Star Online news organised chit chat with several individual to talk about social media in Malaysia especially after the GE-13. They are lawyer Syahredzan Johan, digital strategist Niki Cheong, senior asset management analyst Kavilan Nakaswaram, and ex-private secretary to Datuk Seri Idris Jala Shahid Shayaa. The moderator is Star online news editor Martin Vengadesan.
There are eight questions asked by Martin. Only the significant questions will be included here. One of the question asked is after 2008, one of the Internet's biggest social media influences were bloggers. Since then, Facebook and Twitter have become major players. Is social media use at its peak, or will it become even more influential? Has the impact been a positive or negative one, and should people like Papagomo be able to say whatever they want with unrestricted freedom.
Zara answered the question by referring in the past. She say that restrictions upon freedom of speech were very political in nature. She did not think that anybody can be allowed to say whatever they want. The boundaries that she would support are, for example hate speech. But there must be a healthy debate regarding the restriction of freedoms, There shouldn't be a top-bottom approach where one authority decides what limitations to put on freedom of speech and then protect people from said information.
The chat was continued and this time the question asked is about the establishing of social media improved communication in Malaysian society. I kind of agreed with the statement from Niki. He say that finally, everyone has a platform to speak up. Looking back at the past there are no platform like nowadays. Today, we had blogs and everything change. People out there can voice out their opinion freely. Shahid give more information regarding the question. According to him, with social media, we need to embrace the good, the bad and the ugly. It's a polarity to be managed, not a problem to be solved. Social media encourages you to voice opinions.
Another question asked is does social media lead to a disconnect from reality. Among the answers are the problem is when people use social media as a gauge to judge something. In the context of government, GLCs etc, they don't really connect or tend to have distorted view of how social media works or why people tweet a certain way. For example, I heard from a lot from the Barisan side saying Pakatan controls social media! But no one can control social media. No one can buy it, no one can own it.
Last question asked by Star Online news is about their closing thought on their social media use and the scene in Malaysia. Their opinion are it actually takes up a lot of your time. It's good to have panels like this to have closure. Online debates don't really have closure. Syahredzan say social media, to him, is a godsend. Tweeting is not just something you do because you want people to hear you. He use it because he want to get information. Niki close the discussion or chit chat with his opinion that the magnitude of impact that social media has on the expansion of social ties is quite fantastic. Human beings are all so grounded in a physical way by geographical boundaries. You don't get new information from your bunch of friends because they're all talking about the same thing. But social media has allowed us to break free from clustering. Last time, to get information, you need to find one link. But now, this link exists in so many different forms. It's not just in an acquaintance, but in a tweet, a hashtag, a search. That whole social ties concept makes social media so fascinating.
Complete discussion can be found here http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2013/6/4/nation/13192247&sec=nation
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