Tuesday, March 15, 2011

ONLINE JOURNALISM IS A THREAT TO MALAYSIAN PEACE AND HARMONY ...



The use of new media is growing like mushrooms after rain where its use is widespread. Internet also has no independent observers in which the users browse the website without limitation. Now, we often hear about the social problems caused by this new medium. Pictures and videos on the internet that show things that should not be shown publicly such as the issues of violence, and racism is not particularly suitable for citizens and new generation who are excited to explore the internet, particularly social networks like blog, social networking, youtube and others.

Online journalism is defined as the reporting of facts produced and distributed via the Internet (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_journalism). A website (also spelled Web site) is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed relative to a common Uniform Resource Locator (URL), often consisting of only the domain name, or the IP address, and the root path in an Internet Protocol (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website). The interaction between a group of people who share a common interest; Using social contacts to network; Using internet's network groups (such as Facebook and Twitter) to network and communicate between consumers and businesses (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/social_networking).

In the new media, people were allowed to express their feeling through website that is especially for bloggers such as the ‘blogspot’ and ‘wordpress’. In here they can freely express their feelings and opinion without any restriction. What is blog, blog is basically a place where someone or people express their opinion, or feeling towards something.

Now, the most important problems affecting the new media are spreading widely on defamation in blogs. Blogs contains the elements of defamation that cause a lot of misunderstanding, which occurs among people today. This happens because the internet has no editor or gatekeeper and internet users are free to write whatever they want on the internet. Blogger name Raja Petra Kamarudin is an example how online journalism especially blog can mislead its readers. He is the famous editor or Malaysian Today website. It is a website that offers Malaysia alternative news besides from the mainstream media.

            The main reason for the website to well accept is because it offers the readers some inside news or story in Malaysia that the main stream media did not dare to publish due to their attachment with the government. It is a new way for readers and plus with the advancement in the technology where people are lazy to buy newspapers, especially the young generation that are tech oriented. Nowadays, we can see the growing of blog and article in online about HINDRAF, GANYANG MALAYSIA and more to create treat in the community. HINDRAF as an illegal organisation was made following with facts and evidence that showed HINDRAF had and was being used for unlawful purposes and posed a threat to public order and morality.

This could be proven by existence of HINDRAF blog and website. The official HINDRAF website at http://www.policewatchmalaysia.com has been allowed by Malaysian ISPs again, after a brief ban. However this site is constantly plagued by faults and downtime. In response to the ban, sites such as http://www.hindraf.org, http://www.myhindraf.com were spawned to maintain awareness of this movement, in addition to the many blogs available. Another HINDRAF blog that can easier open is HINDRAF Makkal Sakthi. This group has over the last two years developed a broader political program to preserve and to push for equal rights and opportunities for the minority Indians. It has been successful in continuing to focus attention on the racist aspects of the Malaysian Government policies.

            Racisms are the one of the treat that would make Malaysian disagreement with others because Malaysia has variety of religion and racist. A lot of racisms were post in the internet and people easily get influence by an article or blog.

            On social networking, they create a group about racism and critics each other such as in facebook. As examples, Indonesian creates their own page on facebook about GANYANG MALAYSIA. This group will initiate each other to hatred Malaysia using social networking. A lot of blog by GANYANG MALAYSIA that critics about Malaysia due to this thing, relations between Indonesia and Malaysia will be trouble in the future.

The website also talks about how the government being bias to one race and neglect the other races in Malaysia. With this kind of article, the readers that read the article will feel that they are being insult by the government. Little by little this article could spark racial tension between the races in Malaysia. The website is good because it gives the readers some information that we cannot get from the main stream media. Through the website we can see clearly that the intention of the writer sometimes can mislead its readers to go against the ruler.

Another example of blog misleading is the case of Altantuya Shaaribuu, the Mongolian woman who was killed in Puncak Alam was the first ever sensitive issue that is connecting our Prime Minister to the murder of Altantuya Shaaribuu being published in the blogs where there are irresponsible parties who spread the story.

This kind of website is harmful and giving bad image to our country as it can spark racial harmony and government stability. By right, this issue and facts should not be released to the public because it jeopardizes and put our country’s name at stake and of legitimacy cannot be identified. Sadly, this issue is not the only one as there are many more things like this happening on the internet.

Basically the website is a site for the blogger to argue what the government does. It is also an indicator for foreign country that our country is not peace and harmony like what our Prime Minister always said. This bad review will literally, giving a bad impression on Malaysian as general. Some website also purposely talks about bad our country in their website in order to degrading our country image. They talk about everything until to the extent of the development, racial issues, and internal government problem. They talk about the ratio of races in certain workforce and if some irresponsible people could use this information to trigger racial tension among Malaysian.

            Among the most surprising people are videos featuring porn treatment school students who had been uploaded to the internet. Symptoms will be more contagious among people, especially youth who was easy to be affected. There are thousands of pornographic sites on the internet that can be easily found and can be a detrimental factor to letting children use the internet. This is perhaps the biggest threat related to the children’s mental life. It is a very serious issue concerning the internet.

Then is the theft of personal information. If you use the internet, you may be facing grave danger as your personal information such as name, address, credit card number and many more can be accessed by other culprits to make your problems worse. Example such as a 17-year-old was allegedly raped at knife-point by her 20 year-old friend, whom she befriended on the social networking site Facebook at Dubai.

            As a conclusion, it is denied able that something has pro and cons. So it is the same goes with online journalism. The bad thing about online journalism is that it can influence the society to believe in something that is not sure its truth. Which at the same time affecting our country peace and harmony.

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