Political Blogging Phenomenon to understand Information Behaviour and Digital Technology Use

Abstract

The objective of this study is to examine political blogging, particularly in relation to electoral process in Malaysia. This study used Grounded Theory approach and content analysis method by analyzing 193 internet political blogs. The selected blogs were categorized into three main categories: the pro-government blogs, the opposition blogs and the neutral blogs. The finding reveals that the opposition parties utilized more blogs to discuss local political issues compared to the ruling parties. Both the oppositions and the ruling parties generally not refrained from attacking other political parties and saw it as a tool of campaigning. There was evidence that the popularity of certain politician was heighten because of their blog, even though many said such popularity did not contribute to vote payoff. The finding shows that 114 political blogs did not support the government and only 28 blogs supported the government. The main issues discussed by the bloggers were about the leadership of the Prime Minister. It also shows that Malay bloggers dominated the political blogs. They liked to use their pseudonyms to protect their real identities. Most of them were male and the youth were the most active. This study implies that political blog was widely used by the cyber society to share information and to speak their mind freely and openly. Therefore, more researchers should concentrate more on studying political blogging as key media of political communication especially in a multi-ethnic society. The contributions of this study include: (1) developing a holistic understanding on the mechanism of government website utilization, (2) identifying a few new theoretical concepts that were not explored in previous studies, (3) revealing that value acquisition is the essence of government website utilization, and (4) formulating a derivative conceptual model for delineating the process of information source selection.