"Us" Versus "Them": An Ideological Battle for Electorates on Political YouTube Videos in the 2016 Sarawak State Election.

• Author: Lian, Hah Foong
• Position: Report

Online videos are becoming a common feature in political campaigning with the ascendancy of YouTube as a platform to be a potentially effective election tool. Posting videos on YouTube requires no technical knowledge and enables users to publish and share video content with a wide range of audiences. (1) According to the US-based Pew Research Center, YouTube, which was launched in 2005, was one of the world's most visited social media platforms in 2015. (2) News organizations, politicians and those in the music industry were found to be among three of the largest communities that utilized YouTube to share and distribute various materials.

YouTube was an important tool for political campaigning during the Malaysian general elections of 2008 and 2013 in which the ruling coalition Barisan Nasional (BN) lost its traditional two-thirds majority in Parliament. (3) The new media is said to have levelled the playing field for the opposition in electoral politics. (4)

In Sarawak, East Malaysia, YouTube videos were a popular choice for the competing parties to reach out to the voting public in the state's 11th election on 7 May 2016, which saw the state ruling coalition, Sarawak BN, win 72 out of the 82 seats contested while the opposition parties won the remaining 10 seats. For the opposition parties, the tight control of the mainstream media by the BN ruling coalition parties rendered online media a significant alternative platform to connect with voters and party supporters. Moreover, several days after the dissolution of the state assembly on 11 April 2016, the Sarawak government had barred some key opposition leaders based in Peninsula Malaysia from entering the state for the duration of the election. (5) The Internet provided opposition leaders with a platform to engage with voters in Sarawak. YouTube videos of public rallies organized by the opposition parties, and the live streaming of fiery speeches delivered by banned opposition politicians, were used to expand their influence among voters in the run-up to the state election.

Major BN-affiliated political parties in Sarawak such as the Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP) and Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (United Bumiputera Heritage Party) also used the Internet to connect with voters in similar ways. (6) This is unsurprising given that studies have demonstrated the popularity of online videos in Malaysia. In 2016, Alexa Internet ranked YouTube as the second most utilized online tool in Malaysia. (7) A survey of 1,000 Malaysians conducted by TNS Research and Google Malaysia in 2015 found that Malaysians spent an average of 80 minutes per session watching YouTube videos on mobile devices. (8) Although the survey findings referred to an increase in the use of YouTube videos for advertising purposes, the statistics also pointed to the potential of this online medium as a political campaign tool.

Although surveys record a rapid expansion in the use of YouTube among Malaysians, it is necessary to point out that the popular use of the Internet does not apply to the Sarawak and Sabah experience due to the wide digital divide between the two East Malaysian states and those in Peninsula or West Malaysia. Sarawak is predominantly rural, and Internet access is limited to major urban areas such as Kuching, Sibu and Miri. In 2015, statistics showed that the percentage of households with access to personal computers, laptops and tablets in Sarawak was lower than the national average of 22 per cent, 53 per cent and 34 per cent, respectively. (9) In 2016, statistics on household broadband penetration revealed that Sarawak's Internet access rate stood at 53 per cent when compared with more urbanized cities such as Kuala Lumpur (99.9 per cent), Penang (87.9 per cent) and Johor (87.2 per cent). (10) However, despite the low Internet penetration rate in Sarawak, major political parties contesting the 2016 state election used YouTube as an online platform to mobilize voters.

YouTube videos, in the form of music, satirical and promotional videos, were created and posted by the opposition and BN-affiliated political parties as an integral part of their campaign strategies. Employing Stuart Hall's notion of representation, (11) this article focuses on texts and images that were used in the production of the online videos to interpret the messages that were being aimed at voters. It is the contention of this study that the YouTube videos were utilized by both parties as an ideological tool to construct "local heroes" and "foreign villains" in an attempt to gain support at the ballot boxes. The online videos posted by BN-affiliated parties constructed the late Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem (12) and other state BN leaders as "local heroes" who could be entrusted to protect and preserve the interests of Sarawakians, while the peninsula-based opposition parties and the federal government were portrayed as "foreign others" which had to be defeated. (13) The videos utilized and reinforced Sarawak nationalism (14) in the battle for voter support. The opposition-created videos framed both the Sarawak state and federal BN as responsible for the hardships of rural life in Sarawak. More importantly, both the BN and opposition parties commonly employed state nationalism as an ideology to garner electoral support by vilifying Putrajaya, the federal administrative capital of Malaysia, as the "foreign other". The ideological use of the online platform is a reminder of the ongoing demand in Sarawak for greater state autonomy from the federal government, as promulgated through the Sarawak for Sarawakians slogan that was endorsed by both the BN and opposition parties during their campaigns. (15)

The Political History and Cultural Background of Sarawak

A brief history of Sarawak is relevant here to help readers understand state-federal relations. This section will highlight the incorporation of Sarawak into Malaysia, and tensions in state-federal relations between Sarawak and Peninsula Malaysia, including the stark differences in the socio-cultural and political facets of Sarawak in relation to West Malaysia.

At the end of British colonial rule, Sarawak became one of two states on Borneo Island to merge with independent Malaya to form the Federation of Malaysia in September 1963. Sarawak joined the Federation after the state had successfully negotiated an 18-point agreement which was enshrined in the Malaysia Agreement 1963. (16) The agreement provided Sarawak with a high degree of autonomy in matters concerning, inter alia, immigration, religion, language and the special position of indigenous races and education. (17) Nevertheless, despite the promise of autonomy, relations between Sarawak and the federal government have been fraught with tensions since 1963. (18)

One of the most important tension-generating incidents was the perceived political interference by Kuala Lumpur in the dismissal of Sarawak's first Chief Minister Stephen Kalong Ningkan in 1966. The removal of the Sarawak National Party (SNAP) leader was not only seen as a manifestation of tensions in state-federal relations but also a representation of a "crisis of identity" among state leaders and the people. (19) The incident occurred because Ningkan was promoting regionalism or Sarawak nationalism which contradicted the federal agenda described by the SUPP as "Malayan imperialism". (20) The removal of Ningkan was also interpreted as part of Kuala Lumpur's agenda to maintain stability and harmony in Sarawak by imposing the consociational model of power-sharing along racial lines. (21)

Culturally, Sarawak is quite different to Peninsula Malaysia in terms of its ethnic composition. The ethnic composition of Peninsula Malaysia--a Malay majority followed by ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indians--is very different from Sarawak. (22) The dominant ethnic group in Sarawak is the indigenous population, made up mainly of Iban, Bidayuh, Melanau and Orang Ulu. In 2010, the population of Sarawak was 2.47 million, with Ibans forming the majority, followed by ethnic Chinese and Malays. (23) In 2013, Malays surpassed ethnic Chinese as the second most populous ethnic group in Sarawak, though Ibans remained the majority. (24)

Ibans fall within the category of Dayak people (or more precisely Land Dayaks) who are the non-Muslim indigenous people of Borneo, while the Bidayuh are known as Sea Dayaks. (25) For decades, the Dayaks had been classified as "others" in government official forms and it was only in 2015 that Putrajaya recognized the use of the term "Dayak" to refer to non-Malay Bumiputera (sons of the soil) or the non-Muslim indigenous peoples of Sarawak. (26) In matters of religion, Ibans or Dayaks are predominantly Christians, and hence, often termed as Bumiputera Christians. The pattern of religious practices in Sarawak has strained state-federal relations. In 2008 it became a point of contention when the Home Ministry banned the use of the Arabic word "Allah" which means "God" according to the Bahasa Malaysia edition of Herald, a Catholic Church publication that is aimed at Malay-speaking Christians in Sabah and Sarawak. (27) Following years of legal suits and counter-suits filed by the Catholic Church against the Home Ministry's decision, the Federal Court finally upheld the government's decision in June 2014. (28) However, the apex court decision did not gain traction with the state authorities in Sarawak. Months before the Federal Court's decision, the late Chief Minister Adenan Satem reassured Christians that there was no law in Sarawak which prevented them from using the word "Allah". (29)

Although ethnicity and religion are the mainstay of political tensions between Sarawak and Peninsula Malaysia, inter-ethnic competition among the state's ethnic groups adds another layer of complexity to Sarawak's ethno-political environment. For example, Ibans were unhappy with Malay hegemony in the state and complained of "Melanau...