NO! NOT THE POLITICAL STUFFS. ARGH! I HATE THE SOCIAL MEDIA!
(This post contains sensitive materials regarding political stuffs and it is specially for educational purposes and personal opinions.)
People must be wondering about the statement above why would I hate social media as social media makes the world better in terms of communication and technologies. Let me make it clear, I HATE SOCIAL MEDIA, in a good way. The topic for today would be involving politics engagement with social media and how they use it.
Dangerous Topic: Politics and Social Media (Protesting and Government Control)
Some people tend to avoid “the politics” especially in Malaysia where there is a freedom of speech. Is it true?
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or UDHR (of which Malaysia is a signatory) guarantees that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.
But do we get a freedom of speech?
We can see this through the case which a Malaysian cartoonist known as Zunar was being arrested for drawing a cartoon on criticism of sodomy ruling on Anwar Ibrahim case. His office was raided, his arts were confiscated and his workers had been harassed by people. Can you see the power of social media? Social media allows people to share online about their political views but the government is trying to seize control of the social media itself. Will it be possible?
Yes, it is. With the advanced technology nowadays by the government, the government can take control of who or what can be accessed by the citizens. Even so, it does not stop the people from posting or protesting online. I HATE SOCIAL MEDIA! I THOUGHT I COULD ESCAPE THE POLITICS WORLD THROUGH IT BUT THE WORLD REVOLVES AROUND IT.
Social Media and Malaysia’s Bersih Movements
The Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street are not the only two movements that are from media-driven political reform, so as Bersih movement.
‘Bersih’, a word in Malay language literally brings the meaning of ‘Clean’ as it is used in the meaning of the government is clean from any corruptions and having a clean and fair elections. People are allowed to post their feeling and opinions on how dissatisfy they are towards the government through the Bersih movement.
By having the technologies and social media, people starts to communicate to each other by using applications like Whatsapp, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and many other as they have something in common on protesting the government. Hence, Bersih was created through social media and gained 200,000 followers from 30,000 on 2015.
Wow! That shows how powerful social media is towards political matters.
Political engagement in social media
As social media nowadays plays a big role in communication, some of our leaders in other words political subjects decided to make a good use of it in political engagement. These days there millions of people owning at least a smartphone or a tablet and if you ask them about Facebook, they will know it for sure. Mark Zuckerberg has finally make Facebook a famous platform in the eyes of people. Congratulations Mark!
We can see a lot of our leaders are becoming like a big STAR for having their own official account on social media for example, Najib Razak and Obama.
By having a social media accounts, these leaders are able to communicate with their followers or know what is currently trending in their social media accounts.
They are also able to know how people feel or react to certain political matters and use it as a chance to make the country as a better place to live in.
Able to promote themselves on getting more votes on the next election.
In conclusion, we can see that social media has a lot of uses including political engagement.
So what do you think about social media and political engagement?
Feel free to drop your comments and tell us how you feel.