Twitter: A New Channel for Politicians

Politicians have definitely been well-known in making full-use of the new media to receive votes during the election campaign or to communicate with the citizens more effectively. In this modern time, leaders or future leaders of their respective countries no longer just use speeches or the newspaper as their only medium to channel the message to the public. With the ‘invention’ of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, blogs and Youtube which all are under the category of new media, the politicians are able to transmit their message to the public easily, efficiently and quicker. Perlmutter (2008) have also stated that many political campaigns have been using YouTube, Twitter and Facebook for experimentation.

                                    

                                                     Source: (aperture.org, 2009)

The most well-known politicians to make full use of the new media or social networking sites are the current president of America, Barack Obama. During his election campaign for the election of presidency, Barack Obama not only made his campaigning speech in almost each state in America but also uploaded the videos of his speech to Youtube in order for others who was unable to be present during his speech would get to know the message (May, 2010).

                                    

                                               Source: (darmano.typepad.com, 2008)

After being elected as President of United States of America over Republican’s John McClain, Obama made sure he is able to communicate with the American citizens instantly and efficiently by being a user of the Facebook and Twitter community (Nations, n.d.). Besides, after being elected as the forty-fourth president of America, the president decided to make full use of technology and the new media by having set up the Obama Administration which is to accomplish Obama’s vision of open-source democracy (Merritt, 2009)). The administration would decide to again make full use of YouTube by publishing any messages or speeches to reach a wider range of citizens. 

In Malaysia, many politicians regardless from the ruling or opposition party uses Twitter as a channel to communicate with the Malaysian citizens (Zahiid, 2010). There are several politicians who have been active in Twitter such as Anwar Ibrahim, DAP Lim Kit Siang, UMNO Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and of course the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak (Zahiid, 2010). Jonson Chong who is a communications director stated that although blogs would provide readers with in-depth information, it does not create an instant and effective communication with the readers or followers compared to Twitter (Zahiid, 2010).

Reference

May, AL 2010, ‘Who tube? How YouTube’s news and politics space is going mainstream’, The International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 499-511.

Merritt, K 2009, How Obama will use web technology, Tech Crunch, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/24/how-obama-will-use-web-technology/>.

Nations, D n.d., How Barack Obama is using Web 2.0  to run for president, About.com, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/obama-web.htm>.

Perlmutter, DD 2008, ‘Political blogging and campaign 2008: a roundtable’, The International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 160-170.

Zahiid, SJ 2010, Blogging is so yesterday, politicians turn to Twitter, The Malaysian Insider, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/Blogging-is-so-yesterday-politicians-turn-to-Twitter/>.

Controversial Cartoon Publishing: Danish cartoons and The New York Post

Cartoon publishing has existed since a long time ago. It was later revolutionalised by comic book artists such as Bob Kane and in Malaysia, the most well-known cartoon publisher is Datuk Mohammad Nor Khalid. The purpose of cartoon publishing back then functions like a modern newspaper in which to inform the people about a particular thing. Then, it was used for leisure and entertainment purposes. The social communication and the social discourse can be set in the form or humour or joke, which under the category of cartoon (Giarelli & Tulman, 2003)

With well-known cartoon publishing such as comic books and mangas, it is known for providing people some laughs and entertainment purposes. However, there was controversy surrounding a particular cartoon publishing company after it published an image of Prophet Muhammad. It was a worldwide outburst as there was sort of a war between the East and the West in which the East claimed it is the freedom of speech whereas the West argued that it is disgracing the religion (Hussain, 2007) A Danish cartoon publishing company published two form of Prophet Muhammad which infuriated the Muslim community (Hussain, 2007). One of the cartoons that illustrated Prophet Muhammad portrays that He had a messy moustache and beard, seemingly half-dressed, wearing a sheathed sword around his waist, along with an outer vest over one of the shoulders (Hussain, 2007).

The other is regarding a cartoon published by The New York Times in which there were two policemen standing over a corpse of an ape in which some American critics claimed the ape is a cross-reference to Barack Obama (Hines, 2009). After the cartoon was published in the newspaper, numerous civil rights leaders and politicians were furious and quickly demanded a sincere apology from The New York Times publication company and Rupert Murdoch (Hines, 2010). In actual fact, the executives wanted to ‘borrow’ the ape as a cross-reference to Al Sharpton, who the executives view Al Sharpton as a public opportunist (Hines, 2009). Due to this incident, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and the chief executive of News Corporation wrote an apologetic article to apologize for the controversial carton that was published (Hines, 2009).

                    

                               Source: (sanfranciscosentinel.com, 2009)

Cartoon publishing according to Giarelli and Tulman (2003) have claimed the truth and to some extent try to represent reality, however, there are several controversies surround the use of cartoon publishing and therefore one has to be rational and ethical while publishing.

Reference

Giarelli, E & Tulman, L 2003, ‘Methodological issues in the use of published cartoons as data’, Qualitative Health Research, vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 945-956.

Hines, N 2009, Rupert Murdoch apologizes for controversial chimpanzee cartoon, Times Online, viewed 8 November 2010, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5797869.ece>.

Hussain, AJ 2007, ‘The media’s role in a clash of misconceptions: the case of the Danish Muhammad cartoons’, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 112-130.

New Form of Media Publishing

Media is a form of communication and as stated by Naughton (2006), the communication environment has changed through time. The emergence of technology and global networking has caused an alteration to the communication sector (Naughton, 2006). The existence of video uploading sites such as Youtube and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter is a new form of media publishing nowadays.

Alternate Media

Besides, the role of communication and journalism has change due to the existence of alternate online newspaper and social networking sites. Global alternate online newspaper such as UK Watch, Adbusters and Dissident Voice (world-newspapers.com, 2010) enable the society to obtain alternate information besides depending on the mainstream media for information and news.

New Trends in New Media

Nowadays, it is a trend to use social networking sites as a form of communication in the political sector which was made famous by the President of USA, Barack Obama. According to Nations (n.d.), Obama has used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to convey his message to the public quicker and efficient. Besides, Obama made full use of Youtube during his election campaign by uploading the entire campaign speech to viewers rather than viewing a short clip of the speech in the news (Nations, n.d.).

Reference

Nations, D n.d., How Barack Obama is using Web 2.0 to run for president, About.com, viewed 20 September 2010, <http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/obama-web.htm>.

Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, Reuteurs Institute, viewed 19 September 2010, <http://reuteursinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/discussion/blogging.html>.

World-newspapers.com 2010, Alternate news, viewed 21 September 2010, <http://www.world-newspapers.com/alternative-news.html>.