June 9, 2023

Then-Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew famously stated in an address to the General Assembly of the International Press Institute on 9 June 1971: “freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government”. His statement echoes strands of logic and reasoning that would later come to be known as “Asian values”. This sentiment undergirds the cooperative relationship between the Singapore government and its media outlets to date.

In ‘An Asian version of data journalism?: Uncovering “Asian values” in data stories produced across Asia’ (Journalism, 2022), Dr Wu Shangyuan (NUS Communications and New Media & Centre for Trusted Internet and Community) explores the connections between “Asian values” and journalism practices across East and South Asia, particularly with regard to the emerging form of data journalism. She argues that, in Asia, narratives of Asian values have influenced news outlets’ relationships with their respective governments: Asian journalists tend to be less confrontational towards their home governments than in the West. Data journalism refers to the use of numerical data and large datasets, sometimes from multiple sources, to illustrate narratives that are useful for a public audience.

Whereas data journalism has been lauded in the West for its potential to increase media outlets’ abilities to keep governments accountable through expanded investigative powers afforded by data analysis, Dr Wu’s study reveals that such dynamics may not play out in Asia.

She posits that the emphasis on Asian values has fostered environments where journalists tend to be collaborative with—rather than hostile towards—their home governments. Asian values are defined here with seven key attributes: emotional self-control, humility, norm conformity, collective welfare, respect for authority, supportiveness, and social harmony.

Dr Wu’s research across six Asian societies (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India) aimed to investigate the extent to which data stories produced in Asia displayed Asian values, and what characteristics those which did display Asian values had. With regards to Singapore, Dr Wu’s paper reveals that Singapore most was commonly covered in data stories featuring Asian values, and that Singaporean news outlet The Straits Times featured the highest rate of data stories featuring Asian values at 90%.

Dr Wu concludes that Asian societies are highly varied in how data journalism is employed by their respective news outlets. Factors that affect this variance include the ownership structure of media outlets, legislative rights and freedoms of the press, and the general availability of alternative data. In general, however, data journalism in Asia largely follows that of conventional journalism in that articles tend to be neutral or cordial, rather than antagonistic, towards their home governments. In this respect, data journalism in Asia does not live up to the hype of being an investigative or advocative agent of checks and balances on institutional power as it may have in Western societies.

Read the article here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14648849221133298