The popular microblogging platform known as Twitter has become a legitimate and frequently used communication channel in the Malaysian political arena. While the 2008 Malaysian general election was notable for the use of social media by the opposition parties during their campaigns, the 2013 general election saw a level playing field in which the Barisan Nasional coalition had quickly caught up in its use of social media. This study draws on a content analysis of election-related Twitter messages collected under the #pru13 hashtag to describe the key patterns of activity and the thematic foci of the election's coverage on this particular social media site. The dataset is collected from Twitter's public timeline from May 1to May 6, 2013. What emerged from this analysis is there are evidently intensified and amplified campaign messages polluting the #pru13 hastag from accounts that are questionable in their origin. This study adds to the literature that has questioned the predictive power of social media in an election.

The study uses socio-cognitive approach from Van Dijk (2000) to examine main headlines on newspaper front-pages of Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian during the campaigning period of Malaysian's 14th general election in 2018. For this analysis, 47 news headlines were chosen to highlight the discursive strategies used by the two dailies and how language and power were manipulated within Malaysian population. For many decades, ruling government of Barisan Nasional (BN), controlled the mass media and had justified the act as ensuring the national development and security of the country. These were obvious during general elections when the government expects the Malaysian press to help upholding the state's influence over the society. The in-depth representational analysis suggests that the headlines were written positively when the news were about 'us' and the headlines were treated in negativity when the reports were about 'them'. Thus, this confirms that the Malay-language newspapers are inclined to serve their political masters' interests so that they are able to stay in power.

Abstract:The online news media are said to have changed the understanding of the gatekeeping theory. Due to the virtually unlimited news space together with the interactivity in the online presentation of news, the Internet defies the whole conception of gatekeeping in journalism. This article seeks to examine the influence of gatekeeping forces in two influential Malaysian online news portals, MalaysiaKini and The Malaysian Insider (TMI), during the 2013 Malaysian general election. Based on the hierarchical model of news conception, this study assessed the influence of ideological gatekeeping forces on their news content. The reporting by both news portals was subjected to qualitative textual analysis. The results are triangualted with interviews with corresponding reporters and editors from MalaysiaKini and TMI. The findings show that although the reporting of MalaysiaKini and TMI is counter-ideological, the gatekeeping process remains intact. This is due to the speed factor and the requirement of the news portals to abide by the media-related laws in Malaysia.