Reflections on the New Media and the Informed Citizen Symposium:

24th July 2009

It has been two weeks since the New Media and the Informed Citizen Symposium was held in Brisbane at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, and now I find I am finally able to reflect back on the occasion. Although it could be said that I am biased, as I was one of the organisers, I did feel that it was an invaluable event. It was unfortunate that due to the constraints of the event, it was held outside of the university semester, because I do think that more students – of media, politics, international relations, Asian studies and law – would have found it of interest. In the end, perhaps one of the most invaluable elements of the occasion was the fact that our four Malaysian guest speakers and our one Australian guest speaker were able to compare experiences and swap notes. I also feel that it was a rare occasion when our four guest speakers from Malaysia were able to come together and share their own perspectives with each other – something that perhaps in their daily lifes they may not get a chance to do.

The day began with a quick introduction and debrief on the New Media and the Informed Citizen project and some of our findings so far. Then the project team gave a rough and ready background on the social, political and legal environment in Malaysia, contrasting it briefly with the Australian situation. That gave a good platform from which Steven Gan, co-founder and editor in chief of Malaysiakini, Malaysia’s premiere online news resource, was able to launch into his speech.

Steven Gan is a very humble man who has made an extraordinary impact on the political scene and on the media environment in Malaysia. Highly educated, he spent ten years as a student at various Australian universities.When he first started Malaysiakini, it should be remembered that the Internet was not well established, the perception of the media environment in Malaysia was that it was government controlled, and it was assumed that the political environment would be hostile to a new entrant.However, Malaysiakini today has not only survived, it makes a big impact (I think it had more than 20 million hits per day during the last Malaysian general election), and it also makes a profit. Steven estimated that there were around 35 laws that affected Malaysiakini directly and affected what can and cannot be published. He has also experienced being shut down by the Government and has been sued a number of times (with a few court actions pending). However, he had found a way to navigate the difficult political and legal environment and is now moving into new territory. He has started to recruit ‘citizen journalists’ to report ‘in the field’, giving them cameras and training them in journalism skills. Another new pathway is Malaysiakini.tv, and Malaysiakini is also now available in a multiple of languages (English, Tamil, Malay and Chinese).

When asked what he found affected his publishing freedom more, the law or lawsuits, Steven’s answer was lawsuits. His reply was that if you get dragged through the courts by the Government, you can become a ‘hero’.If you get dragged through the courts by a corporation, it affects every aspect of your life.

The next speaker was Datuk Seri Azman Ujang, a former General Manager of Bernama News Agency, a government owned media entity. Datuk Seri Azman is also now on the board of Berjaya Media, as well as the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, he is seasoned journalist, has long been in the government system and hails from the East of Malaysia. Datuk Seri Azman had confidence that new media had changed the political landscape and had altered the way in which journalists operate. Datuk Seri Azman’s approach was quite different to Steven Gan’s. Whereas Steven Gan took the approach that Malaysiakini was an alternative source of media, vying against the ‘mainstream’ (TV, newspapers, radio etc), Datuk Seri Azman saw new media like Malaysiakini as now the ‘mainstream’. He compared the figures for Malaysiakini to that for the newspaper The Sun, which our other guest speaker Citizen Nades writes for – 20 million hits versus a circulation of 300,000. It was a very good point, and one that I myself am not quite sure how to address!

The next speaker was Mohd Zulkifli (Zul), who is the general manager of Alt Media, part of the Media Prima group.Zul was previously editor of FHM and editor of the Malay Mail. Media Prima includes many large media entities such as TV 3, and TV 9 as well as an online lifestyle channel, Gua. Zul’s role is to manage the online branding and marketing of these entities. He has an extraordinary range of media outlets to manage, with differing demographics, languages and web presence. It was a very visual presentation, by nature of its subject manner, and it had me wanting to hop onto the internet and see what these websites were all about. It was a very interesting answer to the question of where the ‘mainstream’ media is going in response to the online world. From Zul’s presentation I got the impression that there are endless possibilities, but it is making what you do connect to the audience that counts. The interactivity offered by web 2.0 applications is built to do that but how do you drive your audience to your sites, blogs, portals etc? I suppose it helps if you have an established brand like TV 3 and a pre-existing audience for the content i.e. the programming.

Zul very memorably introduced us to the ‘men’s bathroom’ theory of the Internet – he suggested that quite a few bloggers were like the guys who write on the wall in the men’s bathroom, they don’t have anything meaningful to say, they just write because they can get away with it!

After a short break for lunch we were very pleased to have our one and only Australian guest speaker, Graham Young of Online Opinion. Graham Young is a former Vice President of the Liberal Party in Queensland and has been involved with Online Opinion for around 10 years. Online Opinion is one of the few well known sites in terms of news opinion in Australia; otherwise the majority of content is provided by online versions of mainstream newspapers or television.Graham Young’s speech was a real eye-opener for our Malaysian guests – not to be unfair to Graham, but he did deliver a fairly pessimistic appraisal of how the Australian political scene engages with the online world. He outlined the model that Online Opinion uses and described the difficulties he faced doing what he was doing in an Australian context.I think Graham calls it correctly though – after seeing firsthand the weight of importance the Malaysian political scene gives to online media, it is disappointing to come back to Australia and realise that in general, Aussie politicians only view the Internet as one extra marketing channel, not as a new or different way to engage and communicate with constituents directly.

Our last speaker for the day was Citizen Nades – R. Nadeswaran, investigative journalist, editor and blogger for The Sun, a free newspaper. Citizen Nades related to the audience a few of his major stories that he was involved in breaking. One of the most recent and most prominent is the story of Assemblyman Datuk Zakaria Mat Deros. The story has quite a number of elements to it, but essentially it boils down to Zakaria being an elected representative of the previous Selangor State government, but not abiding by the laws of the Klang Municipal Council (in Malaysia, local government is not popularly elected but is appointed). He built an enormous ‘castle’ within a fairly poor area without council approval, had a business, also without council approval, and had not paid his rates equivalent liabilities for many years. Citizen Nades broke this story, which was subsequently picked up by others; although charges against Zakaria were dropped, it caused a national outcry and today Zakaria’s castle is abandoned, and the unfortunate man is no longer in the council, having died of a heart attack.

In terms of new media, Citizen Nades saw it as helpful tool, but no substitute for tried and true methods. For instance, he felt that an electronic record had nowhere near the value of a physical document when pursuing a case or running a story. Citizen Nades also provided highly practical tips for those wanting to pursue journalism amongst the crowd, which was especially valuable given that it takes many years for a good journalist to really understand the practicalities and realities of the job, the kinds of things which very few university textbooks or academic journals cover.

On a sombre note, Citizen Nades did point out that although he spent a lot of time pursuing corrupt officials, not one had gone to prison or been convicted.

And that concluded our Symposium.

The one distinct impression that stays with me from the event is that contrast between what is happening in Malaysia and what is happening here in Australia in terms of new media and its impact on the political system. I am so pleased for Malaysia – the Malaysian Government could have taken a draconian view towards new media and put in filters and legislation to prevent alternative opinion, and helped secure their own political future. Instead they have a relatively free system that has lead to a dynamic engagement of the internet by Malaysian citizens.Here in Australia, we have all the advantages of a relatively free system, but our politicians don’t seem to use it effectively to engage their constituencies, and it can be argued that many Australian citizens take the freedoms they enjoy under a Western liberal democratic system for granted.

There is still much more to say about this and other matters, but I think I will leave that for another occasion.

For more information about the 'New Media and the Informed Citizen' Project, click here.

Written by Shona Leppanen-Gibson