NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

POSSIBILITIES

AND

THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICS

A CASE STUDY:

THE POLITICAL ABUSE OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

IN MALAYSIA AND SARAWAK

PART ONE:

INTRODUCTION; NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN MALAYSIA AND SARAWAK

Timeless, timeliness and timely… The today that we live in is merely a constructed from

the rooted word “time; the continued progress of existence as affecting people and things”

(Merriam, 2000). To rationalize the term new media technology, time plays a significant role in

order to grasp the fundamentals of technology, its nature and its influence over life as a whole. On

the 19th of August, 1991 an advance science and technology research and development facility

known as CERN, introduced the World Wide Web went to the world. There was no fanfare in the

global press. In fact, most people around the world didn’t even know what the Internet was”

(Raphael, 2011). The value of time and transformation evolved, changing our lives greatly and

horrendously. Time, has become void to the process of growth up to the point that the greater new

media technologies becomes, the more alarming are the threats imposed upon the utter existence

of this planet. “The progressive digitalisation of mass media and telecommunications content

begins to blur the earlier distinction between the communication of information and its processing,

as well as between people and machines” (Raphael,2011).

With the year 2020 approaching, Sarawak, which ironically still doesn’t have proper fibre

connectivity being the largest state of Malaysia, it is such a shame that Sarawak has such a smaller

imprint on implementing and benefiting from vast new media technologies available compared to

Kuala Lumpur, alone. As obvious that it may seem, Sarawak is far behind in media technology

and infrastructures, both old and new. This illustrates how the government, driven by the course of

politics throughout time have abused the potential and channel of much greatness. In terms of

exposure, education, utilization and promotion of awareness in media technology, the holistic

impact it carries is nonexistent, here in Sarawak.

Central to the point of analysis of this paper, the essay shall discuss the importance of new

media technologies, and how to identify the variables that exist in the essence of technological

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development and the evolution of media, humankind and the outcome of new media technology

through the governance of Malaysia and Sarawak. Analyzing Sarawak’s development of mass

media technologies in chorological approaches and weighing the actualization of transformation In

the so called age of digital possibilities, the paper aims to look into how the abuse of power,

misuse of authority, governmental and political innuendos have paved the interest towards

general awareness of mass communication and information technologies that should be

impediment to a holistic understanding of social hegemony, solidarity of mankind and leverage

over media technology in the 21st century, geographically here in Sarawak.

To anoint that politics have abused the importance of new media technology, mooting

upon the condition, control and capitalization of mass media in Sarawak is the opening to the

presented notion of abuse. Firstly, since the early stages of the establishment of Malaysia, Sarawak

has already had its independence, with their very own development into new media technologies

which was radio and television broadcasting. Coined as radio Sarawak, it was eventually absorbed

into being RTM as in the beginning, the only experienced management and administration of

broadcasting throughout the region was the Ministry of Broadcasting Malaysia. As mentioned,

rather then providing support and guidance, Sarawak radio was absorbed into RTM which played

the role of the national broadcast station and Sarawak up to this very day. Should there of been a

mutually benefiting relationship between Sarawak and Malaysia, having our very own

independent radio and television broadcasting company wouldn’t of been an issue. However,

RTM, Angkasapuri, ASTRO, Media Prima, all non Sarawakian media conglomerate dictate and

determine every single detail of the direction for Sarawak’s mass media technologies and content. 

Historically, Sarawakians had its first radio broadcast in 1939 where “on the 1 st of April

1939, B.B.C Empire Services successfully established Sarawak’s first radio broadcast which

started with commentaries on the races and after the first five months of operating, the contents

grew to commencing in English, Malay and Chinese on a regular basis” ( n.a, 2015). Furthermore,

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pursuant to the formation of Malaysia, “the Posts and Telegraphs Department regionalised and re-

named Posts and Telecommunication Department” (n.a, 2015). After opening Radio Malaysia in

Kuching in 1970, the future of Sarawak’s media technologies was practically in the hands of the

Malayans. Indeed, the progress and transformation upon Sarawak, from the power of media

technology was seen present, 1975 was the year television being officially introduced to Sarawak.

Continuing with further development and injections initiated by Sarawak, Radio and Television of

Malaysia boasting its 28 years of establishment, seemingly played its role to lead in terms of

media technologies for Sarawak. Having the first electronic mass media systems integrated and

implemented in Sarawak, it levitated the consciousness of the people. However, Sarawak’s

inferiority allowed RTM to exploit and abuse its responsibility in keeping Sarawak up to date with

the development of new media technologies. RTM eventually became the governing body

spearheading the dissemination of national news, enjoying funds and capitals injected from both

sides of the government. The abuse still exists until today, where the mass media technology for

Sarawak is governed by the federal government where the quality and standards provided for the

stations throughout Sarawak is practically a mockery in terms of broadcasting technologies

production principles. Subjectively, if new policies were made, maybe the mass

communication/media demise would find its intervention. However, the irony is that it is not of

the interest of the politics amongst politicians from either both sides.

 “ Today, Malaysians enjoy listening to 6 radio channels 24 hours a day in Malay, English,

Mandarin and Tamil while East Malaysians (Sabah and Sarawak) are tuning to radio

channels in their respective native languages such as Kadazan, Murut, Dusun, Bajau,

English and Mandarin via Blue Channel RTM Kota Kinabalu. Bidayuh, a dialect widely

used by Sarawakians, is the main language for Blue Channel RTM Kuching. Iban and

Kayan/Kenyah are dialects used in the Green Channel of the station while English and

Mandarin are local dialects used for the Red Channel. Except for RTM Limbang, dialects

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used to communicate with the listeners are as mentioned but Bisaya and Murut (Lun

Bawang) are also spectacular dialects used in that channel.” (RTM)

From the above excerpt, we can easily identify the lack of specification, clutters in content

and double standards in creative opportunities. It is such an abuse as well as to the masses as

where politics have led to a nationwide confusion of the importance of media principles,

information, entertainment, television, radio, mass media, digital communication and the

broadcasting industry itself. The only most definitive rationale to describe this situation is that

new media technology is tainted with bureaucracy at large. “a system of government in which

most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives”

(n.a, 2001).

Even after the millennia, there is still an absence of any transparent guideline of how RTM

operates and conducts its programmes. Even after 50 years, not only does Sarawak not have a

single broadcasting company which prioritizes the needs and purpose of Sarawak’s holistic

development, seeking employment and job opportunities in the field of media, broadcasting and

production is determined and decided by the Federal government, not Sarawak.

CASE STUDY ONE:

MEDIA LITERACY, POLITICS & POLITICIANS

In an article published on the 8 th of November 2019, the headline from malaymail.com

reads; RTM rejects Sarawak minister’s claim of unfair coverage. Excerpts from the news clip;

KUALA LUMPUR, May 8 — State broadcaster RTM today refuted a Sarawak minister’s claim

that it has been shunning Chief Minister Datuk Abang Johari Openg and state government events

in its coverage. Insisting that it has been fair in its reporting, it said in a statement today that in the

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first four months of this year, it had covered 181 activities that involved the chief minister, his

Cabinet and the state government. This was the official response from the minister of

communication, Malaysia to an allegation which if it were to occur in other countries, would have

escalated to legal claims and lawsuits as this matter touches the laws, policies and ordinances of

“media ethics, rights of access to information and other broadcasting regulations.

 Karim, in a Free Malaysia Today report, had accused Gobind of “playing politics” by

claiming that RTM would be fair in its coverage.” “Gobind should go back and learn. We

are all Malaysians. We never said we are not Malaysians. This is a federal matter but we

have RTM down here,” Karim reportedly said during the state legislative assembly sitting

on Tuesday”. (n.a, 2019) 

From Karim’s statement, clearly illustrates the frustration in that since the shift of a new

political governance, RTM has shown obvious absence in providing the coverage about Sarawak,

such as not attending press conferences, reducing TV coverages of Sarawakian politicians and

ministers nor events and highlights of Sarawak.  In short, RTM has not given adequate attention

and coverage about Sarawak. Should Sarawak had in their cabinet one who is professionally

educated in the field of mass communications and multimedia law, surely this matter could of

been taken to the court of law, with Sarawak having a basis to persecuting the acts of RTM.

However, neglect over the media knowledge amongst Sarawakians has brought Sarawak to a state

of incapability in the legal demands of fair media practise.  

In comparison to providing a purpose or a basis for media regulations and rights, to

understanding the frameworks of media governance as the official tool of propagation, social

control, it shows that even amongst the politicians and ministers, lies an obvious truth that the

importance of media was overlooked and neglected. Thus, the prolonged abuse of neglect towards

the basic studies and research of media technologies, the notions of role, power and privilege has

resulted in a feud of advantage and handicap between Malaysia and Sarawak. Ideally, should there

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have existed a proper relationship in the media industry and its development, Sarawak should have

already established the same amount of development in the film and television industry today as to

how Kuala Lumpur. 

PART TWO:

THE PROMISE OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES, IMPACT ON SOCIETY & ACT

OF NEGLECT

Today, the general public consists of collective social organisms where each generation

pool are programmed differently yet coexist in uniformity. Through hierarchy, status quo, power

and authority, the state of consciousness for mankind has either synced with the ever changing

technological demands and upgraded the quality of lifestyle or either, drowned in the limitations

of exploring the new media and becoming outdated and irrelevant to the current evolution of

media technology. It is important that we now look at society underneath the scope of generation

differences. Breaking down the social representations and identifying attributes can be easily

achieved by looking at society in these categories.

a) Children

b) Youth

c) Adults

d) Elderly 

By analyzing on how new media technologies have evolved, each category or levels of

society provide branches of information and patterns that lead to a series of notions on how

society has been affected by media technologies with and without the influence of political

interest. This is why one of the major abuses that the politicians have committed is neglecting the

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right to learn and explore the media technologies which when analysed through a study based

periodic timelines, cross industries commodities, cross intellectual differences, inventions and new

industries, provides the learned  a calculative information and data which upon evolving into big

data, mastering and competing with other countries with the most advanced media technologies

does give a strong impact competition. Cyber security and cyber intelligence is an example to

portray how proper human capital management may become a countries ultimate asset.

Digitalisation makes communication from persons easy as it is between persons. Also blurred are

the distinctions among information types: numbers, words, pictures, and sounds, and eventually

testes, odours, and possibly even sensations, all might one day be stored, processed, and

communicated in the same digital form.(Beniger, 1986)

Based on the description from Beniger in regards to digitalization, new media technologies

open up a separate series of cognitive that allow the actualization of digitalization to take place..

With Sarawak’s initiative to develop this industry, the abusive approach that has taken place is

employing the workforces that are not fully capable of executing the ultimate purpose, which is to

bring Sarawakians beyond the intellectual limitations of mass media and digital technologies.

According to Beniger, “governments as well as the private sector are increasingly aware of

the fact that the computer and the educational content industry are not only driving the

development in the education sector, but are also drivers of knowledge stocks. Beniger

considers knowledge as having economic value and may be expanded for profit in the

knowledge society and in cyberspace. (Beniger, 1986)

Neglect, in definition is a category of practical abuse. It is within these context will the

discourse of identifying the level of Malaysia’s achievement in  empowering the country with the

appeal towards technologically development and Sarawak’s responsibility to independently stride

the emancipation of Sarawakians in the entrepreneurship culture in the new media technologies

industries such as communication, PR, journalism, and entertainment.

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CASE STUDY TWO:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SARAWAK IN NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGY & MEDIA

CONTENT INDUSTRIES

Electronic media is the most important source of receiving and disseminating information because

it is fast, cheap and direct to or from the clients. Knowing the fact that being laden with too much

information creates adverse effects to Radio listeners or TV audience, an alternative of placing

information side by side with entertainment is practised. Using RTM once again as a case study,

In 1975, Radio Muzik was launched, ironically on the same year where television was introduced

to Sarawak. As the name implies, the channel allows for total entertainment in the form of songs

for listeners of all ages. To date, Sarawakian artist has never experienced a full pledged local

music industry. What more to say about benefiting economically and opportunities of a music

industry where in today’s age, the music business is worth billions of dollars. With the vast

networking channels available and multiple revenue streams for the artists and production

companies to grow are not only lucrative but inaccessible due to the abuse committed by politics

upon the development of new media technologies, in principle and practise.

The overall effect deters to the awareness amongst Sarawakians with the content industry, new

media technologies, entertainment law and intellectual rights policies that determine the reality.

The reality, in this retrospect is the notion that success in mass media, entertainment either in

music or film can only be achieved in Kuala Lumpur. There is nothing fair about that.

To better illustrate how politics have abused the development of new media technologies, let us

analyse some of the components that new media technologies have created and reflect upon where

does our common sense as Malaysians and Sarawakians may prevail in the level of consciousness

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about the new media technologies expansion since the past decades. What do know and

understand about new media technology developments.

Approaching the subject in more detail, looking at it context via tiers, may ease the comprehension

of it degree of importance. In tier one, can we intellectually discuss and explain about Virtual

reality, Quantum computer, Super processing streaming, Robotics, Synthetics Artificial

intelligence, hologram development, augmented reality and 5G connectivity to all categories of

society?

For the second tier in new media technologies, have we been exposed enough or has the

government provided enough information towards the evolution of the industrial revolution, iconic

technological discoveries such as Tesla’s wifi, image processing systems, 3D printing, 

transformative technology, E commerce, Block chains, and crypto currency? -Just to name a

few. What is the level of understanding for all categories of society in this matter? In the so called

age of digital possibilities, abuse of power, misuse of authority and of government personal

interest are impediment to develop a holistic understanding of media technology in the 21 st

century.

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CASE STUDY THREE:

POLITCS CONFLICT OF INTEREST, CYBERJAYA EFFECT AND THE HUMAN

CAPITAL

Looking at the impact of neglect from another perspective, many do not about the fact that

the success of the infamous pen drive that every individual must practically own was in fact

invented by Malaysian inventor, Mr. Pua Khein Seng, whom In 2001, together with his group,

introduced the pen drive to the world, ironically in Taiwan. Despite the product was the brainchild

of a Malaysian, deliberating on why didn’t Malaysia endorsed in this engineering phenomenon

and supported Mr. Pua Khein Seng when the pen drive was merely  ideate of creation brings us

into the context of neglect. Neglect not only in the sense of seeing forward but also in terms of

neglecting the macro and micro economics of the many potential discoveries and achievement

Malaysia can achieve with the latest of media technology. “There is no environment or support for

design engineers here in Malaysia.” said Mr. Pua. “One of my Malaysian engineers from Phison

returned home and ended up as a teacher in a Chinese school! I was shocked and thought, ‘After

all that training and re-training, he is going to just teach?’ I told him to hold on till I open up the

Phison branch in Malaysia.”

However, in retrospect to political interest, media technology as a tool of propaganda

compared to other countries, Sarawak especially lacks in standards of excellence in both in the

visual arts and relativity of a technological platform. For example, it is such a shame that with the

reach podcasts is capable of, Sarawakians are still confused about the concept, use, and format.

This can be seen by the number of podcasts available in any podcast search engines. Expanding

the discourse of political influence over the development and expansion of a digital savvy nation,

this agenda carries with it a great demand of research, development, global case studies, industry

analysis, technical and conceptual thesis, arguments and educational methodologies on different

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computer technologies, data processing concepts, cross cultural schools of thoughts in principles,

practices and methodologies of new media technologies, which the country has failed to provide

the nation with.  Ali Salman, CEO of IDEAS and author of a report entitled said: “Cyberjaya was

a grand ambition that has ultimately fallen short. Whilst it has created jobs and investment it has

not become the world leading innovation hub that was envisioned. Cyberjaya which was

introduced as a grand and ambitious vision may have introduced failure in its design.” According

to him, he stressed out that “We would like to qualify the use of the word ‘failure’ which may

seem a harsh judgement, given the number of MSC companies and presence of MNCs. It is not

denied that Cyberjaya has helped in placing Malaysia as a player in global outsourcing operations,

but obviously evaluation is always done by comparison with the announced objectives.”

 “An organic process of combining market demand with the supply of skilled labour which is

spatially concentrated, brought together through a sophisticated entrepreneurial process is critical

to success. This cannot be replaced with a top-down government directive or a vision.

Thus, what can be understood from here is that the abuse by politics towards the development of

new media technologies has already been proven with Malaysia’s Cyberjaya failure. “The spark of

entrepreneurship and risk-taking, which has defined Silicon Valley since the sixties, is not a

common sight in the Malaysian Silicon Valley. There is a lot of government everywhere in the

valley, both in the form of urban design and in the form of companies, but there is not much of a

risk-taking private venture capital and entrepreneurial culture.”

Regardless of the current situation Sarawak stands in the governance and influence over new

media technologies, it is still not too late to make prosperous change in the ICT, mass media and

digital technologies should Sarawak invest in new ventures with Silicon Valley itself. With China

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being a major global competitor in the field, knowledge exchange and skill transfers can be made

with Hwawei or OPPO. The number of companies that have succeeded are abundant today. Now,

is simply a matter of developing the strategic action plan towards achieving the required standards

and practices of successfully having new media technologies benefit Sarawak as a new industry

and as well as economy, prioritizing Sarawakians. 

CONCLUSION

To recapitulate the main points of presented arguments in this paper, firstly we must

perceive new media technology as a subject of great measure and weight. New media technology

is to be looked upon meticulously and to be interpreted with much thought and intelligence.

Simplicity is not at all of any equation to describe the essence expected for the primary component

which is the power button. Only to be switched on or turned off, to send or receive, to do and to

solve, new media technology is the evolution of mankind, science, engineering, and the a

multitudes of fields of discipline. Therefore, in conclusion to the notion of politics abusing new

media technology and how we as Malaysians and human beings may achieve progressive growth

towards getting the better half of the ongoing expansion of new media technology is through the

intervention of awareness and developing ways where the scalability of mass media, technology,

politics and governance can be measured with a new consciousness of responsibility. Media and

technology has achieved such a tremendous state of dominance, affecting the world. We, as the

masses can only do our best to ensure that humankind never loses touch with the emotional,

spiritual and caring consciousness. We created new media technologies to the point technology

itself achieved its artificial consciousness. Thus awareness, sensitivity and compassion become

our greatest assets in facing the future ahead.

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Reference

Merriam, W. (2011). Definition of Time. Retrieved fromhttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/time

N.a. (2016). The Background of RTM. Retrieved from https://www.rtm.gov.my/en/background

N.a.(2009). The History of the Pen Drive. Retrieved from

https://hornbillunleashed.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/pua-khein-seng.jpg

Raphael, C. A. (2011). History of Internet; Journal of Technoethic. University of Hull, UK.

Beniger, J. R. (1986). The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information

Society,. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Ali, S. (2018). Cyber jaya, a failure, think tank study finds. Retrieved from
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2018/07/13/cyberjaya-a-failure-think-tank-study-
finds/

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