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Big Data Campaigning 119

data is thus in part because their electoral dominance was seriously challenged
in 2008 and 2013, hence they needed to use di erent strategies to win people’s
support in 2018.
e question then becomes: how useful are social media and online content
in providing information and insights that BN did not already have through
their own vast infrastructure of government-obtained data? Much of BN’s
new-media communications election tactics have been reactionary rather than
visionary, and they often lag behind Pakatan Harapan in introducing new-
media campaign innovations. For example, after the success of bloggers in the
2004 election, BN decided to invest more in them for the following election,
in 2008—but by then, social media had arrived and new-media campaigning
had moved on from blogging. By 2013, BN had entered the realm of social-
media campaigning, having seen its impact in 2008, but as Tun Faisal, a key
gure in BN’s online cyber-campaigning, admitted, ‘In 2013 we did not have
people involved in strategic communication. Response times were long. It took
half a day or one day to answer, in comparison to [2018], it takes only half
an hour [to respond online]. Now every government department has a small
[cyber] unit that can at least give a quick response. Before we were struggling’
(Tun Faisal, personal interview, Kuala Lumpur, February 2018).
BN’s 2018 communications strategy was to be less ‘reactive’ to what
Pakatan Harapan was undertaking and to try to compete on a level-playing
eld, indeed, even to ‘win’ online cyber-battles. As UMNO Youth’s Khairul
Azwan told the Malay Mail, ‘In the past, we failed to utilise the richness of
the data. We are rich in data, but we didn’t use it then. Maybe that time, data
analytics consultants didn’t exist then. Even this one consultant who came to
see me—he said “Azwan, you just give me all the data—telephone number, IC,
addresses, names. e rest we’ll do it for you, what we need is just the personal
details”’ (Boo 2017).
BN campaigners grappled with the question of whether social-media
analytics are more reliable than BN’s tried-and-tested on-the-ground
information gathering. International consultants claiming to be specialists in
online campaigning had previously tried to sell Najib their services (Tapsell
2013b) but in 2018, Najib wanted to keep up with Pakatan Harapan in
establishing new campaign techniques. He knew he needed to do more in
online space if the result was going to be better for BN than GE13’s, which
was his ultimate aim.
In the midst of the GE14 campaign, the Cambridge Analytica (CA)
scandal broke internationally, making headlines worldwide. CA stated on their
website they ‘supported Barisan Nasional (BN) in Kedah state with a targeted

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