New Media and the Informed Citizen
“New Media and the Informed Citizen” is a community research project undertaken by Paradigm Infinitum. The project is a comparative study of the use of new media and its impact on the political system in Malaysia and Australia and is threefold – involving a research paper, a website, and an international symposium held in Brisbane. This project is funded by the Australia-Malaysia Institute, a unit of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia.
Inspired by the unprecedented involvement and influence of bloggers, citizen journalism, online reporting, and social networking sites during the Malaysian General Elections of 2008, this project seeks to examine what the implications of the new media environment is on politics and the political sphere both in Australia and in Malaysia. “New Media and the Informed Citizen” takes as its subject new media and internet technologies and the impact and interaction of these technologies on political empowerment, democracy, and citizenship. Some of the issues to be examined include:
- Freedom of speech
- Governance of Censorship
- Government policy on new media
- The interplay between politics and new media
- Access of citizens to new media
- New media as an added marketing channel or new information channel
Paradigm Infinitum and the project "New Media and the Informed Citizen" are not aligned to any political party or ideology, and the project will be carried out in an objective and strictly non-partisan manner in the interests of expanding and sharing knowledge and further developing mutual understanding between Australia and Malaysia.
Key Findings
Some of the key findings of the New Media and the Informed Citizen project are:
- Australia has strict media ownership rules aimed at preventing media ownership from being concentrated in few hands. Malaysia does not have such media ownership rules.
- Australia’s proposed new media censorship laws have caused disquiet and uncertainty in the new media industry and has challenged the view of Australia as an advanced liberal democracy. Malaysia has shown great restraint in dealing with the new media and has demonstrated a greater tolerance of media freedom in the Internet age.
- Australia has a well-established and arguably relatively independent mainstream media. The new media by contrast is relatively undeveloped compared to Malaysia.
- Malaysia ’s mainstream media operates in a culture of constraint and self-censorship. However, Malaysia’s new media practitioners adopt the opposite approach.
- Australians generally do not use new media for engagement in politics, although politicians do use new media as a marketing channel. Malaysia on the other hand is an advanced user of new media in politics.
- From a legal perspective Malaysia has arguably greater freedom than many Western countries especially in terms of new media , and arguably greater internet freedom than Australia.
- Malaysia has a thriving media industry and globally it is at the cutting edge of new media usage and blending the application of traditional and new media, thus allowing Malaysian citizens to have even better access and greater interaction with politics than is the case in many other countries.
