KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 — The internet and social media, previously among the main drivers of reforms and change in social and political structures here, have become a hindrance to the same as they have been taken over for negative speech.
Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific researcher and lecturer Ross Tapsell said that in the aftermath of 15th general election, Malaysia faces a conundrum of allowing freedom of expression with open, accessible social media platforms, but at the same time regulating disinformation, hate and inciteful discourse that has been emerging.
In particular, Tapsell said Malaysia is struggling with how to navigate the new media to instigate democratic change.
“As it has done for over 20 years, the internet and social media continue to drive reformist messages in Malaysia, and challenge existing hierarchies in political party and media structures.
“But many Malaysians are concerned about the way in which social media drives polarisation around race and religion and ultimately, encourages illiberalism,” he said in his research paper titled “Social Media and Malaysia’s 2022 Election: The Growth and Impact of Video Campaigning”.
Analysing the use of social media in November 2022’s 15th general election (GE15), he said that there was now more “grey areas” in defining online slander, hate speech, disinformation, and simply negative content that scholars and policymakers have to navigate in the current political landscape.
“(They) have to try to understand the digital realm in a contemporary election campaign, and how these terms are more readily used concurrently to understand democratic change,” he said.
He said specific uses of negative campaigning during GE15 may have helped achieve political liberalism, but this has become a hindrance to sustaining it.
He said that the Malaysian social media space was even more fraught with tension and polarised since GE15 due to widespread negative content, such as the “DAP is Communist” narrative on Islamist webpages, while other online users described PAS voters and leaders as “fascists.”
The vitriol was partly due to the fractured Malay voters who are now split between Umno, Bersatu, PAS, and PKR all scrambling to win over the community's support.
Bersatu’s alignment with PAS, and a reliance on race- and religion-based narratives, were important factors in PN’s success in GE15 and have been employed as their messaging heading into the state elections.
“The question is: How can they do so in ways that negate toxic identity politics tropes (tropes on which Umno, too, has always relied), in an online environment promoting narratives that incite and enrage, without cracking down on the growing freedom of expression?.
“There is little consensus, either in Malaysia or globally, about how to work towards this effectively. Scholars, NGOs, and policymakers grapple about whether regulation should target individual citizens (such as those creating or even spreading disinformation) or big tech companies more broadly,” he said.
However, Tapsell also qualified that social media was not the sole cause of Malaysia’s polarisation and that it was ultimately, party elites who choose the narratives and PR companies, social media campaigners, and cybertroopers will often follow that lead.
“How parties differentiate themselves to voters on policy issues other than race and religion remains crucial,” he said.
In 2008, the parties that eventually formed Pakatan Harapan had used blogs and then-nascent social media to overcome their restricted access to mainstream news outlets, denying Barisan Nasional its supermajority in Parliament then and accelerating its decline.
During last year’s general election, however, these same parties had rings run around them by those in former ruling coalition Perikatan Nasional, which tapped into the pulse of Malay social media through its deft use of the TikTok short video sharing platform.
This had allowed the coalition, which had all been written off before polling, to come within touching distance of forming the federal government.
