The Unbelieving Minority: Singapore’s Anti-Falsehood Law and Vaccine Scepticism

Singapore hosts at least 17 groups using Mobile Instant Messaging Services (MIMS) to self-organise around vaccine hesitancy despite a highly regulated information environment. Although the country has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, the rates among middle-aged and older adults remained lower than younger adults till the end of 2021, delaying the opening of Singapore’s borders and economy. The country has also enacted an anti-fake news law called Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act in 2019 that covers MIMS but it has yet to be invoked against them even once in the 96 times that it has been applied to other media (as of the time of writing). This begs the question: how effective are anti-fake news laws in regulating MIMS platforms like Telegram that have been described as “ideal platforms” for the spread of falsehoods by the Singapore government (Wong, 2019). We surveyed two prominent vaccine-hesitant groups on Telegram to discover the socioeconomic demographic profile of the groups, their sources of pandemic-related information and what their reasons for joining the groups. Although our survey had a low response rate, our study sheds light on what is often a shadowy world rife with misinformation. We found that Telegram’s technological characteristics such as affording anonymity and freedom from censorship played a significant role as did the in-group nature of such group chats in a context where punitive measures were implemented to nudge the vaccination rates higher.