Your truly was having lunch @ Bangsar the other day and was walking towards BV when I was stooped by two ladies. Initially I brushed them off, thinking that they were soliciting funds of some sort of charity organisation. Then they told me that they're doing a piece on whether the internet & SMS had influenced the recent general election. Being intrigued and seeing whether they would skewed the response from 'a man on the street' I decided to participate. This was the piece as published on NST Sunday 16 March 2008. They took my pics but didn't use it.
WHILE some thought it annoying, others welcomed the flood of SMSes that “beeped” throughout the election period.
In addition to this “new” source of news, they also relentlessly surfed the Internet for “unbiased” news.Cecilia Anthony Das, 33, was one of the thousands who clicked through various political websites, hoping to learn more about the March 8 elections.
“I sat in front of my computer for as long as 14 hours a day, since nomination day. I would start as early as 9am and only stop at 11pm. I do read the newspapers but I don’t rely on them 100 per cent. I read a lot of political articles on the Internet, but I had already decided who to vote for long before switching on my computer,” said the lawyer.
“Although I received hundreds of SMSes throughout this election period, I was doubtful about their authenticity, especially since most were jokes and rumours. However, they did make you think.”
Sharizal Shamuri, 34, said the Internet provided unbiased reports on political matters before, during and even after polling day.
“The alternative media definitely affected the general election this year.
“The public got to view the situation of the country from their homes.
“I lost count of the SMSes I received. I read each one of them but some of them were not credible. They were sent just to stir things up,” said the engineer from Kuala Lumpur.
Das and Sharizal joined thousands of Malaysians who were surfing the Net to gobble up news and information about the general election, especially on polling day and the following day.
For instance, the New Straits Times website received 970,000 visits from midnight on election day to midnight the following day.
A spokesman for Jaring, the internet service provider, said the NST traffic increased threefold from 30 megabits-per-second (mbps) (the total information flow over a given time) on normal days to 96 mbps during the election weekend.
He added that traffic related to polling, which included registration and results, increased by more than nine times during the announcement of the results compared to the previous week.
Incoming access from overseas users also doubled.
A spokesman for Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) said the highest Internet traffic recorded on election day was from the central areas of the Klang Valley.
And particularly so from Brickfields, Cyberjaya, Kelana Jaya, Wangsa Maju, Klang and Putrajaya.
“Internet users in the central areas alone utilised 17gb (gigabyte) of internet bandwidth. The highest Internet traffic was recorded around 4pm,” she said.
Mobile phone operators too saw an increase in SMS traffic on election day.
A spokesman for Maxis said the increase in voice and SMS traffic on March 8 came close to matching traditional high-traffic seasonal events such as New Year’s eve —the busiest day for voice and SMS traffic.
“Our SMS traffic increased by 31 per cent and voice calls by 27 per cent on polling day, compared to a normal day.
“SMS-based news alert services were also popular, with a large number of customers signing up for election updates and results.” Maxis, which has a subscriber base of over 9 million, serviced 600,000 customers who accessed the Election Commission (EC) link from their mobile phones.
This data service enabled customers to check on the contesting parties in their voting area and polling centre locations, through a link which connected clients to the online EC website.
The Maxis spokesman added that although this service was also available during the 2004 general election, only 500,000 subscribers took advantage of it then.
Celcom saw an increase of 0.5 per cent for average daily SM usage during the election period from Feb 24 to March 8.
A spokesman for Digi said: “We noticed an average increment of five per cent for SMS traffic leading up to voting day and a 15 per cent increase on polling day, compared to with normal day.”
