ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
Malaysia’s 14th general election, which was held on 9th Mei 2018, become the “the father of all elections” as it evidenced the collapsed of 60 years of Barisan Nasional ruling era. While for Pakatan Harapan, becoming government is beyond their wildest dream, is now a reality. This article aims to identify and explain how social media plays major factor in influencing electorate to make their decision and it is based on the lacked of research conducted in this area. Previous research on voting behavior mainly focusing on ethnicity, party identification, leadership, class analysis, middle class, political cultures and other approaches. But in this article we would like to see different angle of voting behavior by focusing on social media mainly WhatsApp users on how they influence in previous Malaysia 14th General Election. Furthermore, it is evidenced that WhatsApp political and agenda setting contents plays major role as compared to Facebook political and agenda setting content in influencing citizen to change the government as a resulted in the election outcome.
Al-Deen, H. S. N., & Hendricks, J. A. (2012). Social Media: Usage and Impact. Lexington Books.
Alejandro, J. (2010). Journalism in the Age of Social Media. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Oxford.
Azhar, A. (2013). ‘Social media crucial in election campaign’ | Free Malaysia Today. Retrieved May 28, 2018, from http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2013/04/19/social-media-crucial-in-election-campaign/
Wahab, A. A. (2016, June 24). Creating a safer cyberspace for future digital natives. The Star Online. Retrieved from www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-opinion/2016/06/24/creating-a-safer-cyberspace-for-future-digital-natives/
Audit Bureau of Circulations Malaysia. (2017). Latest Audit Reports – July to December 2017 | ABCM. Retrieved May 28, 2018, from http://abcm.org.my/report/latest-audit-reports-july-to-december-2017/
Bernama. (2013). Malaysian Communications And Multimedia Commission (MCMC) | Suruhanjaya Komunikasi dan Multimedia Malaysia (SKMM) - MCMC To Monitor, Control Use Of Social Media In General Election 13 To Prevent Abuse. Retrieved June 12, 2018, from https://www.mcmc.gov.my/media/press-clippings/mcmc-to-monitor,-control-use-of-social-media-in-ge
Bernama. (2017). Malaysians are world’s largest WhatsApp users | New Straits Times | Malaysia General Business Sports and Lifestyle News. Retrieved May 25, 2018, from https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/bots/2017/09/278936/malaysians-are-worlds-largest-whatsapp-users
Chang, P. K., & Tham, J. S. (2016). Media Usage Patterns among Chinese Voters: In Preparation for the 14th Malaysian General Election (GE14). Asian Social Science, 12(12), 251. https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v12n12p251
Chinnasamy, S., & Abdul, N. (2018). Social media as political hatred mode in Malaysia ’ s 2018 General Election, 02005. https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20185302005
Chun, S. A., & Cho, J. S. (2012). E-participation and transparent policy decision making. Information Polity, 17(2), 129–145. https://doi.org/10.3233/IP-2012-0273
comScore. (2017). MDA and comScore Release Rankings of Top Web Entities in Malaysia. Retrieved May 31, 2018, from https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Rankings/MDA-and-comScore-Release-Rankings-of-Top-Web-Entities-in-Malaysia-for-September-2015
Faizal Kasmani, M., Sabran, R., & Adzrah Ramle, N. (2014). Who Is Tweeting on #PRU13? Asian Social Science, 10(18). https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v10n18p144
Gibson, R., & Cantijoch, M. (2013). Conceptualizing and measuring participation in the age of the internet: Is online political engagement really different to offline? Journal of Politics, 75(3), 701–716. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381613000431
Gomez, J. (2014). Social Media Impact on Malaysia’s 13th General Election. Asia Pacific Media Educator, 24(1), 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/1326365X14539213
Grönlund, Å., & Wakabi, W. (2015). Citizens’ use of new media in authoritarian regimes: A case study of Uganda. Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 67(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1681-4835.2015.tb00479.x
Hamid, N. N. B. A., & Rahman, S. A. (2018). Impact of Social Media on Malaysia’s Election Landscape. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(9), 275–284. https://doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v8-i9/4590
Hyun, K. D. (2012). Americanization of web-based political communication? A comparative analysis of political blogospheres in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 89(3), 397–413. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699012447919
Kantar, T.N.S. (2017). The New Social Frontier: Instant Messaging usage jumps 12% globally | Kantar TNS. Retrieved May 25, 2018, from http://www.tnsglobal.com/asia-pacific/press-release/new-social-frontier-instant-messaging-usage-jumps-12-globally
Larsson, A. O., & Moe, H. (2012). Studying political microblogging: Twitter users in the 2010 Swedish election campaign. New Media and Society, 14(5), 729–747. https://d
In-Text Citation: (Nizah & Bakar, 2019)
To Cite this Article: Nizah, M. A. M., & Bakar, A. R. A. (2019). WhatsApp Election in Malaysia: Assessing the Impact of Instant Messaging on Malaysia’s 14th General Election. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(3), 132–146.
Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode