Dr. Niki Cheong presented preliminary findings from the research project on behalf of the team at the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Brisbane, Australia (October 2019).

1. Decoding the weaponisation
of popular culture on WhatsApp
in Singapore and Malaysia
NIKI CHEONG @ UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM, UK
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CRYSTAL ABIDIN @ CURTIN UNIVERSITY
AMELIA JOHNS@ UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY
JOANNE LIM @ UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM MALAYSIA
NATALIE PANG @ NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

2. Introduction
• Examining the dissemination of
crucial messages using popular
culture on WhatsApp using cases
from Singapore and Malaysia
• Ongoing project – January to
December 2019
• Mix of ethnography/participant
observation and personal interviews

3. Decoding the weaponisation
of popular culture on WhatsApp
in Malaysia and
Singapore

4. Approaches and Methodology
 1) Walkthrough method (Light et al. 2018) to understand affordances of
WhatsApp
 2) Digital ethnography of related interest groups of social media and
WhatsApp: Internet celebrities, Political Facebook pages & groups, WhatsApp
groupchats, Meme factories
 3) Scrollback method (Robards & Lincoln 2017) and interviews to study face-
to-face user demonstrations of WhatsApp 30SG, 30MY)
 4) Survey regarding use of WhatsApp chats, esp. personal opinion vs. group
sentiment (300SG, 300MY) among ‘youths’ aged 18-34

5. Weaponisation
Our initial survey from pilot studies
anticipate that the ‘fake news’ discourse
is being used as a tool to suppress
dissent, a ruse to fear monger and scam
digitally illiterate citizens, and a strategy
for the social steganography of
contentious ideas.

6. Internet Popular Culture
Memes Personalities Formats

7. “
”
To me personally, right, memes, as long as I
have a compulsion to share it, it’s a meme,
it’s a ha ha, ok, time to share it … I mean
memes are memes because they travel.
MEMES N DREAMS, TELEGRAM GROUP WITH 17,500 PEOPLE

8. “
”
“Our entry point was never just like memes and gifs,
our entry point was finding the point between, um,
education and entertainment … And the zeitgeist at
that point in time was gifs and memes- so why not
incorporate it into the article.”
CILISOS, NEWS PORTAL THAT PIONERED ‘MAGGI TEXT’

9. Popular Culture
• Empty carriers – designed to spread
and deliver laughs or an emotional
boost – that can be loaded with
ideological content.
• Used differently in entertainment
(‘amateur’) versus informative
(’professional’) contexts.
• Formats may disarm people and
facilitate spread of contentious ideas.

10. “
”
(On) WhatsApp, I cannot
force that particular thing to
be not shared.
WELLNESS ADVOCATE, 58, SINGAPORE
“It can just go like wildfire. But like I said, I – I know I’m not sending out
illegal messages, message that is not supposed to be – but I don’t want to
give false hope to people because it’s just not about using a product and
then maybe – the underlying thing beyond that…”
Disinformation/False News

11. “
”
Oh, drinking too much, like, drinking
cold water is after – especially after 11
pm – is bad for your health, all that
kind of thing.
STUDENT, 22, SINGAPORE
”Yeah, we have a family group chat, I do have like, my parents, sometimes, you know
– send those graphics of yeah, this thing, or – sharing a link which – the website
doesn’t seem very credible, but they are sharing … Or she shares some random fact
that doesn’t seem very factual. Like she thinks it’s scientific but it’s not, I’ll ask her
‘which Facebook article did you find this from?’ That kind of thing.”
Health Conspiracies

12. “
”
Usually the more controversial ones are the
religion – the ones that are related to religion
and race, so sometimes it’s about like the fault
of the writing that sounds like emotion-laced.
SAYS.MY, CONTENT PORTAL IN MALAYSIA
“If it’s emotionally laced it sounds as though you are already, um, pointing your finger,
then they have the right to be like, this writer, you know, obviously trying to blah blah this
particular race or whatever.
Others where it’s more conspiracy theories that, that prefer to think that, um, the person
on the cover image was chosen because of her race and like, then it’s just normal social
media, like Says is always trying to – all that, that kind of thing.”
Race and Religion

13. “
”
Our black ops is to rebut the other side’s black ops …
If, for instant, you know, during the campaign, if you
find a particular cybertrooper, who normally, would
not be using his or her real name start attacking. I
mean not attacking lah, assassination lah!”
SAIFUDDIN ABDULLAH, MALAYSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER
Political Propaganda/Attacks

14.  Cybertroopers are agents mobilised by state-linked political actors who rely on
the internet affordances to engage in activities related to the manipulation of
information and the disruption of communication practices to assist the state to
secure its power.
(Niki Cheong, PhD thesis, 2019)

15. Steve Bones Everything
• Use of satire (parody) on the haze
affecting Malaysia (and Singapore)
• Standup comedian using video
format (via YouTube) as political
commentary
• Almost all participants interviewed
since video was released reported
receiving the video on WhatsApp
despite not having a big following
on Facebook
Citizen Response

16. Digital Literacy
• On WhatsApp, the spread of
contentious ideas appear to go along
generational lines.
• Participants refer to parents, ‘aunties’
and ‘uncles’ that tend to forward
content indiscriminately.
• Part of this has been attributed to
culture of caution, but could also be
linked to digital literacy.
• In Malaysia and Singapore, ‘filial’ values
sometimes affects efforts at correcting
misinformation.

17. “
”
It’s not reliable because instead of
getting it from a proper, er, legit
source, you get it from your, umm,
mother, father.
MALAYSIAN PARTICIPANT
One group interviewed (5 students) talking about misinformation on Whatsapp during the 14th General Elections in
Malaysia. I asked, What groups are these? All five, at the same time, replied, “Family!”
“That WhatsApp group was crazy you know … most of them are forwarded messages.”
“I think the older generation are prone to believing everything they receive”

18. “
”
“…usually my mother are those who receive this kind of
messages, and I just avoid talking about it because I don’t
want to keep contradicting an elder. I mean, if I keep
sending her posts to show her that she’s wrong, she will
in the end stop sending it to
me, but she may send to other people.
SINGAPOREAN PARTICIPANT
“I think sometimes it’s easy for us as tech-savvy young people to say “Just research”, I
think for older people, or for people who just don’t have the time, or just don’t have
the knowledge…”

19. Discussion
 Popular culture can be weaponized at beginning, and at any
point.
 Meanings are so mutable, that’s why they spread and
people can put different meanings (or appropriate the
content).
 Affordances of WhatsApp facilitate the spreading of such
content.
 Cultural and generational context important in
understanding how such contentious ideas spread on
WhatsApp.

20. Decoding the weaponisation
of popular culture on WhatsApp
in Singapore and Malaysia
WHATSAPPRESEARCH.HOME.BLOG
@NIKICHEONG (UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM, UK) – WWW.NIKICHEONG.COM
+
CRYSTAL ABIDIN @ CURTIN UNIVERSITY
AMELIA JOHNS@ UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY
JOANNE LIM @ UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM MALAYSIA
NATALIE PANG @ NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE