Digital Imagined Communities: A Discursive Deconstruction of Singapore's National Identity as Represented on Social Media

Abstract

This thesis seeks to achieve two objectives. Firstly, it aims to understand Singapore’s national identity as represented on social media in 2017. Secondly, it aims to analyse whether this national identity as represented on social media is rife with challenger discourses from mass texts. This thesis offers three main contributions to existing literature on social media political discourse in Singapore. Firstly, it proposes that Ted Hopf and Bentley Allan’s discourse analysis framework is an appropriate methodology for analysing national identity discourses on social media. Secondly, it shows that Singapore’s national identity across the elite-mass spectrum of online texts is one whereby Singapore is understood to be insecure. This insecurity can be further deconstructed into social, existential, and economic insecurity. Lastly, it shows that national identity discourses on Singapore’s social media in 2017 is not rife with challenger discourses from mass texts. Instead, it shows that there is more consensus than disagreement between elite and mass texts regarding Singapore’s national identity on social media in 2017.