54
Vee Vian Thien
The Malaysian Sociopolitical Blogosphere: A Peer-Production System
of Political Discourse
The Malaysian blogosphere mobilizes collective action effectively and avoids plunging
into a chaotic abyss of information overload by operating as a self-organizing,
networked, peer-production system of political discourse. It operates much like Wikipedia insofar as it is decentralized and dependent on social cues over market prices,
and its participants are motivated by social-psychological rewards. The blogosphere ’ s
topological features and norms organize the production of political conversations
through a three-step process of intake, fi ltration, and synthesis.
60
Intake The fi rst step of this system of production is the intake of material. Ü berblogs
function as central points of entry for information. Bloggers ’ main sources of information are online news portals, other blogs, and readers ’ e-mails. In addition, the
elected politicians among Malaysian A-list bloggers will often have fi rsthand information on parliamentary proceedings or regulatory proposals. Although Malay is the
offi cial language in Malaysia, many Malaysian A-list bloggers act as links out to
foreign blogs. These bloggers are linguistic bridges, translating English posts to Malay
and vice versa. This practice is evident in my sample of 46 of the most popular
Malaysian sociopolitical bloggers. More than half, 56.5 percent, cross-link across languages, and 32.6 percent of these blogs are themselves bilingual. Also, politician bloggers have a vested interest in maintaining multilingual blogs to reach a broader
electorate base.
Filtration The relevance of content is assessed by the posting bloggers who make
judgments congruent with the norms of topicality and responsible blogging. Accreditation by fellow bloggers is an important aspect of the fi ltration mechanism. Although
readers ultimately determine the reliability of a post for themselves, the blogosphere
assists this process through a form of peer review reliant on “ signals. ” The norms of
topicality and responsible blogging together maintain a pool of vocal and vigilant
individuals who will make their disagreement, if any, with a speaker-blogger ’ s views
known. Corroborative posts and/or the lack of contradictory posts thus form the fi rst
signal. The next two signals are general indicators of approval — listing on a blogroll
is a personal stamp of approval by the listing blogger, and hit counters form a crude
indicator of any one blog site ’ s popularity.
The blogosphere ’ s fi ltration mechanism played a visible role during the campaign
season of a 2010 federal by-election. The Hulu Selangor by-election saw “ blogwars ”
explode between BN and PR supporters over circulation of “ evidence ” that PR ’ s Muslim
candidate consumed alcohol. When the grainy photograph fi rst emerged on two
pro-BN blogs, discerning and unaffi liated sociopolitical bloggers immediately began
commenting on the awkwardness of the candidate ’ s arms in that photograph. Eventu-
Vee Vian Thien
The Malaysian Sociopolitical Blogosphere: A Peer-Production System
of Political Discourse
The Malaysian blogosphere mobilizes collective action effectively and avoids plunging
into a chaotic abyss of information overload by operating as a self-organizing,
networked, peer-production system of political discourse. It operates much like Wikipedia insofar as it is decentralized and dependent on social cues over market prices,
and its participants are motivated by social-psychological rewards. The blogosphere ’ s
topological features and norms organize the production of political conversations
through a three-step process of intake, fi ltration, and synthesis.
60
Intake The fi rst step of this system of production is the intake of material. Ü berblogs
function as central points of entry for information. Bloggers ’ main sources of information are online news portals, other blogs, and readers ’ e-mails. In addition, the
elected politicians among Malaysian A-list bloggers will often have fi rsthand information on parliamentary proceedings or regulatory proposals. Although Malay is the
offi cial language in Malaysia, many Malaysian A-list bloggers act as links out to
foreign blogs. These bloggers are linguistic bridges, translating English posts to Malay
and vice versa. This practice is evident in my sample of 46 of the most popular
Malaysian sociopolitical bloggers. More than half, 56.5 percent, cross-link across languages, and 32.6 percent of these blogs are themselves bilingual. Also, politician bloggers have a vested interest in maintaining multilingual blogs to reach a broader
electorate base.
Filtration The relevance of content is assessed by the posting bloggers who make
judgments congruent with the norms of topicality and responsible blogging. Accreditation by fellow bloggers is an important aspect of the fi ltration mechanism. Although
readers ultimately determine the reliability of a post for themselves, the blogosphere
assists this process through a form of peer review reliant on “ signals. ” The norms of
topicality and responsible blogging together maintain a pool of vocal and vigilant
individuals who will make their disagreement, if any, with a speaker-blogger ’ s views
known. Corroborative posts and/or the lack of contradictory posts thus form the fi rst
signal. The next two signals are general indicators of approval — listing on a blogroll
is a personal stamp of approval by the listing blogger, and hit counters form a crude
indicator of any one blog site ’ s popularity.
The blogosphere ’ s fi ltration mechanism played a visible role during the campaign
season of a 2010 federal by-election. The Hulu Selangor by-election saw “ blogwars ”
explode between BN and PR supporters over circulation of “ evidence ” that PR ’ s Muslim
candidate consumed alcohol. When the grainy photograph fi rst emerged on two
pro-BN blogs, discerning and unaffi liated sociopolitical bloggers immediately began
commenting on the awkwardness of the candidate ’ s arms in that photograph. Eventu-