Page 138 - Towards_a_New_Malaysia_The_2018_Election_and_Its_6146371_(z-lib.org)

Big Data Campaigning 123

were discussed and debated in the international media in the aftermath of the
Cambridge Analytica scandal ( e Guardian 2018). I do not wish to repeat
these arguments here, other than to say that the issues they raise around tighter
regulation of social-media companies remain highly relevant in Malaysia,
as well. Here I wish to focus on the Malaysian context, in the hope that a
more detailed analysis of a Southeast Asian country, from empirical research
throughout an election campaign, can add to the broader literature of big data
and democracies.

Monetizing Big Data
Money is central to any election campaign. As online campaigning has become
more prominent and in uential, companies are now selling themselves as
having a winning formula to catapult their client to victory. As Iskandar of
PAS acknowledged,
ere are millions of [pieces of] information on voters, and voter interests.
All that requires money. A lot of folks [big data companies] come and ask if
we want to hire them on or not. During an election there are a lot of people
who can make money. But it is important. You need to be in step with what is
going on in IT.
(Interview, Iskandar, Shah Alam, February 2018)
us, even the traditionalist, conservative party PAS, known for spreading
messages through mosques and ceramah, knows the importance of keeping up
with other parties to hire big data professionals.
ere are two main concerns with regard to nancing big data companies.
e rst is whether smaller parties with minimal campaign funds have less
ability to get their message out than they did prior to the arrival of big data
companies. Social media have proven to be a highly impactful way for grassroots
communities to challenge powerful political and business elites. In the digital
era, the institutions who can a ord to access data and pay big digital media
conglomerates like Google, Facebook, and Twitter will be far more likely to be
business and political elites than grassroots communities or smaller political
parties. Grassroots activists simply cannot a ord to fund further promotion
of their causes online. Facebook’s response to the CA scandal was to reduce
content in users’ newsfeeds from advertising, brands, and political groups. In
its place, Facebook said, the company would return to its original concept,
which was to prioritise content in newsfeeds that came from family and friends
(Chaykowski 2018). Malaysian opposition parties claimed the result of this

This content downloaded from 139.80.253.0 on Fri, 06 Nov 2020 04:22:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms