Internet Politics and State Media Control: Candidate Weblogs in Malaysia
Year: 2011
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This paper underscores the importance of online research in illuminating the social processes underlying Internet effects on politics. It is an empirical study of the effect of blogs on the 2008 general election in Malaysia that demonstrates the significant positive effect of having a blog on the likelihood of winning a Parliamentary seat, independent of controls. Theoretically, I expect that use of the Internet is a sound political strategy for disseminating information, given the Malaysian government’s censorship of traditional print and broadcast media. Using the population of electoral candidates in the 2008 general election (N=471), I estimate a logistic model predicting the effects of having a blog on winning a Parliamentary seat. The results show that opposition candidates benefit significantly more from having a blog than do non-opposition candidates, as blogging provides opportunities denied to them by Malaysia's state-controlled media. Bloggers are more than seven times as likely to win an election compared to non-bloggers, controlling for incumbency, party membership, and race. This analysis also makes an exploratory effort to identify social mechanisms that can explain the effect of blogs. In addition to being an alternative source of information, blogs' potential for building interpersonal relationships and their role as mobilization tools are discussed using qualitative examples
Source: Sociological Perspectives
Author: Rachel Gong
Institution: Stanford University
Language: English
Topic: Social Media and Politics
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2059565888