Listen first, post later: Gen-Z-ifying the general election

Straits Times

5 days ago

Christie Chiu and Wong Yang were first-time voters, but also rookies to election reporting. Their brief was slightly different – cover Singapore's 2025 General Election, but for TikTok and Instagram. This sent them scuttling from Boon Lay to Bedok, Gen-Z-ifying rally speeches and devising skits, gags and punchlines. They look back at how they put a different spin on The Straits Times' tradition of covering elections.
Screenshots of ST journalists Christie Chiu and Wong Yang in a (left) PAP Fullerton rally video wrap-up, and in a video talking about cost of living as an electoral issue.
Christie (C): A lukewarm comment at a party struck me some weeks before the general election. 'Don't take this personally, I don't read ST's political coverage,' she said.
I had just asked the crowd of 20-somethings what kind of election content they would like to see from The Straits Times. Call it a spur of the moment bit of user research.
That The Straits Times might not be a young person's top pick was not news to me, but hearing it unvarnished still landed like a punch.
She had her reasons for saying what she did, but it reminded me that others like her – those who shut the door tight – do exist. Finding a way to open it a crack falls on us.
Many who scroll past our articles still stumble upon our social media posts – a vital doorway of its own.
That offhand remark, humbling as it was, became an unsaid yardstick as we set out to cover the general election on social media.
It made the weight of our work clear: It is often the first – and sometimes only – point of contact between The Straits Times newsroom and a generation that has no shortage of media outlets courting their attention.
Top stories
Swipe. Select. Stay informed.
Singapore HSA intensifies crackdown on vapes; young suspected Kpod peddlers nabbed in Bishan, Yishun
Singapore Man charged over distributing nearly 3 tonnes of vapes in one day in Bishan, Ubi Avenue 3
Singapore Public healthcare institutions to record all Kpod cases, confiscate vapes: MOH, HSA
Singapore Man allegedly attacks woman with knife at Kallang Wave Mall, to be charged with attempted murder
Singapore Singapore boosts support for Timor-Leste as it prepares to join Asean
Singapore UN aviation and maritime agencies pledge to collaborate to boost safety, tackle challenges
Singapore High Court dismisses appeal of drink driver who killed one after treating Tampines road like racetrack
Singapore 18 years' jail for woman who hacked adoptive father to death after tussle over Sengkang flat
Yang (Y): That speaks to how young people consume news today. With content creators and alternative media, people around our age are less reliant on traditional media as their primary source of news.
So how do we report on the general election for people who are not just digital natives, but 'social natives' – those who grew up with social media, and for whom being able to comment on and share content with friends is intrinsic to their way of being in the world?
New age, new tools
C: This generation's connection to social media as a way of life exists also within the orbit of another term of the era: brain rot.
It was the
2024 Oxford Word of the Year , and refers to the decline of one's mental or intellectual state from excessive consumption of low-quality online content.
Our team's task was to push against that: creating fun, short video explainers on the election's key concepts and developments, without cheapening the analysis.
Becoming part-time comedians was an unexpected, and frankly welcome, addition to the job. Getting paid to crack jokes with colleagues? A dream. But fun for fun's sake quickly wears thin when the content doesn't mean anything.
What value were we adding to our audience's lives? Were we helping them become more informed voters? Those were questions that grounded our approach – while keeping the brain rot at bay.
Y: The first step towards answering these questions was to simply listen to our audience. We did this through several initiatives led by our supervisor, assistant news editor Danson Cheong – an audience survey in 2024, phone interviews, a focus group discussion, and a small audience panel on Telegram. We asked them what they were concerned about heading into the election, the questions they wanted answered, and what they thought of our drafts and final videos.
This helped us respond directly to topics and concerns that interested young people, rather than approach election coverage in a way that evoked a top-down sense of 'here's why you should care about this'.
We put the audience front and centre, fretted less over 'sounding Gen Z' and just tried to be honest.
Carrying on traditions
C: In the paper's 180-year history, just a sliver – the last 10 years or so – has focused in earnest on elevating online coverage, we learnt in a recent chat with Straits Times associate editor Zakir Hussain.
Still, much of the ethos behind our videos is not exactly a reinvention. Putting the audience first, decoding dense information and bridging gaps in knowledge – these are classic tenets of journalism. Just rebooted for the screen instead of the page.
We took a slightly different path, but we, too, felt we were part of the paper's enduring tradition of covering elections.
The ST team's – (from left) video journalist Chong Lii, senior audience growth specialist Farzanah Friday and journalists Wong Yang and Christie Chiu – last shoot for the 2025 General Election.
ST PHOTO: DANSON CHEONG
Our rally wraps – where we broke down the key points of candidate speeches – reminded us of the stories Zakir shared about his first general election as a rookie reporter back in 2006.
He recalled how in those days before smartphones, a group order going around for digital voice recorders set each reporter back a hefty $200. A hack was used for stories that needed speed: An intern or junior reporter would head over to the rally with a fully charged cellphone, dial a landline in the office and hold the phone aloft in the crowd, so the team back at HQ could follow along and take notes in real time.
Reporters on the ground back then took notes – with pen and paper, and the soon-to-be lost art of Teeline shorthand. They would then call in or quickly cab back to the office to debrief editors, file a quick first cut, and refine it before off stone (printing time) to ensure the story earned a spot in the morning paper.
In 2025, the newsroom again made a bulk order – this time for smartphone-compatible microphones and tripods, which reporters picked up before heading out to assignments. It also subscribed to artificial intelligence transcription services, which allowed the newsroom to monitor what was happening as long as someone was on the ground to hit record.
Our project was helmed by a team of five, including our colleagues from the audience and video teams – Farzanah Friday, Vera Ang and Chong Lii – double hatters who produced and edited the videos.
At the rallies we covered, Yang and I took notes on our smartphones. We were usually accompanied by Danson, who would clear our 'first cut' – the video script and raw footage of us presenting on site, filmed with a humble smartphone on a tripod.
The other team members in the office would work their magic from there, polishing the final video for different editors to vet before releasing it the next day – just in time to catch the morning traffic.
The digital age is a bittersweet companion. Its tools lighten the load but raise the demands. You have to be faster, fuller, sharper. Yet some things don't change: the thrill of front-row seats to democracy in motion, the privilege of capturing a moment in history, and the responsibility of conveying these vignettes to audiences accurately, fairly...
Y: ...and fairly quickly.
ST journalists Wong Yang and Christie Chiu debriefing their supervisor over the phone from Cavenagh Bridge about the PAP's Fullerton lunchtime rally on April 28.
ST PHOTO: CHRISTIE CHIU
What the audience said
Y: Producing the videos sometimes felt like sending things out into the void, or adding to what was already a noisy media landscape. After coming up with the caption, deciding on a thumbnail and hitting 'post', would people latch on to the videos when there was already an information overload?
To our surprise – and relief – viewers commented that they found our videos engaging, accessible and refreshing. People who might have previously been averse to reading The Straits Times were pleasantly surprised by this alternative approach.
This was a great boost for the team. It affirmed that what we did had resonated with viewers, and we managed to cut through the noise in some ways.
Our young democracy
C: While researching the electoral journey of Pulau Ubin, an archival binder with weathered clippings of Straits Times articles, which we'd borrowed from the company's resource centre, struck a chord with me.
The clippings dated back to 1959, and we learnt that the island had its own polling station until the 1990s, when residents started riding ferries to the mainland to vote. It hit me that despite the hundreds of faded, blurry newspaper scans we sifted through each day researching on past elections, Singapore's democracy is still a young one.
An archival binder from the SPH library that offers a glimpse into Pulau Ubin's past, such as its electoral history.
ST PHOTO: CHRISTIE CHIU
This year marks the paper's 180th birthday, yet it also marks only the nation's 14th general election since independence. Our democracy, it turns out, is less than half as old as The Straits Times itself.
This truth has revealed itself in several ways, especially in my own experience existing on people's feeds this election. The scrutiny of my mannerisms, appearance and voice by thousands of anonymous usernames often left me wondering – did these people even hear the message? The scripts we spent countless late-night hours crafting?
It also deepened my empathy for the women politicians, who were often reduced to superficial comparisons – how attractive they were, rather than the substance of their political arguments.
Our videos, engaging as they were, were a drop in the hours upon hours of work professional journalists put into the 2025 General Election.
But when we tackled issues such as the cost of living, the significance of the Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC walkover, or rally speeches, we tried to spark conversation – to plant a seed that would lead viewers to dig deeper or read more.
That, to me, was the value of a cross-media publication: the ability to weave a tapestry of interconnected viewpoints. Videos, visuals and traditional reporting all play a part in painting a fuller story.
ST executive producer Vera Chong (in pink) and video journalist Chong Lii orchestrating a scene for an explainer video that unpacks the significance of the Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC walkover. Journalists Wong Yang and Christie Chiu are seen here preparing to fight for a 'seat' in Parliament.
ST PHOTO: DANSON CHEONG
Y: As Christie and I stood among Singaporeans of all ages and persuasions at the rallies, what stood out – as we listened to the crowd cheering and jeering – was the sheer diversity of views simmering in our political cauldron.
These views all come from somewhere: they are shaped by every individual's unique lived experience and ever-expanding modes of 'being Singaporean', be they in the way we think of success, love, family or what the good life looks like.
So, if going to the polls is about voting for the Singapore we want to see, how can we as journalists arm our audience – who hold these varied perspectives and aspirations – with the knowledge to make an informed decision at the ballot box, and in a way that speaks to them?
As this experience covering the general election and working with our audience has shown, in a world full of sound and fury, it doesn't hurt to listen first.