(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Conference on Media & Mass Communication Osaka, Japan
increased 328.9%. Today, the Internet penetration reaches 62.8% of the Malaysian population
(Deuntzer, 2009).
Malaysian Political Background
For the first time, the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lost its two-thirds parliamentary
majority at the federal level in the 2008 general election. It also lost control of five state
assemblies (but would later wrest control of one of the states). Heralded as a political tsunami,
the beneficiary was a loose coalition of opposition parties (then) namely, the Islamic party
PAS, multiracial party Parti Keadilan Rakyat, and DAP a mainly Chinese party. They have
since formed a coalition called Pakatan Rakyat.
Calls have been made to study the impact of the new media and its ability to “capture
the imaginations of the masses” (Azizah, 2008). Some media practitioners feel that the winds
of change swept not only the political landscape, but also the media environment and that
they should do soul-searching to stay relevant and accurately feel the pulse of the nation. It
has been claimed that mobile democracy – the SMS – may have been the most effective
weapon that knocked out the BN (Wong, 2008).
Research Objectives
Based on the abovementioned scenario, the following are the aims of the study:
a) To examine to what extent the new media shapes the perception of Chinese youth on
politics.
b) To explore the perception of Chinese youth on the new media and its role in
democracy.
The scope of the study covers Chinese youth aged between 20 and 24.
Further Literature Review
New media research about the internet and digital communication technologies is thriving
and expected to continue (Tomasello, Youngwon and Baer, 2009). Gerhards and Schäfer
(2010) found only minimal evidence to support the notion that the internet is a better
communication space as compared to print media. Another research in Japan found that the
new media – blogging and the Internet – played little role in the ruling LDP’s defeat. Instead,
the DPJ ousted LDP partly through the use of mainstream media, especially television.
(Duncan McCargo and Lee Hyon-Suk, 2010). An exploratory survey result hinted at an
intermingling of social, professional, political, information and entertainment-seeking and
academic activities on the web. (Hall and Caidi, 2003).
The effects of online news on political behaviors in the US found that online news
readership significantly increases interest in politics but does not affect subsequent outcomes
such as political participation or polarization. Constant exposure to news online (political and
other) may lead people to report being interested in politics. Moreover, the relative ease and
costless process of sending more information online may indeed lead people to become more
interested in politics. The study notes the nature of online news as an additional source of
information that supplements a media environment saturated with political content. (Golde
and Nie, 2010).
Another study found that the Internet leads to additional political participation but
does not trigger a shift from ‘old’ to ‘new’ politics. The research finds that the extent of
online political participation is influenced by both the level of Internet use and the extent of
offline political participation. The second finding is that the level of Internet use cannot
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