Stakeholder Group: Civil Society

Region: Asia Pacific

Biography

Professor Ang Peng Hwa is Director of the Singapore Internet Research Centre at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the author of Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet (Thomson, 2005), which argues that the internet can be, is being and should be regulated. He was a member of 40-strong Working Group on Internet Governance that was appointed by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to prepare a report for the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society. Most recently, he spent a year on sabbatical in Ahmedabad, India, to help start the Mudra Institute of Communication Research.

A lawyer by training, he worked as a journalist before going on to pursue a Master’s in communication management at the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. in the mass media at Michigan State University.

His teaching and research interests combine law and communication, touching on internet law and policy, censorship, and the social impact of media. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, New Media and Society, Cyberpsychology and Behaviour, as well as trade publications such as the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Singapore Straits Times.

In 2000, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship at Harvard University; in 2001, he was a visiting scholar at Oxford University.

He is interviewed regularly by the Singapore media and has also appeared in articles in the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and the Economist magazine’s Marketplace.

Ang currently holds the chairmanship of the regional non-profit media organisation Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) and is one of the two vice-presidents of the Consumers’ Association of Singapore (CASE), and legal advisor to the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore (ASAS).