Rate My Professor Kwai Hou Lee

Dr. Howard Kwai Hou Lee serves as Lecturer in Communication within the School of Media and Communication at Murdoch University. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy from Murdoch University in 2021, submitting a thesis entitled Media governance in Singapore – efficacy and challenges, which examines the regulatory frameworks and challenges in Singapore's highly connected media landscape under the supervision of Associate Professor Terence Lee. Before transitioning to academia, Lee accumulated over a decade of experience as a public servant in Singapore, providing him with firsthand knowledge of governance structures and public policy implementation that informs his scholarly work.

Lee's research centers on media governance, digital surveillance, state-media dynamics, technological opportunism, and public trust in illiberal democracies, with a particular emphasis on Singapore's responses to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Notable publications include 'Stakeholder engagement and chaotic narrative spaces: Singapore’s COVID-19 outbreak in foreign-worker dormitories' (2024), '"Shut up and take my money" – narrating state funding, independent journalism, and public trust in Singapore' (2024), 'Bodily surveillance: Singapore’s COVID-19 app and technological opportunism' (2023), 'Between two Acts: competing narratives, activism and governance in Singapore’s digital sphere' (2023), 'The TraceTogether Matrix Has You – Surveillance, Rationalisation and Tactics of Governance in Singapore’s COVID-19 App' (2022), 'Tracing surveillance and auto-regulation in Singapore: “smart” responses to COVID-19' (co-authored with Terence Lee, 2020), 'From contempt of court to fake news: public legitimisation and governance in mediated Singapore' (2019), and a book review of Fong Siao Yuong's Performing Fear in Television Production: Practices of an Illiberal Democracy (2024). His scholarship, garnering over 110 citations, contributes to ongoing academic discourse on journalism independence, crisis narrative management, and the implications of surveillance technologies for public discourse. Additionally, Lee contributes to platforms like the East Asia Forum and participates in Murdoch University's Indo-Pacific Research Centre.