Global Courant 2023-05-31 02:00:00
KUALA LUMPUR – During Malaysia’s hotly contested general election last November, hate speech increased, according to a social media survey that found Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) and its president Hadi Awang to be the main proponents of racial rhetoric.
Although PAS is now in opposition as part of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition, it became the largest party in Malaysia’s parliament for the first time, with 43 MPs in the 222-strong chamber.
“PAS Chairman Hadi Awang and his party have been the greatest enhancers of race. Reports about race have also been found to perpetuate disinformation,” said the report published by the Center for Independent Journalism (CIJ) in collaboration with Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and University of Nottingham Malaysia.
It cited as an example Tan Sri Hadi’s TikTok allegation that the China-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP) of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliance “only used Malaysian candidates to gain voter appeal”, which attracted 2.5 million had commitments. highest of nearly 100,000 analyzed messages.
The study tracked the Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok accounts of more than 90 key political and government actors. It found that the number of “unique posts” on common hate speech topics nearly doubled to 99,563 from October 20 to November 26, compared to about 55,000 in a pilot study conducted over an extended period from August 16 to September 30.
Parliament was dissolved on October 10, leading to the start of unofficial campaigns for the November 19 vote.
The election threw out Malaysia’s first-ever hung parliament, triggering five days of intense horse trading before Datuk Seri Anwar was sworn in as leader of a coalition government comprising PH, the Umno-led Barisan Nasional (BN) and a group of East Malaysian parties .
But PN could further boost its support within Malaysia’s Muslim majority ahead of the polls to elect the governments of six of Malaysia’s 13 state governments. These are due to take place in August and are expected to see a fierce battle between the PH and PN coalitions.
Wathshlah Naidu, executive director of CIJ, said on Tuesday at the launch of the Social Media monitoring of Malaysia’s 15th general election report that the weaponization of race and religion is expected to continue in the state polls as the issue has largely failed since the general election. has been addressed.
“Before the state election… we already foresee the possibility that it will be the same story because things haven’t really stopped,” she said.
The study found that PAS chief Hadi was the only politician or influencer followed with two posts that reached “level three” severity, deemed to contain inhumane and hostile language.
The report, citing a lack of a universally agreed definition of hate speech, “adjusted its own levels” to “address the progression of speech that is bigoted, discriminatory and inhumane, and that incites violence and bodily harm.”
More than 80 percent of hate speech analyzed was level one, indicating disagreement or non-offensive language, while nearly 18 percent were level two for abusive or discriminatory language.
Only 105 messages were level three and 39 had the highest severity, involving incitement or calls for violence.
Some of these hateful messages contain misinformation, such as when PAS leaders accused DAP of being communists, while former Prime Minister PN chief Muhyiddin Yassin alleged that Jews and Christians had a secret agenda to convert and convert Muslims in Malaysia.
About two-thirds of the messages analyzed were based on race, followed by religion at about a quarter, although many of the hate speech messages often contained elements of both issues, or even other categories.
About 14 percent were royalties, while posts about gender and aimed at the LGBTQ community accounted for about half of that. Less than 4 percent of comments targeted migrants and refugees.
