Media and Elections in Asia: The Changing Role in Coverage and Control

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1 Guest Editorial Media and Elections in Asia: The Changing Role in Coverage and Control Asia Pacific Media Educator 24(1) University of Wollongong, Australia SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC DOI: / X Introduction The collection of articles and commentaries in this thematic issue underscores the changing role of media in recent elections in parts of developing Asia. Case studies from Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand show a trend among voters to shift to online portals for election news and social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to share content, engage in online campaigns and expose anecdotal events of election irregularities. This special issue Media and Elections in Asia is assembled to reflect on the normative role of a free media in ensuring free and fair elections. The general assumption is that free and fair access to information about political parties, candidates and party policies would help voters make informed choices at the polls. However, as the case studies show, a significant feature about the mainstream media in the region is that the media can be biased. In India the media is more participatory than it is in the other countries in South Asia. There is freedom of speech and the media landscape is vibrant as there is no official censorship and neither does the government own the media. The bias in mainstream media is not a result of government interference but has arisen due to the ways in which media has evolved in a liberal economy. In this sense India has more in common with the media in Western democracies such as the US where there are undercurrents and pressures, such as from commercial considerations that skew the message. In Southeast Asia, the media are used by political incumbents as state apparatus via the ownership-by-proxy structure and restrictive media laws. Often political parties and groups own their own media channels. With declining readership, listenership and viewership of traditional media across age groups, a new contest is being played out in cyberspace with each party driving its own agendas online. This thematic issue hence addresses these questions: How have developments in the online media environment influenced the electioneering process in the region and the electoral outcomes? Who sets the election agenda in a fragmented media environment? How will the region s incumbents adapt their politics to the changing online media landscape?

2 2 James Gomez Bias of Mainstream Media and Its Decreasing Credibility Country studies show the mainstream media are either owned or controlled by the ruling regime and through their affiliated companies. Mohd Azizuddin Mohd Sani, in his paper Malaysia s 13th General Elections: Political Partisanship in the Mainstream Print Media, posits that such media entities routinely promote the incumbents political interests. Members of the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional, control extensive ownership and hence dictate much of the print and broadcast media contents. In his analysis of the mainstream print media Azizuddin concludes that the mainstream Malay-language newspapers are explicitly supportive of the ruling coalition Barisan Nasional. Partisanship is likewise evident in the reporting by Tamil-language newspapers and English-language online news portals but more as a result of commercially led priorities. Here the explanation provided by Maya Ranganathan with regards to the media and elections in India is relevant. She writes that Indian media s overriding emphasis on commercial and corporate interests has shaped the form and content of the 2014 election coverage. A significant aspect of media reportage of the Indian elections was the oft-repeated charge that mainstream media were driven by a commercial agenda and hence were not merely partisan but also fluctuating in their loyalties. In her paper 2014 Indian Elections: Commerce Pushes Social Media into Focus, Maya argues that commercial interests of mainstream media were responsible for the emergence of the new media space as a significant factor in the electoral campaign. Political actors, activists and voters alike moved online in their bid to overcome the filters of commercial media rather than for any other reason. In a content analysis of the English-language papers in the run up to India s elections. Francis P. Barclay, C. Pichandy and Anusha Venkat in their paper India 2014: Political Orientation in Election Coverage of English Newspapers show how each paper is slanted towards different political parties. Their findings show that in the run up to the formal voting period, the BJP occupied the most political space across the four papers. The party also scored the highest in terms of positivity. The Hindu and The Telegraph were found to be more supportive of the Congress. Hence, the mainstream media in these and other countries are increasingly seen as biased. But maintaining impartiality in media coverage of elections is one of the journalist s main ethical challenges. Yvonne Chua in her commentary Between Advocacy and Impartial Reporting during Elections explains the challenges journalists in the Philippines faced when they were advocating for the political rights of persons with disabilities while adhering to the principles of impartial reporting. Besides the skewed news reporting, media bias also comes in the form of election advertising. In the run up to and during the elections, incumbent government agencies have recourse to greater financial resources compared to

3 Media and Elections in Asia 3 opposition parties to purchase advertisements in the media to highlight their achievements. Mustafa K. Anuar, in his paper Election Advertising in the Mainstream Print Media: Politics for Sale during Malaysia s 2013 General Election, notes that during the last Malaysian general elections, advertisements in the mainstream press served as an additional dimension to the political and ideological onslaught of the incumbent BN, given that these papers are indirectly owned by the ruling group. The advertisements only reinforced the reportage, which was generally supportive of the BN. He adds that even in the placement of election advertising, there is an in-built bias against opposition parties, which are often prevented from placing their advertisements. The declining trust in mainstream media is reflected in the drop in circulation of print media in Malaysia. The Shift to Online Platforms Media coverage of the elections reviewed in this collection range from 2013 in Cambodia, Malaysia and Philippines to the Indian and Thai elections in During the campaigns, social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have emerged as the medium of choice for the opposition parties to counter the ruling government s dominance in the mainstream media. Meng Kim Seng in his paper Shaping Political Change: The Role of the Social Media in Cambodia s 2013 Elections shows that given their restricted access to the mainstream media, the opposition coalition led by Sam Rainsy had turned to the social media to drive its campaign. Meng notes that if social media continues to grow at the current speed without direct interference by Prime Minister Hun Sen s regime, Cambodian politics will undergo fundamental political change. James Gomez also observes this shift in his commentary piece Social Media Impact on Malaysia s 13th General Election. He notes that social media s foremost role in the election may lie in its ability to mobilize high voter turnout. But he points out that the predictive power of social media remains elusive in the Malaysian political context. The political structure, the ruling coalition s incumbent advantage and access to government resources, the role of ethnicity and Islam remains impervious to the internet and social media. However, as this trend continues there is a risk that social media platforms, in particular Facebook, can end up merely as echo chambers as highlighted in the case of the 2014 Thai elections. Max Grömping analyses the interaction patterns between users of these Facebook pages during the 2014 Thai elections and shows that while users on the same side of the political divide frequently comment, share and like content posted by like-minded pages and individuals, interactions across the ideological divide are negligible. His paper Echo Chambers: Partisan Facebook Groups during the 2014 Thai Election demonstrates that partisan social media users hardly engage outside their networks.

4 4 James Gomez The move to social media has led some governments to tighten their control over online media discourse, such as in Cambodia and Malaysia, through amending existing laws on multimedia communications. In countries where there is no dedicated legislation on the internet, defamation laws still pose significant risks to those who post anti-government information online. Additionally, the ruling incumbents in many of these countries are beginning to expand their internet footprint by moving their election campaigns online thereby diluting their opponents early online advantage. Media Impact and Electoral Integrity Evidence from the countries surveyed in this volume suggest that if a media is not free and is seen as biased, consumers are prepared to shift and switch to alternative sources of information on the internet in order to make informed choices in casting their votes. However, as a result of a mixture of online and offline media, the election experience is no longer a common civic experience as in days past where governments enjoyed a monopoly of the mainstream media. Instead it has become more of a fragmented experience as captured by the different niche media that voters in the region now access daily, hence the challenge for the future of elections in the developing countries of Asia. There has been a rising dissatisfaction over poll results in the region, especially in Southeast Asia. In the cases surveyed, especially in Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand, the dissatisfaction over poll results continues and is likely to shape the next electoral contest. In Malaysia the dissatisfaction over poll results was largely due to alleged chicanery and cheating at the polls, gerrymandering, postal votes and a lack of independence on the part of Malaysia s Election Commission in conducting the polls. This explains why the Malaysian polls ended in dispute over alleged election irregularities. Election irregularities also featured in the case of Cambodia prompting the opposition to organize public protests contesting the poll results. In Thailand, anti-government protests that forced an inconclusive February 2014 election eventually led to a military coup in May The military cited the continuous post-election violence as its reason and placed restrictions over the mainstream media and the internet. The coup leader went on to add that necessary reforms will have be undertaken before fresh elections can be held (Jordan 2014). Here the findings of the Electoral Integrity Project based out of University of Sydney and Harvard University which studied the quality of electoral systems may be relevant. The report noted that from the countries surveyed, Southeast Asia was the weakest globally in terms of electoral integrity. It scored Cambodia and Malaysia 45.6 and 48.4 out of 100 points respectively, while the Philippines scored 58.9 (Electoral Integrity Project 2014). Although the political crisis in Thailand remains unresolved through the conduct of elections, it managed to attain a score of 61 which is close to the global average (Grömping 2014).

5 Media and Elections in Asia 5 There were no figures published for India. But the results from the 2014 Indian elections are different this time around given that the BJP won overwhelmingly. It is the first time in 30 years that India has seen a single-party government. Yet there were accusations that the Modi camp were able to influence the media through their large advertising budget of 5,000 crore Indian rupees (USD 1 Billion) (Economic and Political Weekly 2014). Given that an independent Election Commission oversaw the process, apart from individual decisions, the result has not been questioned. Nevertheless, what this means is that one has to go beyond the media perspective to consider also the electoral structure of countries for a fuller understanding of the dynamics shaping media and elections. The countries surveyed in this collection are small and varied. Nevertheless the value of the findings from this collection lies in its deliberation on the role of media and elections in the Asian context. They can help us frame developments in Indonesia in July 2014 as well as the media direction shaping up in Myanmar in the run up to its elections in References Economic and Political Weekly (2014). Anger, aspiration, apprehensions. Economic and Political Weekly, XLIX (21), May 24. Retrieved 20 May 2014, from in/editorials/anger-aspiration-apprehension.html#.u3eqowx0tik.twitter Electoral Integrity Project (2014). The expert survey of Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, Release 2. Retrieved 14 May 2014, from project4/projects/expert-survey-2/the-year-in-elections-2013 Grömping, Max (2014). Electoral integrity in Thailand. Retrieved 14 May 2014, from Jordan, Tony (2014). Thai coup leader says no timeline for return to elections, 26 May Retrieved 27 May 2014, from thai-junta-leader-dissolves-senate-to-control-lawmaking.html James Gomez Senior Research Fellow Estonian Institute of Humanities Tallinn University, Estonia jamesgomez@hotmail.com