Did TikTok Bring Young Malaysian Voters to the Polls? – The Diplomat

On November 5, Muhyiddin Yassin launched a TikTok video that racked up 4 million views in a single day. The chief of Malaysia’s Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition is an old-school politician whose followers name him “abah,” that means father. However Muhyiddin has a Bernie Sanders-like attraction amongst younger conservatives. Within the video, the 75-year-old breaks out a couple of dad dance strikes to the hit rap single “Swipe” whereas swiping left on the symbols of rivals within the race. “Wow Abah energy…” learn one of many 17,000 feedback beneath the video.

Malaysia’s latest normal election was one for the file books. Voter turnout hit an all-time excessive. Almost 15 million residents solid their ballots, a 20 p.c leap over the earlier normal election. Voters below the age of 21, newly enfranchised by a constitutional modification, flocked to the polls. The youth surge probably propelled Malaysia’s raucous democracy into uncharted waters, giving the nation its first hung parliament.

Did TikTok play a job?

PN surprised political analysts by successful 73 seats. Muhyiddin was a number one contender for prime minister within the days after the election. However the coalition, which ran on a nationalist and Islamist platform, couldn’t cobble collectively the 112 seats required to type a authorities. PN was the principal beneficiary of what some media shops known as the “inexperienced tsunami,” or Islamic vote. The Malaysian Islamic Get together (PAS), a companion within the coalition, greater than doubled its seat tally to 49, changing into the one largest occasion in Malaysia’s parliament.

Francis Hutchinson, senior fellow and coordinator of the Malaysia Research Program on the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, advised The Straits Instances, that “what took us abruptly . . . was the extent of that wave. It actually was loads greater than we thought.” The constitutional change that lowered the voting age to 18 and introduced 6 million new voters to the polls reworked the demographics of the voting inhabitants and pushed the voters to the best of heart. “These new voters in Malaysia usually are not essentially extra liberal, much less pushed by identification politics or keen to demand change. The younger skew extra in the direction of Malay and indigenous teams than the remainder of the inhabitants, due to differing birthrates, and are continuously conservative,” defined Bloomberg columnist Clara Ferreira Marques.

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In a post-election press convention, Muhyiddin mentioned his coalition’s sturdy displaying was primarily as a result of participation of first-time voters.  PAS is standard with Malay youth regardless of their aim of imposing strict Islamic legal guidelines and codes of conduct. One among its youth leaders warned that Western-style concert events invited “the wrath of Allah.” Nonetheless, PAS wanted to workforce up with a extra average political determine like Muhyiddin to win seats in parliament. The PN chief dancing to a rap single could not have happy the fundamentalists however he seems to have scored with younger conservatives.

PN’s TikTok outreach to new voters paid off on election day. “It activated them and pushed them out to vote in droves, leading to substantial victory margins for the Nationwide Alliance,” James Chai, a visiting fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, advised Nikkei Asia.  Sofia Hayati Yusoff, a lecturer on the Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia’s Division of Communication, surveyed first-time voters and located that “candidates and events that succeeded in influencing the younger voters have been people who campaigned by way of TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube…they used numerous approaches together with leisure by incorporating the newest songs into their campaigns.”

The short-form video internet hosting app from Beijing-based ByteDance has skilled meteoric progress in Malaysia during the last two years. “TikTok is a brand new ‘constituency’ chased by many politicians; it’s akin to a parliamentary seat with no bodily boundaries,” wrote Mohd Faizal Musa, a visiting fellow on the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Musa performed fieldwork in Malay heartland constituencies and located that new voters look to TikTok as their first, and generally the one supply of stories on politics. At 4 million, the entire variety of customers is small in comparison with different markets. However Malaysia is the highest video-consuming nation in Southeast Asia and one in all TikTok’s fastest-growing markets.

In contrast to Fb, TikTok doesn’t permit political promoting. That hasn’t prevented the app from changing into a platform for antisemitism and conspiracy theories. In mid-November, Muhyiddin made unsubstantiated accusations that the rival multiethnic Pakatan Harapan alliance was colluding with “teams of Jews and Christians” whose aim was to transform Malay Muslims. The video of the speech was posted on PN’s Fb web page. However shorter clips utilizing loaded phrases like “Christianization agenda” started circulating on TikTok.  The Council of Church buildings of Malaysia known as Muhyiddin’s remarks “irresponsible.” The PN chief later claimed the TikTok movies took his phrases out of context.

One other instance of how to not use TikTok got here from 97-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister. In his video, Mahathir launched a diatribe towards Muhyiddin that started with the phrases: “Who’s the traitor?” “Get Relaxation Sir. Please,” wrote one TikTok person, expressing a well-liked sentiment. Mahathir misplaced his long-held constituency, forfeiting his deposit. The Langkawi seat went to a PN candidate who hammered house a easy message: exit and vote.