CHU SIWEI
Executive Summary
My group engaged in sociological research for our WOW! project. The topic we chose was censorship in literary art in Singapore. We titled our research "What Are Writers’ Experiences with Creative Freedom in Singapore?". We conducted four interviews, including three email interviews, to gain a better understanding of censorship in literary art in Singapore. We also did secondary research by referring to relevant books and previous research papers on the issue of censorship. At the end of WOW!, we put our findings into a 2900-word report and produced a poster which we used during our concluding presentation and Q&A session.
Background information of the projects / tasks which you were involved in.
The project aims to expose us to research that uses the social science approach (by studying social and cultural behaviour) and apply this to an area identified by us. We were introduced to research methods used in sociological studies, exposed to opinions from different perspectives and learnt the format and steps researchers take to produce a formal research report. In order to dig deeper into our chosen topic, we conducted both primary and secondary research. To achieve this, we had the privilege of doing field work outside of TJC. The main deliverables included a formatted 2900-word research paper, a poster to demonstrate the findings of our research alongside a presentation. We delivered this presentation to our teacher mentor, Dr Lim Wee Kiat, our teachers in charge, Mr Wang and Ms Ong, three students doing the same project on another topic, and five of our cohort mates.
Throughout the process, we received help and mentoring from Dr Lim. With his guidance, we managed to source for useful research references. As part of the sociological research process, we had the opportunity to interview three Singaporean writers and someone who is familiar with governmental censorship. We also enjoyed the abundant books and references in the National Library Broad. Since we did not work with our mentor in his office, we spent most of our time in school and managed to work well as it was a conducive environment.
The main tasks we were engaged in included writing an interview guide, crafting a report and making a presentation poster. To complete the report, we needed to do a lot of readings on issues relevant to our research on censorship. These readings came in the form of both digital and print material. These materials, combined with our mentor's comments, helped us to produce a comprehensive interview guide. After that, we analysed our interview notes. At the end of the project, we presented our work with a poster.
Elaboration / record of the activities done
At the start of the project, as we were not sure which topic to choose, we read recent news and found the topic of sex education interesting. However, we could not find a suitable inquiry question that could be substantially researched upon within one month. Therefore, we chose our second topic on censorship. We started out by reading past papers on censorship and realised that most studies focused on censorship in media while there was little work done for censorship in literary art. Creative freedom is very important for artists in the literary scene. A lot of their work requires a deep sense of empathy and understanding of societal issues and the human psyche and thus they need to be allowed the freedom to explore their artistic motives and fulfil their artistic direction. Therefore, we decided to investigate the issue of creative freedom in literature in Singapore.
After deciding on the theme, we came up with a timeline for the project and a list of the writers/artists that we planned to interview. For the interview stage, the main challenge was obtaining interviews. We had to work around the Chinese New Year holiday period and the interviewees' busy schedules and so only managed to conduct four interviews, three of which were online. Even though we did not reach our goal of six to eight interviewees, we still made good use of what we have and analysed the interview answers with the aid of our teacher mentor. Meanwhile, as some of the books that we were interested were only available for references in NLB, we went to NLB several times.
As one of our group members was overseas during Chinese New Year period, we could not meet physically to discuss our project. Instead, we shifted to working via email with each other and our mentor; our routine included updating Dr. Lim about our group's progress via email daily, and skype when necessary. We are also grateful for the help we received from our teachers-in-charge, who supported us throughout the process and kept us on track in terms of time management.
Deliverables
We did a 2900-word report to show our detailed findings and a poster to present our findings in a more accessible way. We used this poster in our presentation too.
3 content knowledge / skills learnt
1. Definition of censorship (content knowledge)
Before I started the project, I always regarded censorship as a series of actions carried out by a single authority to suppress the unwanted opinions. Therefore, I always thought that censorship would only affect the writers when it comes to publishing a book or an article. However, after extensive research on the issue of creative freedom, I found out that the scariest and most commonly seen censorship is not governmental censorship but self-censorship in which the writers themselves limit their own thoughts.
2. How to craft an interview guide (skill)
We learnt that an interview guide needs to be detailed but also general. Firstly, we always need to keep ethical issues in mind when crafting an interview guide. Secondly, we must anticipate all the possible scenarios that might happen during the interview and be prepared to know how to handle them. Thirdly, questions we ask must allow the interviewees think comfortably but also inspire their answers. We need more detailed answers beyond simply "yes" or "no" answers. Apart from things mentioned above, we also needed to be well-prepared to conduct the interview by getting familiar with the interview guide and clear about the allocation of tasks within the group.
3. How to analyse interview notes (skill)
As we conducted most of our interviews with well-established artists, we were able to see from the perspective of an artist who really gets his or her hands dirty. However, it was also harder for us to tell the reasons why the artist would speak in this or that way as for our background we have little in common. Hence, we learnt about how to see an artist's thoughts through looking at their interview answers.
2 interesting aspects
1. Ethics
I was surprised by how Dr Lim paid so much attention to ethic issues of our project. Dr Lim told us about vulnerable population and how we should pay special attention to them. After knowing the reasons of being so careful with ethics, I realised how much I need to learn in social sciences and how we should always protect people when doing studied about people. The ultimate goal of social sciences is to give us a better understanding of human beings as social creatures and to bring improvements to the society we have now. Hence, we should always be careful with ethics.
2. Do not be afraid to express your ideas
We are thankful that Dr Lim was so patient with us for every minute we spent together and for how he valued our thoughts a lot. When we talked about things related to our generation (and not so much to his), he treated us like we are the experts of that area and that gave us so much confidence to express ourselves.
1 takeaway for life
I feel grateful to be able to appreciate the importance of an open mind which holds very few stereotypes. It is undeniable that everyone holds some stereotypes, no matter they purposely do that or just think in that way subconsciously. One of our human instincts that differentiates us from other animals is that we can learn knowledge without actually discovering the fact and we can pass down the knowledge and accumulate the achievements. For example, we can learn how a volcano erupts without ourselves watching a volcano erupts. This trait is very important to us and only thanks to that, we can enjoy the modern world that we live in today. However, it can be an obstacle for our learning and development if we did not learn the knowledge properly but insist on the wrong facts or the facts been told without using our brain to think through it. When we first started to investigate on censorship, we simply defined censorship in the traditional which precisely should be governmental censorship, only a part of censorship. If we hold a stereotype that only actions carried out by authoritative organization are defined as censorship, we would never be able to know how powerful self-censorship is. Therefore, I conclude that in social science studies or in all learnings in general, it is very important to have an open mind with few stereotypes.
