Online journalism is a threat to Malaysian peace and harmony

The emerging of technologies and advancement in information delivery system will keep on evolving from time to time.  The existence of Internet since 1960 started with used by academic institutions to trade information. Then the use of this platform had widely received by the medical communities stepped in for more, students, companies, random individuals, then more and more smaller networks tied in to make larger networks and it has evolved more drastically started at 1990 with the introduction of World Wide Web (www).

The Internet phenomenon had given a huge impact on journalism world. The online journalism played an important media sources Malaysia recently. Even though Malaysia is among the countries that have the slowest bandwidth speed with the highest speed only 50Mbit/s, the wide used of Internet is unstoppable here. Malaysians spend one third of their time on social networking.

October 2012

The huge numbers of users of Internet will cause some misuse of this platform. Especially evolving of media house in Malaysia now days had giving more focus in their delivering system through online. This online journalism keeps the updates faster than the offline that is newspaper, radio and television. However, it became a threat to Malaysian peace and harmony as the exchange of information through online is overwhelming and not filtered by anyone as everyone is free to post anything at anytime. Some ethics in journalism might overshadow by the craving of an individual in sharing their thought and belief.

The threat is not only by the media house, but also from the bloggers who made their blog as one of the alternative sources of information. The identity of a blogger is unknown and the writing of their posting is not filtered where they are free to write on anything above the sky. This will cause hatred among the society who might not on the same page as them. Some sensitive issues, especially racial and religious issues play a huge impact among multiethnic society in Malaysia.

The characteristic of the online journalism which is cheap and flexible made it debut is faster and easy to spread through few clicks only. The greed of sharing and becoming the first source of information without confirmation by the authorities will become rumors. The control from the interference by the government might cause distress by the users, as most of young Malaysian generations are very outspoken of the issue of freedom of speech. Therefore, the public or Internet user need to be educating of the danger of holding a wrong or unauthorized information. The spreading of wrong information will cause direct offences to the victim who involved.

It is not wrong as internet user nowadays are kind to share their thoughts but somehow the posting might offended others who know better the truth about some issues. The common and the expert might have clash of information pertaining rising issues of the nations, as recent example is the breaking news of losing MH370. The chaos will cause huge impact to the nation or even worldwide.

A good ethical online journalism is a subject that not only learned by the media practitioner, but also need to be educate to the public especially the internet user on the limit and knowing the truth before made posting or sharing some information through online.