The Networked Electorate: The Internet and the Quiet Democratic Revolution in Malaysia and Singapore

Abstract

1. Introduction The flow of information to the electorate has traditionally depended mainly on newspapers, television and radio. Obviously, this state of affairs precludes the average man or woman on the street from reaching to the masses because of barriers of entry in terms of costs and access to these channels of communication. In countries where there is limited press freedom, this dependence on traditional media prevents opposition politicians from effectively campaigning and spreading their message to the electorate. The Internet presents a reversal of this old paradigm--with the advent of Web 2.0, it is theoretically possible for the average person with a message to communicate with the electorate at large. Therefore, it is unsurprising that many people are excited with the possibility of the democratising effect of the Internet. This paper is an exploration of this possibility from the perspective of two jurisdictions--Singapore and Malaysia. These countries are selected as comparative case studies because they share very similar laws, culture and language and recently held general elections--Singapore in 2006 and Malaysia in 2008.1 And yet, the effect of the Internet on the electorate in these two countries has been markedly different. In spite of these apparent similarities, in the case of Singapore, the Internet merely exerted some pressure on the pre-existing laws and state-imposed norms governing free speech; in contrast, in Malaysia, the Internet was a maj or contribution to what has been described as a 'political tsunami' during the recent general election. This paper will attempt to explain the reasons for this divergence. Despite this divergence, I will argue that both jurisdictions share a particular commonality--the presence of active Internet communities among the electorate has generated norms with regard to free speech that are incompatible with pre-existing norms that exist off-line. These Internet speech norms have the tendency of spilling out of cyberspace and making off-line speech norms less stable. In the case of Malaysia, the spillover effect of these norms, for reasons which will be explored below, is greater than what has happened in Singapore. In Malaysia, these speech norms coupled with the effective use of the Internet as a campaigning platform rendered the Internet as one of the contributing factors in swaying the electorate to vote in a particular manner. It is also contended that the existence of social and political weblogs or blogs in these jurisdictions presents unique opportunities for the creation of new social spaces where free speech thrives. This paper attempts to present a rough snap shot of these newly created social spaces. 2. The Theoretical Framework of this Paper: Of Dots and Active Dot Matrix I begin this paper by examining the theoretical framework of the various forms of restraints operating on an individual's behavior. The individual, as Lawrence Lessig has famously argued, may be conceptualised as a (pathetic) dot (Lessig, 2006, pp. 122-123). As lawyers, we often only think of the law as the primary regulator of human behaviour. However, Lessig alerts us of four forces which restrain the behaviour of the dot. Quite apart from law, these restraints include social norms, architecture and market forces. The dot and these four restraints are represented in the figure below: [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Lessig's insight on architecture impacting on the dot's behaviour is an insightful and important observation. For the purposes of this paper, the architecture of the Internet is significant. The heavily hyperlinked architecture of the Internet (especially weblogs or blogs) connects individuals with one another. Thus, the individual is not, as Lessig conceptualises, a lonely and pathetic dot existing in isolation in the context of Web 2.0. Rather, a more accurate representation of the dot in this context is Andrew Murray's active dot matrix which is represented in the figure below. …