KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 5 — Sticking to its ideals is what has made PAS popular on social media in comparison to other opposition parties, the Islamist party concluded today
PAS information chief Nasrudin Hassan said the positive numbers for PAS shown by Politweet’s latest Facebook survey is because the party has been continuing to preach its Islamic ideals instead of being deviated by populist issues.
“The latest development shows that people wait before judging. Our party has been consistent in fighting for our struggles.
“We don’t flip-flop on issues or go looking for populist topics to talk about. We struggle for our mission, we may appear strict at first but people eventually can understand later on,” he told Malay Mail Online when contacted today.
Nasrudin or better known by his moniker, Tantawi added that PAS has been gearing up to change with the developments of social media from time to time to improve their ways of spreading information.
“PAS’ latest approach is that we upgrade from time to time without deviating from our ideals. We are prepared in all aspects including media coverage,” he added.
The Politweet survey last week showed that PKR and PAS have overtaken DAP as the opposition parties receiving the most interest on Facebook.
The social media researcher found that the audience for DAP was now just 1.1 million Facebook users or just under a quarter of its previous peak of 4.6 million in January this year.
To this, the Temerloh MP flayed DAP and its leaders for trying to play up issues unnecessarily which in return had turned them unpopular on social media.
“Leaders that make cybertrooper-like statements would be looked down and lose support. The maturity of politicians on social media plays a big part.
“If they keep on making racist and condescending statements. People will run away,” Tantawi explained.
Heading into the next general elections, Tantawi stressed that PAS has realised that social media plays a big part and will continue to bolster their efforts to improve support on the platform.
“We will have to make sure that we have a grip of conventional, traditional and social media.
“We realised that social media influenced the last general elections. So, now we must handle and tackle it in order to make full use ahead of next elections,” he said.
According to the Politweet survey, PKR is now the opposition party with the largest audience on Facebook with 1.8 million users expressing interest in it, while PAS is second with 1.6 million.
The reason for DAP’s steady decline however could not be determined directly from the data, but Politweet said it could be extrapolated from events prior to each major change in interest levels.
It noted that interest in DAP peaked when the party cut ties with PAS over their disagreement on hudud in March 2015, and dropped after it declared the death of Pakatan Rakyat in June the same year.
