What is POFMA?
POFMA is the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act. It is also commonly known as Singapore’s anti fake news legislation. The law came into effect on 2 October 2019.
More overviews of the POFMA legislation can be found here:
- POFMA in the Singapore Statutes
- Singapore Legal Advice’s Guide to POFMA
- Academia.sg’s overview of POFMA’s news coverage and their statements on POFMA
What is POFMA’ed?
POFMA’ed is a dataset which aims to record every instance of the use of this legislation, for reference by academics, media practitioners and the general public. The data will be updated continually.
This dataset was last updated on 8 October 2020.
This dataset began as part of a discourse analysis research assignment for my university. I have published it online because I believe it might be of interest to others who, like me, were searching for answers to questions like how many POFMA uses are there, who is affected by POFMA and what trends are there in POFMA’s usage? As a student, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions for improving this dataset.
This dataset is maintained by Teo Kai Xiang. If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions, please direct them to POFMAed@gmail.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Mentions
- Academia.sg’s page on POFMA
- POFMA: Singapore’s Clumsy “Fake News” Hammer (New Naratif)
- Pofma — but not for WhatsApp so far (Our Class Notes)
- Singapore’s First Election Under the Fake News Law (The Diplomat)
- In Singapore, an Already Unfair Vote Undermined by COVID-19 (ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights)
- Singapore Votes Resource List