Suchergebnisse

Southeast Asia's Internet users are far more diverse than usually reported. They range from the urban youth with laptops and highspeed Wi-Fi, to the older generation semi-rural and rural users with affordable mobile phones for Facebook and WhatsApp. Southeast Asians generally trust social media platforms more than in Western societies. This trust in social media reflects a lack of trust in local mainstream media and official sources of information. What campaign information (and disinformation) is being spread and which ones are most successful are essential for understanding how voters in Southeast Asia use and trust social media. Social media platforms and Southeast Asia's 'app industry' need clearer and enforced regulation on their use of data and the extent to which they can sell data to advertisers. These advertisers include, but are not limited to, politicians and political parties. Since the future of social media usage will likely lie in closed groups, the role of big data analyses that have dominated research on social media over the past ten years, is likely to regress. Instead, ethnographic scholars who can access these groups and engage with their particular interests and identities are more likely to be useful in understanding the digital sphere in the future.

This article argues that Malaysia's 2022 General Election (GE15) amplified negative campaigning via new techniques associated with platform and technological advancements, led by creative innovations in campaign tactics, including livestreaming and video content. GE15 was the freest election campaign in Malaysia's history. All political parties and coalitions enjoyed access to a wide range of mainstream and online media to disseminate content, and new platforms like TikTok emerged as influential conduits of campaign messages. Yet serious problems in this digital public sphere remain a feature of the country's media landscape. These include cybertroopers, fake news peddlers, and those creating polarizing content around race and religious issues. This article explains how social media campaigning in Malaysia is becoming more professionalized and better resourced, inspiring some diversity and creativity, while at the same time enabling groups who spread narratives intended to incite and enrage, particularly via video content. The Malaysian case exemplifies the growing problems within the contemporary digital public sphere, showing how the professionalization of social media campaigning can lead to disinformation and, ultimately, polarization. (Pac Aff/GIGA)

This paper examines the role of new communication technologies in the regime change of Malaysia's 2018 elections. I argue that growing Internet penetration in semirural areas of Malaysia's Peninsula "heartlands" allow for new forms of campaign message to be spread in unique and compelling ways. Facebook and instant-messenger platform WhatsApp are playing a prominent role in shaping political discourse in contemporary Malaysia, and this was evident in the election campaign that brought an end to Malaysia's ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional's, 60-year hold on power. In this article I use James Scott's (1987) Weapons of the Weak as the theoretical foundation for assessing the role of WhatsApp and other social media sites as tools of resistance, specifically in spreading information about the corruption and nepotism of Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife, Rosmah Mansour. Given the prominence of the smartphone for news and information in Southeast Asia, this article explains how the digital era is changing the avenues via which the region receives and shares political information - as well as outlines the consequences that it brings for elections campaigns and democracy. (JCSA/GIGA)

Ever since they were conceived, Australia's international media organisations have trodden a fine line between promoting Australia's interests and upholding the values of the Fourth Estate which encourage comment on and criticism of government policies.

This article examines the hindrances to journalists' autonomy in the Papua provinces of Indonesia. It argues that media practitioners in Papua are operating in a subnational authoritarian environment, where the freedoms enjoyed by journalists elsewhere in Indonesia's largely robust media are not afforded to local journalists. The article explains that security forces and local government are the main factors influencing mainstream news content in the region. Yet, as Internet penetration rises and new communication technologies are advanced, new online journalism ventures are gaining in prominence. Their success will depend on whether subnational authoritarianism remains the status quo in a region where new local media ventures are largely unable to provide open and critical coverage of events and issues.

Ever since they were conceived, Australia's international media organisations have trodden a fine line between promoting Australia's interests and upholding the values of the Fourth Estate which encourage comment on and criticism of government policies.

Even though Indonesia has entered a new era of democracy and press freedom, self-censorship still exists in the professional practice of many Indonesian newspaper journalists. Indonesia has a long history of censorship, particularly pressure from the government encouraging journalists to self-censor their work. As such, self-censorship has been encouraged and promoted through the institutionalised and internalised values of many Indonesian newspaper publications. Through interviews with journalists who work for new and reestablished newspapers in Indonesia, this article will explain how the practice has evolved, and how it persists today. While the main agent of pressure during Indonesia's New Order regime was the government, today the owners of newspapers are powerful figures who exert their influence and hinder the autonomy of Indonesian journalists.

Even though Indonesia has entered a new era of democracy and press freedom, self-censorship still exists in the professional practice of many Indonesian newspaper journalists. Indonesia has a long history of censorship, particularly pressure from the government encouraging journalists to self-censor their work. As such, self-censorship has been encouraged and promoted through the institutionalised and internalised values of many Indonesian newspaper publications. Through interviews with journalists who work for new and reestablished newspapers in Indonesia, this article will explain how the practice has evolved, and how it persists today. While the main agent of pressure during Indonesia's New Order regime was the government, today the owners of newspapers are powerful figures who exert their influence and hinder the autonomy of Indonesian journalists.

Through a comparative study of trends in the media industry in Indonesia and Malaysia, this article analyzes the transformative process of digital media on news production. Through an in-depth discussion of the influential conglomerates in two neighbouring countries, it examines the effects of digital media on journalism, news, and information. By including Southeast Asia in scholarly debates concerning the impact of the digital revolution, it will address the timely need to balance the existing Western-centric bias in this field of academic research. This article examines the process of platform convergence and how this assists the formation of media oligopolies in both countries. It shows that despite the difference in restrictions in media environments in each country, the process of media conglomeration and convergence is highly similar. This has significant impact on the way we assess the impact of digitalization on media pluralism and diversity in the convergence era.