BN urged to improve cyber strategy
An academic says the ruling coalition is still lagging in the perception war.
Athi Shankar, FMT
Barisan Nasional needs to beef up its cyber team to beat Pakatan Rakyat in the game of shaping public opinion, a political analyst has suggested.
Sivamurugan Pandian, an associate professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia, said social media proved to be the decisive battleground in the campaign for the 13th general election, adding that Pakatan had the upper hand.
“BN surely lagged behind in social media like portal mails, tweets, Facebook, blogs and YouTube,” he said.
He cautioned BN against overdependence on the conventional mainstream media and warned that it would face big problems in the next election if it failed to improve on its social media networking and strategies.
“It’s time for BN to learn to battle out in social media,” he said.
He acknowledged that BN had improved in its cyber strategies since the 2008 election, but not well enough to beat Pakatan in the game.
“BN needs to be more on the offensive,” he said.
To illustrate the skill of Pakatan cyber troopers, he cited their treatment of the controversy surrounding Perkasa vice-president Zulkifli Noordin, who was BN’s defeated candidate for the Shah Alam parliamentary seat.
He said those troopers effectively played up an old video recording of Zulkifli insulting Indians and Hindus in a religious discourse.
He noted that the video was already online when Zulkifli was still a PKR member but the troopers had skilfully used it to create the impression that BN was in the habit on nurturing racism.
Consequently, he added, the Zulkifli factor was a major cause of BN’s loss of Indian votes in Selangor and other urban areas.
