Vote for yourself or vote for the technology?

It is not the first time that people utilize new media to spread their power and reach political influences. Unconventionally, when coming off with an election or any political campaign, it is ubiquitous to see politicians apply different strategies such as blogging, video advertisement, discussion on forum, propaganda by smses and so forth. It is not exaggerating to say that without the existence of electronic media, the messages could not be spreading out so timely or the atmosphere could not be under a great tension.

Tough time for journalists

Globalization and media segmentation present citizens with alternative outlets for political information. The evolution of new media unfolding in the way information and exposure are shared. In this sense, it might be seen as a loss for minority to conventionally contribute in traditional media like newspapers, television, radio broadcasting and so forth. Traditional media is deemed as more costly and lack of advocacy, thus, it is unlikely to target on majority groups.

In cyberspace, regardless of frontiers, everyone has the right to spread news without interference and receive and impact information. Hence, it has benefit politicians to bring in to play their fallacy to influence the voters as the new media allow a wider audience to hear their message!

Inevitably, the status of traditional media has gradually replaced by the new media. In Australia, a big media company such as Fairfax has hysterically cut its workforce by 550, including nearly 170 journalists (Colless, 2008). It was a threat to quality journalism and the conventional mainstream media.

By reviewing the political field in Malaysia, the activeness in cyberspace is rather seen as a blogging competition. With the belief "the more I write, the greater posts I win', the ruling party and the opposition has put in their extreme efforts for greater penetration of their message. In this point I find out that they are too much advocacy and it is not understandable to see people misuse technology by overselling their stories.

However, we can see it is workable in the America society. When Barack Obama first released his video by promoting his economic stimulus plan. It has won more than 820,000v viewers and his followers (The Daily Telegraph, 2009).









Barack Obama has effectively advocated his ideology with the release of his video on Youtube.

(www.youtube.com)



As a reader by seeing all those anecdotes, or as a common user in cyberspace, I think that it is not about the things that we supposedly used to deserve or embrace. I would rather perceive it as "a subtle potshot" rather than sightworthy viewing materials. As Schriver (1997) stated, the content which is not yet developed and questionable value should be placed "on hold" until they are truly ready for human comsumption. Yet, I say partially, of course the old and new media must find a way to grow together if they are to survive. People should examine the underlying value before it come into a topic.

References:

Colless, M.2008, 'A tough line earns journo's respect', 9th Sept, viewed 14th June 2009,
<http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au>

The Daily Telegraph, 2009, 'Barack Obama needs Youtube ', 25th Jan, viewed 14th June 2009.
<http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph>

Schriver, K.A.1997, The interplay for words and pictures, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.