Grappling To Understand One’s Identity:

1. Grappling To Understand One’s Identity: Singapore’s Broadcast and Media Content Policies’ Impact on its Citizenship Education and the Affect on the Growing Muslim Population By: Marissa Citro, Independent Consultant on Asian Citizenship Ed., citrmarissa@gmail.com, SIS 645, American University

2. Executive Summary: Introduction • Singapore as a ‘tiger economy.’ • Population is very ethnically, racially and religiously diverse • Q: What kind of content is projected and/or permitted to be broadcasted across the media? • This impacts one’s educational and religious identity.

3. Executive Summary: Focus

4. Singapore’s Media Content & Broadcast Policies: Overview • Content that contains explicit violence or sexual activity • Affiliations with a certain ethnic, social, or religious group

5. Singapore’s Media Content & Broadcast Policies: Example-2011 Parliamentary Elections • First time PAP allows oppositional content to be broadcasted via TV and internet. • Result: • PAP’s popularity drops significantly • Population very much engaged with democratic process.

6. Impact on Citizenship Education: Overview • Q: What is citizenship education? • A: How a certain individual, • influenced by formal (academic) and/or informal (non-academic) content, curricula, culture, nationality, etc. • devises his/her own identity. • An identity can be associated with one’s religion, nationality, race, gender, culture and/or ethnicity.

7. Impact on Citizenship Education: Singapore (I) • Political engagement and debate is looked down upon in the academic world. • Theoretical background of religious populations in Singapore-no controversial issues are up for discussion.

8. Impact on Citizenship Education: Singapore (II)- Example • Emphasis on Singaporean Nationalistic Identity through: • Curricular content • Media • Recognition of national holidays.

9. Consequential Affect on the Singaporean Muslim Population: Overview (I) • Revivalism and resurgence in number of believers for all religions in Singapore. • By the numbers: Buddhists (42.5%), followed by Muslims (14.9%), Christians (14.6%), Taoists (8.5%) and Hindus (4.0%) (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2000).

10. Consequential Affect on the Singaporean Muslim Population: Overview (II) • Muslims tend to cling to religious identity. • About 99.6% of Singaporean Malays call themselves Muslim (Tan, 2007). • Strong believers in Religious Ed. • Very politically active population.

11. Consequential Affect on the Singaporean Muslim Population: Example-Jeremiah Islamiah

12. Conclusions (I): the PAP and the government • PAP & government encourages onenational identity through media and education policies. • Citizens have become more engaged in the democratic process despite academic objectives of complacency. • PAP is more than willing to ostracize any other group that is gaining power.

13. Conclusions (II): the Singaporean Muslim Population • Muslims have strong connection to religious identity. • Muslims are not alone in desire to be more politically active. • Situation makes it difficult for one to devise own identity because of multicultural population mixed with strong emphasis on one identity.

14. Recommendations to TAF • Encourage Policies in Media and Education Reforms that Reflect the Pluralism and Diversity. • Provide Materials to aid in this Transformation. • Oversee Operations With an Unbiased Perspective.

15. Opportunities For Further Research & International Implications • Research the Situation of Other Religious and Ethnically Minority Groups of Singapore. • The Impact of Future Regulations and Policies in the Media. • Consider the Identities that are Being Projected In Other Similar Asian Nations.