Media Future: - Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia

Recognizing the importance of blogs, several candidates and political parties set up
weblogs during the 2004 U.S Presidential campaign. Notably, Howard Dean’s campaign
was particularly successful in harnessing grassroots support using a weblog as a primary
mode for publishing dispatches from the candidate to his followers. In the third quarter of
2003, Dean’s campaign raised $7.4, of a total $14.8 million, via the Internet, with a
remarkably modest average donation of under $100.6. His fall was as spectacular as his
rise, and was likewise fueled by means of the Internet, which served as an acho chamber
for the infamous „Dean Scream“. Although official campaign blogs played a lesser role in
the Bush and Kerry campaigns, with the Bush campaign’s blog being criticized as little
more than a place to post press releases, both parties launched innovative online
campaign to boost their grass-roots efforts. (Boutin 2004: 77)
Signal dari pengukuhan blog sebagai media baru paling utama dalam pencitraan
ekoposial, khususnya berasaskan pengalaman di Malaysia sebagai zentrum penetrasi
internet, dan media baru tertinggi dalam ASEAN, dan dibandingkan dengan kadar
pengukuhan di Amerika Syarikat maka sudah tentu proses-proses ekoposialdi
sepanjuang 2009 sehingga 2015, sebagaimana yang diprediksi oleh Zentrum Future
Studies Malaysia (ZENTRUM) adalah diupaya bentuk oleh peranan yang dimainkan oleh
blog dan media sosial. Ini dimatakan oleh statistik dari data terpilih, iaitu kedudukan
gunaan blog + media sosial = internet sebagai sumber informasi berasaskan penetrasi
kepercayaan bukan capaian dan integrasi dengan sistem komunikasi informasi tertinggi di
dunia.
Universiti Malaya Media Studies department senior lecturer Dr Abu Hassan Hasbullah
said in the recent election, BN lost in the “information war” due to its misjudgment on the
importance of the alternative media. “Young people are relying more on these new
alternative media rather than the conventional ones like newspapers and television,” he
said at a forum themed “Society and Media in the 2008 Election” yesterday. In the study,
64.5 per cent of those aged from 21 to 30 years trusted blogs and online media for
reliable information compared with 23.1 per cent who relied on the television and only
12.4 per cent on newspapers. Of those between 31 and 40 years, 61.7 per cent believed
that the information in the blogs and online media was true while 23.5 trusted the
television and 14.8 per cent the newspapers. But the older generation, those who are
from 41 to 50 years old, seemed to trust the traditional media more than the new media.
“Realising how powerful the new media is, the opposition parties have used the
opportunity since 1998 when the Internet started to penetrate the country. “In the mid
2000, the opposition had more than 7,500 blogs and websites while the government had
only three… (New Straits Times, 02.04.2008)
Media baru melalui kandungan dan budaya informasi yang pluralisme sudah benar-benar
mengemukakan suatu proses perubahan dalam kepercayaan sama ada terhadap makna,
bentuk dan kandungan mahupun teori-teori baik kewartawanan, komuniksi, media (Winter
Hepp, Kotz 2008: 267-281) termasuk cultural studies dan future studies. Sebagai contoh
rujukan terhadap data dari pendapat publik sudah menjadi daif dan bersifat mikro kesan
dari pembentukan informasi non-henti dari internet: “According to a study by Burst
Media, about 25 percent of likely voters said the Internet was the best place to research
candidates’ positions and election issues. About 21 percent said TV was the best source,
while more than 17 percent said newspapers” (http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/entry/
176964.html), dan with more than 100,000 donors, twice as many as Clinton, Obama is
proving that harnessing the vast reach of the Internet is a powerful strategy (http://
www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/04/ap3584830.html).
Blogosfera berkembang sebagai institusi media baru yang paling mengesankan dalam
membentuk perubahan-perubahan dalam pola-pola dan corak-corak pemikiran dan
kebudayaan ekoposial sejagat (Packer 2004: 12). Weblog mungkin berdasarkan statistik
di bawah kelihatan masih minoritas berbanding populasi namun dalam pengujian future
studiesserta petunjuk suku pertama tahun 2008 jelas menyatakan blog akan menjadi
kuasa media yang sangat gravitas. Malah bermula pada 2004 itu juga, berasaskan
pengalaman perubahan mediasfera di Amerika Syarikat dan Eropah, sebagai negara
tertinggi capaian internet, nyata berlakunya peralihan kepercayaan massa dari media
tradisi kepada media baru yang ditunjukkan oleh pelaburan besar para politikawan
Demokrat dan Republikan, juga di Eropah untuk mentebarkan blog sebagai media utama
dalam kempen-kempen. Hal ini seperti agak diam di Malaysia dari aspek kerancakan
walhal diamnya fungsi blog sebenarnya akan mencipta pengaruh tanpa sedar di kalangan
strategis politik konservatif kerana sebenarnya kepercayaan blog dibina dengan begitu
deras di sepanjang period 2004 kesan dari pengaruh peranan blog yang dicetuskan
“Online political campaigning has come a long way since Howard Dean’s turkey sandwich
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