About Us

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New Naratif engages, educates, and empowers

Southeast Asia is complicated, heterogeneous, and multifaceted. It is divided along numerous political, class, religious, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic lines. At the same time, authoritarian governments are intolerant of alternative perspectives. Establishment interests openly and proudly seek to keep citizens ignorant, apathetic, and confused. Information channels are heavily controlled, censored, and regulated in diverse ways. This keeps citizens in a state which allows governments to not only impose authoritarian and anti-democratic practices, but to justify such policies by citing citizens’ ignorance and apathy. New Naratif pushes back against this by empowering Southeast Asians to take control of their lives and create positive changes.

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New Naratif challenges oversimplification and stereotyping

Coverage on Southeast Asia is often Western-centric, largely dominated by soundbites, stereotypes, and clichés. This results in Southeast Asia coverage that relies on easy tropes pandering to the interests and assumptions of Western audiences. New Naratif challenges this oversimplification of ideas and perceptions, placing less emphasis on what is important today and more on what is important every day.

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New Naratif is openly subjective

New Naratif requires our contributors and team members to be engaged in the world whose stories they’re telling. Often, attempts at objectivity result in a storytelling model which provides false equivalence between two opposing sources. Our contributors and team members strive to be fair, accurate, and independent, but also explicit about the values and assumptions underlying what they produce and disseminate, and are candid about their particular perspective on any given issue. They will evaluate, to the best of their ability, which side of a story is most credible, and exercise transparency regarding their judgments. Contributors and team members may view the world from their own personal perspective and through the window of their particular interests, but as an organisation, New Naratif believes in democracy, human rights, social justice, and equal dignity for all.

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New Naratif stands for hope and solutions

The state of the world and mainstream media can make people feel cynical and powerless: “So much is wrong with the world, and I can’t do a thing about it.” New Naratif aims to counteract that effect with our three-step process: engage, educate, and empower. We believe a better world is possible, so we provide information that not only brings problems to your attention, but also brings people together through our community engagement and civic participation activities for seeking collective solutions. Through this process, we strive to hold up a mirror to our society and get people moving. We encourage initiatives specifically meant to bring about positive societal change, and we hope to inspire people to believe in their society and work collaboratively for the greater good.

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New Naratif encourages our members to be actively involved in our process

We see our process of engaging, educating, and empowering as a dialogue between our team and our members, particularly community members with professional or personal expertise on a given topic. The point of that dialogue is to share knowledge and experience regarding key developments of our times and to then collectively work to create a better world. To this end, team members actively invite feedback, keep members apprised of our progress with updates via the members-only newsletter, and avail themselves of members’ expertise and experience to better our movement for democratic change. Most of all, we believe in Southeast Asians, and that empowering all Southeast Asians to take collective action to assert agency over their own lives can only lead to a better world.

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New Naratif is free of ads

New Naratif is an ad-free platform. Disseminating messages (commercial or otherwise) for a fee is not permitted. We do not accept paid stories. Our business model is creating a movement that people want to be members of, not selling our audience to advertisers or commercial establishments. New Naratif is, however, open to collaborating with partners who share our principles and contribute directly to our goals. Any such partnerships are subject to one non-negotiable condition: full organisational independence.

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New Naratif thinks in terms of individuals, not target groups

New Naratif aims to build a community of curious, engaged individuals who wish to understand the world and collectively take action to make it a better place. We do not aim to reach a specific group of people, particular demographic category, or particular political alignment. We strive to look at Southeast Asians as diverse individuals, rather than dividing the region into aggregated groups such as nationality, race, religion, or language. Anyone who subscribes to our principles and vision is welcome to join.

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New Naratif is committed to an enduring relationship with our members

New Naratif exists for our members. We simply would not exist without them. Maintaining a sustainable relationship with them is our highest priority. New Naratif does not try to lure new members with benefits that existing members do not get. We welcome input from our members regarding both the course set by New Naratif and how we spend our resources. In particular, members are encouraged to regularly provide feedback regarding our editorial outputs, community events, and democracy classrooms. As we are a small team, we can only implement suggestions and feedback on a case by case basis.

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New Naratif does not make profits

New Naratif is published by Observatory Southeast Asia Ltd, a private company limited by guarantee. It cannot be bought or sold. It is a not-for-profit enterprise. All revenues are reinvested in our work. This keeps New Naratif from becoming hostage to short-term profit motives. Returns are dedicated to our mission—not the other way around. Equally, it is an important principle that all contributors be paid for any forms of their work. A major flaw of the modern freelance economy is the lack of rights and protection of freelancers. New Naratif will not exploit freelancers. It will not solicit unpaid work for “exposure”. It will pay freelancers on time and in full.

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New Naratif strives for maximum diversity

Our goal is to become a movement for democracy, as diverse as possible, with many voices. We prefer to hire people who make our organisation more diverse in terms of cultural heritage, ethnicity, skin colour, academic degree, sexual preference, and political orientation. Our conviction is that our organisation will never be diverse enough. Diversity is not a target to reach; it is a continual endeavour.

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New Naratif believes in the privacy of our members

A common denominator for nearly all free services on the internet is that users pay for them by turning over their personal data. At New Naratif, our privacy policy prohibits us from collecting unnecessary personal information from our members. With respect to the data we do ask of our members, we apply the following criteria: 1) We collect only the data we are required by law to collect, or that is necessary for our platform to function correctly; 2) We do not sell this information to third parties; 3) Our reasons for collecting data must be explained clearly to our members; and 4) Wherever possible, members must have control over their own data.

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New Naratif is ambitious in its ideals, yet modest in its claims

New Naratif seeks to promote democracy in Southeast Asia. We believe in human rights, social justice, and individual human dignity. We seek great change, but we cannot do this alone. New Naratif is open to collaboration with governments, corporations, universities, media organisations, or any other actors who share our goals. We are mindful of our limitations and act with humility in the Southeast Asian spirit of collegiality and constructive engagement.