(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL BLOG IN MALAYSIA
From the point of terminology the word “blog” itself had gone through several process of
evolution commencing since the end of 1990s (Jensen, 2003) and identified by Peter Merholz as
web log. There existed several sectors such as Jesse James Garnett, Cameron Barrett, dan Brigitte
Eaton who actually started the collection of weblog in the Internet. One thing for certain was that
during its early existence there were only 23 blogs as listed by Jesse James Garnett in 1999
(Blood, 2007). In general we can devide their evolutionary process as follows:
web journal web log weblog wee bogs blogs.
Inline with the increase in use of weblog, various supportive platforms were created for
the expansion such as Pitas, Blogger, Groksoup, Edit This Page, Velocinews, blogspot, wordpress
and many others. These had directly promoted the bloggers as stated by Blood (2007);
In September of 2000 there are thousands of weblogs: topic-oriented
weblogs, alternative viewspoints, astute examinations of the human
condition as reflected by mainstream media, short-form journals, links
to the weird and free-form notebooks of ideas.
Amongst primary reasons which contributed to the increase of its use were because of its
dynamism, unhindered in voicing out the writer’s opinion and not subject to any policy as
experienced by media organisation, easy to be updated in having a maze of networks and also
commentors from other blogs (Wall, 2005) and these for once had created a network known as
blogosphere. According to Steven (2007) modern media such as digital, compression, broadband,
and satellite networks are designed by the development of technology to facilitate the new media.
The impact of Internet on the political aspect had undoubtedly acquired much attention
from the researchers resulting from its very nature which not controlled by any sector, not even
the gatekeepers as mostly existed in the mainstream mass media. In fact it will be more obvious
where a country imposes any form of a direct ownership or legal acts; under the circumstances
Internet is the only solution which overcomes the deadlock, also enables penetration of
information to the public. The use of Internet especially the application of blog is no loner a
strange phenomenon in Malaysia. This because of its global characteristic and also it becomes a
platform in the transformation process and political upheaval of a country.
The experience of Malaysia especially the one related to the increase of use of the Internet
was primarily due to the change of political and economic landscape which took place in 1998
which witnessed the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim (then the Deputy Prime Minister) on the
allegations of misused of political power and sodomy which resulted in his imprisonment was
found to be amongst the catalyst that contributed to the increase of the Internet use. More even so
when most of the mainstream media were controlled by the government (Abbott, 2004:85;
Gomez, 2004:2) and Internet was seen as the point of transition to liberalisation and freedom to
voice out opinion and view without undergoing any screening. As Rodan states:
A reformasi movement emerged and, despite differences of
agenda among its elements, carving out independent media
space was a strategic necessity to advance the respective
reform aims under this umbrella. In the process, official
rhetoric about transparency was exploited in campaigns for
political accountability and openness.
(Rodan, 2004:141)
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