In her column for local Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao last Friday (Mar 4), Joanne Peh recalled having dinner with friends over the weekend when the conversation turned to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“I admitted that I did not follow the news,” shared the 38-year-old actress. “I seemed to have heard that Ukraine was at war, but I did not pay attention to the specific reasons. In this era of information overload, I can still be cut off from the rest of the world.”
In response, a reader wrote to the paper expressing how “disappointing” it was for Joanne, “a well-known artiste and university graduate” — she majored in Journalism at NTU’s School of Communication and Information — “to say that she doesn’t know about the Russia-Ukraine war”.
Another comment reads: “We can’t live in our own world and be indifferent towards current affairs, even without compassion and vigilance.”
What does Joanne have to say to the criticism?
Joanne then explained herself through Lianhe Zaobao, saying that the point of her column wasn’t whether she was aware of the war, but to remind herself and everyone else that in this Internet Age, our online habits will influence the kind of information we receive.
One example, we reckon, would be how you might start seeing ads about a certain product after Googling it once.
“At that time, the Russia-Ukraine war had just broken out when my friends talked about it,” she said. “I usually don’t pay much attention to international and political news as I focus more on the subject of children’s educational psychology.”
The star, who has two kids with husband Qi Yuwu, has a passion for early childhood education and even launched her own creative children’s enrichment programme.
She believes in bringing kids up right
She continued: “Data algorithms are calculated based on our screen-swiping habits to recommend items that may be of interest to us, so when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, this piece of international news did not immediately appear on my Facebook.”
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about world events, it’s just that my usual browsing habits made me miss some important information. Of course, I later started paying attention to the war and observed how the media in different countries would report on it.”
Ultimately, Joanne wanted to use this example to illustrate how algorithms can affect the things we see online, which could then possibly lead to having a one-sided worldview.
“It is easier to get information, but it doesn’t mean that we understand everything,” she mused. “This experience serves as a warning to myself and also got me thinking, how do we know if everything we see is the truth? If a lot of people are talking about something, does it make it true? Our views are decided by the information we receive, and these views may have personal biases.”
https://www.8days.sg/entertainment/local/joanne-peh-criticised-russia-ukraine-war-response-15518886
