I would just like to share something that I read in today's The New Paper, a particular article, "HEY EMBRYOS Will your walk reflect your talk" reflecting on the very recent presidential elections.

"the explosion of political awareness on social media and the Internet, tools young people are comfortable with"

The fact that the youths in Singapore demonstrate political apathy has been a hot issue for awhile and I have to admit that I too was once politically apathetic. However, it is heartening to finally acknowledge that this situation is changing- for the better- and we've got social media and the internet to thank for that. During the 2011 GE as well as PE, the many passionate thoughts of my peers circulated on Facebook and Twitter. I will read lengthy Facebook notes on their thoughts on the GE and the different parties. Tweets from Straitstimesonline and my friends on Twitter also add to the varying information about the GE and PE and made the whole process even more so exciting. CNA also referred to the live tweets from us Singaporeans during broadcasts of the recent GE and PE. All the information that I find online really helped me to understand what was going on during such major political events in Singapore. Even when there was something I did not understand like the background of a particular candidate, information was readily available within a few clicks. With the information gathered, my friends and I would have lengthy discussions during the GE about the various candidates and we all became really interested in the ongoings of the elections. I firmly believe that the use of the social networking platforms makes all these political information easily available to us youths, and it also makes it a more interesting avenue of learning for us. Even the politicians themselves use these tools to reach out to the general population and it has been interesting reading their posts and comments. We don't even have to go down to their rallies; recorded clips can be found easily online. These really bring politics to a whole new level and I think that it really is cool that even politicians have evolved their campaigning mediums to become more relevant to this current Information Age.

But as the writer of the article states "If we achieve political awakening, we should accept with it the sober responsibilities of volunteering and social work. It is one thing to criticise the Government online for allowing the income gap to widen. It is another to seek out those who have fallen through that gap and give them help day after day". A poignant reminder that I felt was very relevant to what we learnt in Session 2 (: