Bloggers Unite in Malaysia

When a foreign newspaper has a front-page article of another country, the news gotta be big! And this time, Singapore reported about the power of bloggers in Malaysia who has led to better insights on why the Barisan Nasional lost so many states in the last General Election. Thus, it is reported that a study by four academics from Universiti Teknologi Mara’s Communications and Media Studies Faculty, showed that 80 per cent of respondents were aware of blogs, which were popular with the middle class and below. However, the high percentage of these bloggers or readers of blogs are not those who consisted of the majority who voted for the opposition.

“After making the cross matching, we found that there was no strong evidence that supports the notion that the Internet content had moved people to vote for the opposition,” Professor Madya Baharuddin Aziz told Bernama. Instead, the study showed that the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, which were thrashed at the election, failed to adequately address issues raised online, resulted in their loss.

It with this that I take pride in announcing how blogs are now becoming a medium and gethering of information so that people can make informed decisions. Keeping mum about something or a policy do not make it anymore. I am also glad that Malaysian bloggers are not penalised for sounding out their opinions including about politics even though I foresee this might happen in the near future, just not as bad as the level of filtering as done by the China government. It with this that blogs like MalaysiaKini and many others that are brave enough to report the truth and bring freedom of speech to the table.

I am glad to say I am still proud to be Malaysian especially a Malaysian blogger. If only, the petrol price will go down.