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118 Ross Tapsell

e Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), formerly part of the opposition
Pakatan Harapan but which ran independently in GE14, also used big data
techniques. PAS’s Iskandar Abdul Samad of Selangor explained: ‘We have some
sort of programme by which we can analyse what people are talking about with
regard to PAS. We can work out what we are saying and if it “clicks” with the
people, and that is very important.’ He said big data has become ‘very useful’
to know voter ‘sentiment’ and to ‘test out polices’ to see what kind of policies
people want. He said the most important aspect is being able to pro le people
by age and geographically because, ‘certain messages are only applicable to
certain groups of people—where they live, how old they are—we don’t just
send one message to everybody. You have to pick the group and which message
to send. You need to be detailed on that’ (personal interview, Shah Alam,
February 2018).
e argument here is that opposition parties have used big data companies
as a new campaign tactic that they considered essential in election campaigning
in 2018. eir use was justi ed solely by their ability to help win elections
in a system that is rigged towards the ruling party. Some Pakatan Harapan
gures I spoke with suggested that it was indeed cheaper to hire big data
companies than it was to build grassroots community campaigners and pay
regular professional polling institutes to survey voters on-the-ground. While
I was not able to compare gures, even considering that Ra zi himself put
in RM800,000 for Invoke, this argument that big data campaigning is more
cost-e ective does make sense. e larger issue, and one explored later in
this chapter, is the paradox that the opposition’s uptake of these companies
undermines their very objective: a broader democratic environment and more
open, pluralistic public sphere.

e Barisan Nasional and Big Data

A feature of any authoritarian regime is the role of surveillance in monitoring
its citizens. Being able to keep a close watch over its citizens enables a regime
to sti e dissent before it arises or to repress civil-society forces. e Barisan
Nasional’s 60-year success has long been from pursuing the politics of
patronage (Weiss 2013). Gathering precise information on constituencies and
individuals, particularly in rural constituencies, is central to this patronage-
based system. Given the intelligence networks of the police and military, and
access to public service information-gathering departments and services, there
seems little need for BN to adopt new big data campaign tactics. ey already
led Pakatan Harapan in information-gathering systems. BN’s resorting to big

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