WITH BRAINS ENGAGED: Dr Balakrishnan urged the 2,000 RI students in his dialogue on new media to be wary of spurious claims and flashy publicity stunts on the Internet, an arena where 'more heat than light is generated'. -- ST PHOTO: ALBERT SIM

They were: more diverse views, louder political discourse and politicians delivering their messages in stylish, short multimedia packages, a phenomenon he labelled 'YouTube politics'.

But this future is fraught with pitfalls, the Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports told students of Raffles Institution, which had invited him to give a talk on new media and its impact on politics.

As he spelt them out to the 2,000 students, he urged them to use their heads when reading online: 'In the midst of such an exponential growth in information, determining what is true or false is going to be extremely difficult... I have no easy answer except to ask you to be sceptical and to think and be careful.'

To illustrate one pitfall, he pointed to those who still believe that the sun revolves around the earth: 'Because you have an interconnected world, people with far-out ideas, or even wrong ideas, will be able to find someone who also believes the sun revolves around the earth and reinforces those beliefs.'

A diversity of views did not always end up in a 'fundamental truth'. New media allows wrong ideas to be reinforced, he said.

'They want to gain attention and the best way...is to say something crazy, outrageous, scandalous, maybe even defamatory,' he said. 'It is a world in which more heat than light is generated.'

As for YouTube politics, the minister spelt out what he saw as the new demands on how a politician today has to communicate.

On radio, politicians had to be good orators. TV required good soundbites. New media adds another criterion: style, even in place of substance.

'It's no longer enough to talk, you must have moving images, you must have sound, you must have music. It must be packaged into no more than three minutes.

'If it's something true but boring...no one's going to watch it.'

But in opening their eyes to potential problems, Dr Balakrishnan stressed that he was not out to 'indict the future' but to get them to be more discerning.

'These are just trends, trends that you and I need to think about, need to understand, need to know how to use,' he said.

He returned to this message in the question-and-answer session that followed.

When asked how one should be discerning in the digital age, he told the students to 'read with your brain engaged'.

'I'm always flabbergasted when someone stands up and says: 'Oh I read in this blog that so-and-so did this.' We pronounce it as if it was a discovered truth.

'How many of us bothered to say: 'Wait, who said it, where was it published, are you sure it's accurate?' That whole layer of homework which is needed is not done.'

The remarks began a lively dialogue, duringwhich the minister fielded 16 questions ranging from political apathy to press freedom. One was on how the People's Action Party (PAP) viewed the challenge of new media.

He said the Government had no problems with it: 'There is no dirty little secret which the PAP is trying to hide from its people and that's why the Government is actually very comfortable with new media.

'That's why we are investing hundreds of millions in infrastructure which will connect us to the Internet, that's why we invest so much money into making sure every student, every family has a computer that's connected to the Internet.'

jeremyau@sph.com.sg