The media has been a significant medium especially ever since the technology evolved and it has been assisting a lot in the development of countries. Media could be physical like newspapers, comic books, magazines and as the world develops, now we have digital media consisting online news website, social media platforms and blogs. The being of media in this community is important because it helps in establish a sense of identity for most countries and it demonstrates the distinction in the use of media and the content between different countries in different parts of the world.
Factors involving history, politics and geographic effects on why the media in a certain country is in transition and different parts of the world creates a distinctive perspective in each and every nation leading to different way of applying media and distributing messages throughout the transition of media. History plays a big role in the media changes as it was a part of the growth of a country and it is important that we know the exact history of a certain nation to understand the media content previewed for each country. The political stand of a country is also an important role in media growth understanding that there are distinctive differences in the use of media among a democratic country or a communist country because of how the nation was brought up and how they utilize their media to distribute political news. The communist news media may have a more restricted content compared to democratic countries, therefore the way they use media may be in a more traditional manner. Geographic of a country could also be one of the factors leading to the development of media because of its influence surrounding the country whether it be cultural, or religion. The media are undergoing rapid changes in Asia and elsewhere in the industrialised world, particularly due to the increase in multi-media technologies and the introduction of digital services. The ever-increasing number of publications on the media, media ownership and media control reflects the significance of media for everyday life in the modern and industrialised societies. Transition, as stated in the dictionary directly means the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another, giving the meaning of “media in transition” is the process of changing in the media landscapes whether it be in terms of technological shift or content wise or even the way of applying media. To see media in a transition is to see how it shifts from printed propagandas on newspapers to visual advertisements on Facebook where it used to be a one-way communication and now it has two where we can comment on Facebook posts. It stands for the difference in how communication expands and it demonstrates the history and political participation in global communication.
In addition, the media's roles for political and social change is the most apparent for the reason that it is very important in the process of democratization especially in the age of the Internet and technological developments. Moving from traditional print media, politics have been given a wider approach to the mass because of its easing means of using with a much faster access, which is mainly used by the younger generation leading to the reason that will be explained more throughout this whole paragraph. Steven Gan, co-founder of the news website Malaysiakini, said Malaysia had really gone through a big change ever since the site started off in 1999. He talked about how having a resonant media leads to stronger opposition and he believes that the media could guide Malaysia to a greater democracy. As stated by Chang and Ren, the Internet age has made a big impact on swaying public opinion on propagandas and that visual media is as significant as it is speeches in public spaces (Chong & Ren, 2012). A recent occurrence that demonstrates the role of media is the Government Election in Malaysia where all citizens including politicians participate in the social media discussion board throughout the whole stages of election. The debates were intense and passionate especially among the youths that shows beyond doubt the reason the opposition pulls off a shocking election win. according to the statistics of voters, the number of youth voters were 10% more than middle aged voters explaining the excessive use of social media discussing campaign issues. As suggested by Zhang and Pang, the rise of Internet has developed the use of free speech where citizens share their political expressions (Zhang & Pang, 2016). A politician, Khairy Jamaludin leading the political party Barisan National Youth fully utilizes the use of Twitter and the fact that he is somewhat admired by the mass. He uses Twitter to gain trust from the people giving them a guarantee on the changes promised if Barisan Nasional won the government election. However, a representative named Nurul Izzah from the opposition party, Pakatan Harapan, uses more of social media including a reasonable amount of election hashtags. She made use of social media to promote for their campaign and procure confidence among the people. There have also been memes circulating in the moments of the government election with satirical contents especially the pic former prime minister because of the latest fraudulent scandal involving a huge amount of money. The memes spread The role of media is somehow revolutionary which led Malaysians to a successful social movement against the corrupted government. Kumar talks about memes having a parodic content that gives power to appeal to arguments where it acts as a joke but challenges people to critique it (Kumar, 2015).
The changes in the role of media can be seen through the social movements created by people through social media like Twitter. The current Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia used Twitter to call out to the people for a victory celebration on the government election. She tweeted the place and time to assemble the party’s supporters and celebrate the victory together. To compare to the old ways of assembling people, there has to be announcements on printed newspapers which would take a much longer time to perform a rally. Another example of a social movement was the Bersih 2.0 where it was created only on Facebook. Liu suggested how social media movements could bring people together and could be a geographic bridge (Liu, 2015). For the past century, before the mass use of technologies traditional media (which only consists radio broadcasting and newspapers) is the only option to transmit its agenda to the general public. The role of media in the past was merely just to inform the general public about what was going on especially during the wars where people gather around the radio to receive information so, back then, it was all for the purpose of hearing news rather than acting towards the news. The media has gone through a dramatic change owing to the technology advancement, making it clear that media development is inevitable. The new generation could be less grateful for the technology they were born with because they did not get to witness the limitations of media technology that may or may not make a big impact to a country back then. Due to the strict regulations of developing countries, the development of traditional mass media is rather limited because of the permits and licenses required before any new business of mass media and the only way that could help the process of obtaining these permits and licences is associating with the ruling government. The people who own newspapers like Utusan Malaysia, Berita Harian, New Straits Times and The Star have been linked to the ruling government that has been ruling Malaysia since independence (Samani, Maliki, Abd.Rahim, Abd.Rahman, Mustaffa, 2015). Meaning that the reports written on the newspapers are not fully clear on the governmental issues since it has to be shown in a biased manner since these newspapers were linked to the government. Nevertheless, the media landscape now has changed with the existence of computers, broadcast and telecommunication technologies that contributes to the rise of the Internet. In 1998, Mahathir administrated a law allowing no censorship on the Internet that now has further contributed in the rise of online newspapers and that was when online newspaper companies were starting up with limited capital creating new sort of medium or product to the general public (Nain & Kim, 2004).
The future of media would be more and more digitalised than it ever was now because of the technological advancements predicted in the future. However, there are pros and cons regarding the media in the future. The pros are there would be more access to the social movements, and freedom of speech which is a great approach to a better democratic country for the only voice that matters is the voice of the people. There is no better democratic country that complies with just the needs from the people and a country that believes in revolution should allow freedom of speech among the general public. but people could be abusing the limits of freedom of speech. The younger generation would be the majority group of people that would most likely to voice out ideas and opinions which would be fair enough owing to the fact that the younger generation is believed to be the future of a country. However, there is always a limit in things and if people do not fully comprehend the consequences of public and free opinion, citizens might just get into big trouble. Things might just get more complicated when people start arguing on racial issues considering Malaysia is a multiracial country. Even now, there are a few cases of racial deprecating on social media and being that on social media is always one click away, could lead to something a whole lot bigger than just bluffs on Twitter mentions that would possibly remind people of the tragic riot incident that happened on may 13th 1969.
In conclusion, the media, in a sense would always be in transition because the history will always be changing and politics will always be more challenging as the general public expands their knowledge through the use of smartphones being just at the tip of their fingers because the Internet has been giving the new mass media a great rise. The media is a great medium for social and political movements especially in a democratic country where people could share their thoughts and opinions on a certain governmental issue for that could build a better country for the future.
Reference List
Chang, J and Ren, H. (2018) The powerful image and the imagination of power: the ‘new visual turn’ of the CPC’s propaganda strategy since its 18th National Congress in 2012, Asian Journal of Communication, 28:1, 1- 19
Zhang, W. and Pang, N. (2016). The internet and social media. In T. Lee, & K. Y. L. Tan (Eds), Change in voting: Singapore’s 2015 General Election (pp. 232-245)
Kumar, S. (2015). Contagious memes, viral videos and subversive parody: The grammar of contention on the Indian Web. International Communication Gazette, 77(3), 232-247
Liu, Y. (2015). Tweeting, re-tweeting, and commenting: microblogging and social movements in China. Asian journal of communication, 25:6, 567-583
Nain, Z., & Kim, W. L. (2004). Ownership, control and the Malaysian media. Who Owns the Media. Penang: Southbound, 249-270.
Samani, M. C., Maliki, J., Rahim, M. H. A., Rahman, M. P. A., & Mustaffa, N. (2015). The media agenda of the new and traditional media in Malaysia: Constructing realities. e-Bangi, 10(1), 48.