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114 Ross Tapsell

Opposition parties have long utilised new media to enhance their
campaigns. e restricted and partisan nature of mainstream media has meant
that Pakatan Harapan parties and gures have had to adapt swiftly to new
communications strategies in order to get their message across. In many ways
they have been highly successful. In 2008, then-Prime Minister Abdullah
Badawi famously said ‘we lost the internet war’ of GE12 (Malaysiakini 2008),
while in 2013, Najib declared to urban campaigners that GE13 would be ‘the
social media election’ (Free Malaysia Today 2013). Social-media campaigning
has been an essential part of the strategy of the Coalition for Clean and Fair
Elections (Bersih), which holds rallies to call for free and fair elections in the
country. Each time its opponents adopted a new tactic to campaign more
openly, the Malaysian government found ways to harden its regime and crack
down on the various ways the internet could upstage their own messages
(Tapsell 2013a). It is in this context that some Pakatan Harapan gures turned
to big data campaigning as a new communications strategy (or set of strategies)
that could potentially assist them in winning the election campaign—strategies
that they knew the government had yet to regulate tightly.
But big data campaigning is di erent because it is not only about pushing
information out, but also about gathering information in. Previous new-media
innovations Pakatan Harapan utilised successfully centred largely around
disseminating messages to audiences in ways to usurp government control of
the message. Big data campaigning allows parties to gather more information
about voters, to then target them with their political messages. Fahmi Fadzil,
who has been an integral part of PKR’s new-media campaigning since 2013,
explains how big data extends the new-media techniques Pakatan Harapan
used previously: ‘ ere is a general consensus that we can’t rely on previous
measurements of voter sentiment. It [big data] might help gauge voter interest.
Social media has helped us reach a wider audience, but at the same time might
help us target the audience that we need to focus on’ (Fahmi Fadzil, personal
interview, Kuala Lumpur, February 2018).
In an electoral-authoritarian regime, the ruling power has a vast
infrastructure at its command, of state-linked or friendly telecommunications
companies, polling data, intelligence reports (including from police and
army intelligence), and much more. In addition, it has signi cant funds to
pay for local face-to-face polling. Big data allows the opposition the kind of
information-gathering that has previously been the realm of the ruling power.
Big data companies with access to online and social-media content can be
utilised to level the playing eld. ose with the best algorithms and campaign
strategy for targeting swing voters can win the election.

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