Director  has received the 2025 Gordon Cullingham Research and Publication Grant from  for “Walking Ottawa in Ink & Washes: A Quiet Cartography of a City Becoming Home.”

As Heritage Ottawa noted in its announcement, ““

Congratulations . We look forward to the completed book!

— ALiGN Media Lab

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In this 3 min video, offers publics some tips on how to thoughtfully engage with social media.

A video taken from FPA ‘s Another Take interview: “Driven by Emotion: How Social Media Rewards Love & Hate”

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We’re still enjoying our summer break. However, it doesn’t mean nothing’s going on at ALiGN 🙂 We’re busy working on various things, our own research and, of course, the next special issue!

In the meantime, in the last couple months, several publications from ALiGN folks are published. These include:

• Dobson, K. (2019). . In J. Hunsinger, M. M. Allen, & L. Klastrup (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Internet Research, Springer.
• Lim, M. (2019). Cyber-Urban Space. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia or Urban and Regional Studies, A. M. Orum (Ed.). []
• Lim, M. (2019). Disciplining Dissent: Freedom, Control, and Digital Activism in Southeast Asia, in R. Padawangi (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Urbanization in Southeast Asia, London: Routledge, pp. 478-494. [Download PDF]
• Woo, B. & Rajani, N. (2019). Comic Book Stores as Sites of Struggle, in , Rutgers University Press.

Also, Nasreen Rajani and Merlyna Lim were featured in the media:

• Lim in CTV News Channel: Protests in Hong Kong primarily going offline, interviewed by Angie Seth.
• Lim in CBC News: Hong Kong protesters go offline to dodge China’s digital surveillance, by Ramona Pringle.
• Rajani in Post<Riposte: Episode 16 – Election Detection: Fighting Fake News and Toxic Politics, by Sherry Aske. /sjc/2019/episode-16-election-detection-fighting-fake-news-and-toxic-politics/

Enjoy!

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May 2019

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

MERLYNA LIM

Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society

Mobilizing Emotion, Not Knowledge

As Canada prepares for a federal election, Canada Research Chair Professor Merlyna Lim is analyzing how social media users—human and otherwise—are mobilizing emotions rather than facts.

In the months leading up to the Canadian election, Facebook accounts with names like “Trudeau Has Got To Go”, “Overthrow Trudeau”, and Justin Trudeau is an Idiot” focus on ridiculing the Prime Minister.

On the opposite end of the political spectrum are accounts attacking Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, with names such as “Andrew Scheer Is An Idiot”, “Scheer Nonsense”, and “Schmeer 2019”.

Political cartoons and jokes are an age-old tradition. But Communication and Media Studies Professor Merlyna says that in the age of social media, hateful speech and misinformation spreads incredibly quickly—intensifying the polarization within politics.

 

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In their April 7th edition, De Standaard, a Flemish daily newspaper in Belgium,  publishes an article titled  (meaning In Asia, press censorship is disguised as ‘the battle against fake news) which includes a special interview with ALiGN director Merlyna Lim. The article itself is in Dutch (a pdf version of the news article is available here). Below is an English summary.

Largely based on her interview with Professor Merlyna Lim, the reporter Giselle Nath discusses how Asia is at the forefront of enacting laws and regulations against fake news. In India, the minister of information Smriti Irani proposed a new law for the media which will put journalists accused of fake news to immediately lose their press accreditation. In the Indian case, there is no legal definition of fake news, opening the door for intimidation and censorship practices of journalists in the country.

Similarly, other countries in Asia have started crusades against press and internet freedom since the beginning of 2018, disguising them as a battle against fake news. Trump buzzword, according to Lim, “has made journalists and reporters’ lives throughout the region difficult”. In the Philippines, president Duterte has taken a legal action against the online news site Rappler, calling it a fake news channel for a critical reportage of his drug war — Rappler reporters are now being barred from all Duterte’s meetings.

Myanmar recently revived its old censorship law to arrest two reporters from Reuters and now calls all reporting on ethnic cleansing on the Rohingya ‘fake’. Thailand (under a military junta) and Singapore are also putting more restrictions on free speech.

The most striking example is Malaysia which introduces a law that penalizes individuals who spread fake news with six years in prison and an enormous fine. This law, unsurprisingly, comes forth during the preparation of the upcoming general election where the ruling party under the Prime Minister Najib Razak has to face the growing opposition. In the meantime, the Prime Minister is caught in the biggest corruption scandal ever in Malaysia which made news worldwide, except in his own country. Merlyna Lim calls the Malaysian new law on fake news an uncouth attempt to keep people silent.

“There is a wave of democratic reform movements in Asia [in the last two decades] which became more prominent in the last seven to ten years”, says Lim. Along with this wave, Lim says, “There’s been a growing use of social media, which provides spaces for the young, urban middle class users, to use it, mainly for social purposes, but also to be political and to collectively imagine the possibility of alternative future, that is different that the authoritarianism. (Some of) They want reform.” However, reform is not easy. “The problem is that many Asian countries have an authoritarian past. Free press without propaganda, factual evidence, institutions that are accountable to the people: it is all so new to them.”

Lim also argues that, additionally, there’s a global undercurrent of politics that makes the reform processes even more problematic. “Politics itself has become marketing-driven. It’s commercialized more and more. Politicians sell their brands, not ideas nor policies. The underlying problem is not fake news, but fake democracy.”

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In November 2017, Lucy Juneau from �Ӱ�ԭ�� Newsroom interviewed Professor Merlyna Lim, ALiGN Director/Founder who is, apparently, also an artist.

Below is the interview, which was published in the .

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In July 2017, Merlyna Lim, won the International Urban Sketching Competition held by the Jackson’s Art.  As a winner, Merlyna was  by Lisa Takahashi from the Jackson’s Art in October 2017. Here, she was interviewed not as a scholar, researcher, or professor, but as an artist. Below is an opening paragraph from the .

For a complete interview, .

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Our newly launched lab has gotten a media coverage. In today’s MetroNews ….

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ALiGN researcher Nasreen Rajani was interviewed about feminist-oriented corporate companies, such as the Dove Beauty Campaign, by Manta Mahas from the �Ӱ�ԭ��JHR in an articled titled ““

Rajani commented:

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Our own Nasreen Rajani was interviewed in the �Ӱ�ԭ��’s independent weekly, the Charlatan, about .

Rajani, who is currently researching digital media and online feminist activism, commented:

“Social media has the potential to build awareness around rape culture and to build connections between others but it’s not inherently effective as a debate platform… many just want to voice their opinions and not listen to others.”

According to Rajani, there is no easy answer on the effectiveness of online debate. While social media has great power to reach people, she said it is not the place for a serious conversation.

“We also may be more likely to follow those opinions that align with our own,” Rajani said. “It’s important to remember that instances of gender-based violence have, unfortunately, been thriving on social media… and this works to police people’s voices [and] tweets or pushes them offline completely.”

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