New Media and General Elections: Online Citizen Journalism in Malaysia and Singapore

This paper looks at how citizen journalism is shifting the power from traditional media and its influence on the general public. This paper also particularly focuses on the Occupy Wall Street movement, which incidentally sparked similar Occupy movements around the world.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister and Barisan Nasional (BN) leader Najib Razak in February 2013 was quoted widely in the media as saying that the general elections (GE) in 2013 will the country’s first “social media election”. This paper examines the role of social media in Malaysia’s 2013 general elections and its political impact. Previously, in the 2008 general election, it was widely accepted that alternative online content determined the result. The country’s opposition coalition was credited in using new media to overcome a hostile mainstream media owned by establishment political interests to secure a much improved showing at the polls. Back in GE 2008, the new media electoral landscape was comprised of blogs, party websites and alternative news portals and not really social media as we it know today. In 2008, BN was the clear social media outsider. In fact, BN literally had limited online presence and was said to have underestimated the impact of new media altogether on the electorate’s voting behavior. Fast forward to April 2013, the landscape is very different. BN had made strong inroads onto social media and has carved itself a competitive position. What then has been social media’s political impact on voter behaviour during Malaysia’s 13th general elections?

This paper examines the challenges of elections management as it relates to the issues of demography and identity management in Nigeria. Since democracy/election is a game of number that involves delineation of constituencies, registration of electorates, casting of ballots, counting and declaration of results, all the activities that constitute election cycle require accurate data of the actual population and the demographics distribution particularly that of their ages to determine who qualifies to vote and be voted for. However, evidence suggests that the major problem is the lack of centralized identity management system in Nigeria. The lack of accurate census and a reliable national identity system suggest that INEC have to undertaking fresh registration of voters for every general election.  This paper suggests that Nigeria should endeavour to having a single and a centralised biometric identity system. Secondly, constituencies’ delineation should be the responsibility of National Boundary Commission and finally, National Identity Management Commission should take over the registration of voters’ and  harmonisation of all identity data; so that Independent Electoral Commission will only be saddled with responsibility of conducting election proper.

"Two momentous developments have defined the Nigerian journalistic landscape in the last ten years. The first is the migration of all major Nigerian newspapers to the Internet (while actively sustaining their print editions) in hopes of reaching the highly educated Nigerian migratory elite in the diaspora. The second development is the robust growth and flowering of transnational, diasporan citizen online news media that have vigorously sought and captured the attention of Nigerians both at home and in the diaspora. On the surface, these developments seem contradictory, even counter-intuitive: the migration of news content from homeland legacy newspapers to the Internet should have functioned to satisfy the thirst for domestic news by geographically displaced diasporan Nigerians and therefore obviated the need for diasporan-run citizen news outlets.

In this chapter, I trace the evolution and idiosyncratic features of online journalism in Nigeria; explore its variegated manifestations; capture the relational and professional tensions that have erupted between Web-only, mostly diasporan, citizen journalists and more traditional homeland journalists; and show how all this has altered journalistic practice in Nigeria. I also discuss the incidence of the tensile relationship between citizen online journalists and the Nigerian government, a relationship that has led to the high-profile arrests of diasporan citizen journalists who traveled to Nigeria from their base in the West for routine business. Finally, I will explore how the emergent genre of citizen social journalism (i.e., microblogging on Facebook and Twitter by ordinary citizens about news events) helped shape the 2011 general elections in Nigeria and enriched homeland traditional journalistic practice. "

This Chapter interrogates the logics and technologies underlying the governance of elections in Africa. It defines elections, their nature and logics. It argues that elections are tools, which integrate electoral processes and systems to deliver on the people's choice of who will govern them. 'Free and fair' presuppose the existence of a 'free and fair' electoral commission, 'free and fair' machineries to run the elections, 'free and fair' systems and procedures for the conduct of those elections. It interrogates the role of stakeholders, before, during and after the elections and argues that elections reflect the independence and sovereignty of any nation. The Chapter presents a 5Vs framework of Volume (how many vote); Velocity (Speed) – the regularity of the elections; Value (the value of the elections as perceived by voters; Veracity (the trustworthiness and authenticity of the systems and outcomes); and Variety (diversity of voters and diversity of political parties). The Chapter argues that the prerequisites to hold free and fair elections include political will from the polity; transparency; a politically educated citizenry capable to act; unity in diversity (there can be many parties and tribes), faith and trust in the electoral systems, political parties and themselves; astute and smart systems and processes and bureaucracy.

In this chapter, I explore the history of Nigeria’s traditional media’s struggles for democracy and inclusion, and show how emergent genres of web-based journalism are supervening upon the traditional media as the sites for the push and pull of democratic discourses. I then deploy case study research to investigate how Nigerian citizens in social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter not only invigorate deliberative democracy, and even democracy itself, by serving as alternative sources of news for Nigerians but for setting the news agenda of the domestic mass media. The chapter also highlights the declining social and cultural capital of the Nigerian legacy media, and shows that the profusion of citizen participation in the democratic project through social media networks isn’t always benevolent. It then suggests ways the legacy media can complement, coopt, or contain the luxuriance and exuberance of the social media scene.

In this study the researchers intended to analyse the Eelam Weblogs. This research has empirically investigated to understand and examine how weblogs influenced the Eelam Tainils for their social networking and interaction. Also it In studied how the blogs were used as a tool for communication. It analysed the evolution of blogging during subsequent period of the Eelam war and assessed the impact of this new .form of media under the present scenario in journalism.

Text in Portuguese. Abstract in English. TITLE: Online Campaigns, Political Participation and the Public Sphere: The Case of the Open Government Plan in the 2010 Brazilian Elections..ABSTRACT: This paper aims at examining the online political discussions which took place on the website Proposta Serra , an open government plan initiative launched by the Brazilian Social Democracy Party´s candidate José Serra during the 2010 Brazilian presidential elections. The Proposta Serra´s purpose was to engage voters and campaing agents in political discussions in order to create a collaborative government plan. The project´s website reproduces some of the features of social network sites, such as public or semi-public profiles, photo albums and blogs. The Proposta Serra s singular characteristic was to give voters the opportunity to create thematic online forums turned to debate issues such as agriculture, housing, urban and rural public infra-structure and education. Through content analysis, we evaluated the deliberative quality of (N=200) messages exchanged by the participants in 4 different forums. Five analytical categories taken from the current online deliberation literature were used: Reciprocity, Reflexivity, Respect, Justification and Information. The results show high ratings of deliberation in the political discussions, demonstrating the forums´ usefulness to promote qualified cognitive exchanges. However, the lack of transparency in the selection process of voters suggestions decreased significantly the user sense of political efficacy

Chapter in Ratuva, S., and Lawson, S., (2016). The People Have Spoken: The 2014 Elections in Fiji. Canberra: Australian National University. Fiji was a media pariah among Pacific nations, as well as a political outcast, for much of the eight years after Voreqe Bainimarama’s military coup in December 2006. But while some media credibility was restored in the months leading up to the 2014 general elections and during the ballot itself, the elephant is still in the room: the 2010
Media Industry Development Decree (Fijian Government 2010). While this Decree remains in force, Fiji can hardly claim to have a truly free and fair media. Just seven months out from the September 17 elections, Fiji was ranked 107th out of 179 countries listed in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index prepared by the Paris-based global media freedom it was in many quarters during that year, and the promise of ‘free and
fair’ elections by 30 September 2014. The elections gave Fiji’s ranking a further boost, rising 14 places to 93rd (RSF 2015).
organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF). That ranking was an improvement on the previous year (RSF 2014a), rising 10 places from the 2013 ranking. The major reason for this improvement was the adoption of the new Constitution on 6 September 2013, criticised as it was in many quarters during that year, and the promise of ‘free and fair’ elections by 30 September 2014. The elections gave Fiji’s ranking a further boost, rising 14 places to 93rd (RSF 2015).