Both Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Harapan (PH) are involved in a cyber war – waged on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube – to win over voters, especially the undecided.
According to a report in The Edge, analysts have attributed the opposition’s rise in popularity since 2012 to its reach on the internet and social media.
The opposition gained 51% of the popular vote in the 13th general election.
Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is also BN chairman, appeared aware of the situation last November when he told some 4,000 Umno cybertroopers at the party’s Social Media Convention that the coalition had to win on social media if it wanted to stay in power.
The Edge quoted PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli, who also heads Invoke Malaysia, as saying Najib was right in his assessment.
Whoever had more reach on social media had a better chance of winning, Rafizi said, adding: “It’s the No 1 battleground, more important than the ceramah on the ground.”
However, he was quick to point out that other factors were also at play such as content, whether the reach was negative or positive, and whether people could be motivated to turn up to vote.
“It’s a lot more complicated than having a presence,” he told The Edge.
“It’s like shooting in the dark. You think that just because you have reached 200,000 people, you are good and you’re winning, but it may backfire. In a three-cornered fight, where the difference could be just 2% or 3%, a 1% difference in support level may cause you to lose your seat.
“So over-reliance on social media, without looking at the conventional/traditional matrix, may be your undoing.”
Umno information chief Annuar Musa agreed, saying: “Nothing beats face-to-face interaction.”
That’s why, he told The Edge, social media was just one of the tools BN was using.
He said BN was more prepared for the cyber battle now and that component parties were meeting on a weekly basis to strategise for it.
Meanwhile, Monash University communications lecturer Julian Hopkins was quoted as saying that political parties would increasingly customise marketing techniques to target voters.
Hopkins said WhatsApp was the most important platform now, more so than Facebook.
“My own survey in late 2016 showed more than 80% of 279 participants use WhatsApp to communicate with their family and close friends. So I think the group that will influence people more is the one that gets their content shared on WhatsApp, because the sharing is by people that users trust more.
“And there’s no advertising there – yet. It’s very different from the Facebook trend seen in 2013,” Hopkins told The Edge.
Social media observer Politweet’s founder Ahmed Kamal Nava told The Edge that its latest data showed interest in the three biggest BN component parties – Umno, MCA and MIC – had increased on Facebook since July 2013.
Only interest in Gerakan, which was almost obliterated in GE13 and left with just one parliamentary seat, dwindled to 270,000 users as at March this year, from 380,000. Umno recorded higher interest, at 3.4 million users.
In contrast, the figures showed that interest in two of three opposition parties measured had fallen. Interest in PAS had halved to 370,000 users from 740,000, while DAP, which used to interest 1.36 million users, now had 1.3 million users. Interest in PKR, which was at less than half a million previously, had risen to match DAP’s in March.
However, Ahmed cautioned, such interest did not indicate support for a particular party, merely awareness.