The new rules of Malaysian politics: How the opposition use new media to reach their voters directly
Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional (BN) was reported to have spent RM1million onprint ads in newspapers telling readers to vote for them during the campaigning period.
Malaysians also their dailies flooded with “Vote for BN” ads and it intensified as it got closer to polling day.
Expenditure by BN on TV and radio ads have not been included.
The Opposition, however, was reported to have spend much less. On a given day, the Opposition would only one page ad compared to the 16 pages from BN.
Yet, in Malaysia Elections 2008, they suffered their worst defeats since 1969, losing five states in the process and failed to regain one.
Compared to the elections in 2004, the opposition only managed to win one state.
In Malaysia Elections 2008, the Opposition had five bona-fide bloggers contesting seats against the ruling party, who chose the mainstream media to get their message out.
Bloggers Jeff Ooi won Penang’s Jelutong seat, Tony Pua for PJ Utara in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, NikNazmi for Seri Setia and Elizabeth Wong for Bukit Lanjung.
Ironically, Blogger Badrul Hisham Shaharin lost to a newbie blogger, who took to blogging when the campaigning started.
Except for Jeff Ooi, most of these blogger/politicians hosted their blogs at Blogspot.com and Wordpress.com.
It would have cost them only zero Ringgit to setup their blogs. Yet, they won.
Only Jeff Ooi’s blog is on a hosted domain, but that wouldn’t cost him millions to set up.
Now that the bloggers are in Parliament, they will be tested to prove themselves on how they going to use the medium to the benefit their constituents.
The title of this post was “stolen” from David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly which this blog played a part in the book.
David highlights how big brands are spending millions on mainstream media advertising which they can do now for pittance with new media to reach out to their buyers directly.
This election is an example of the effectiveness new media is in today’s Internet age.
Of course, the mainstream media will start do surveys which will show how readers find them to be more credible than bloggers.
That is so passé.
New media may not be deemed credible but this election has proven its influence.
Influential enough to win votes at no monetary costs.
Is Malaysia going to tighten its grip on the Internet?
I personally doubt so as the boasted Google’s interest to host a data farm in Cyberjaya depends on the government earlier promised not to control the Internet.
Other MNCs might also be turned away from investing in Malaysia if controls were made.
Isn’t the Internet such an animal of contradiction?
Hi,
Great post! I am a researcher as well based in KL. It’s always great to touch base with someone who knows what they are talking about. I believe if you contact the Brotherhood Press or the Brotherhood of Mechanical Bicycles Lovers, You can actually get a 140 pg report FREE!!!!!! Yes they actually had something like 7 teams studying the Malaysian elections.
However, I believe you country (singapore) has restrictions on foreigners meddling or singing about politics, so that could be why this report is only avaliable in HK. You can contact them if you like..just a tip!
Reg
Meredith
Hi Merdith,
The post isn’t meant for politics.
The whole purpose is to look at how both aspects from media1.0 and media2.0 in the region.
Somehow it seems, media, be it MSM or social media, seem to always crawl back to politics.
Thanks for your comments.
the(new)mediasult.com
“This election is an example of the effectiveness new media is in today’s Internet age. Of course, the mainstream media will start do surveys which will show how readers find them to be more credible than bloggers.”
True, but this will be an unfair comparison. Unless you measure effectiveness of politicians’ messages when conveyed via MSM with effectiveness of politicians’ messages when conveyed via blogs.
“New media may not be deemed credible but this election has proven its influence. Influential enough to win votes at no monetary costs.”
I dont think new media should be deemed credible just because of what happened during this election. The rakyat already knew figures like Jeff Ooi, Elizabeth Wong etc. and reading them way before the elections. Malaysians wanted and still want to know more about them especially their views/stance towards certain issues.
New media was a medium to facilitate this, and a (future) politician conveying their message via blogs is able to make it more personal than if via MSM, I think. I’m not sure why… maybe because of it’s customisable nature etc etc
I never said the elections made these bloggers more credible.
There’s no yardstick to say what’s credible what’s not.
But arguing whether blogs are credible won’t make a difference because most have in their minds that they are not.
I posted that the election shows how influential blogs have become and in you last paragraph supports it.
Personal yes. Blogger does a post, readers read. Some comment, some don’t.
But when readers comment, blogger respond. That’s make it personal too.
Yea, you right slutty.
I was homing in on the thought that peeps like Jeff and Elizabeth were already credible, influential etc and maybe that’s why blogs were so effective for them, maybe even more than MSM would have been.
For example, Mr. Ooi’s blog has been around for a very long time and we saw Jeff in the real world as well, at events asking burning questions and so on and so forth. Any Malaysian who wanted to know more about local current events, could read him up. I know I have.
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