collective, where she works for an end to the death penalty and the war on drugs. She’s also an executive committee member of NIMBUS, a network of solidarity among Singaporean groups engaging in acts of journalism and media-related work, and the managing editor of Mekong Review, an Asia-focused literary journal.

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