Have angry Malaysians shot themselves in the foot?
Over the past few years, with the rapid spread of social media in Malaysia - there has been an exuberance of opinions especially from the chattering classes.
The freedom of expression offered by blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on was seized upon with glee by Malaysians who have long felt that the officially sanctioned opinion was the only voice of the media.
Therefore, the democratization of opinion grew at an unprecedented pace.
However, such freedom also comes at a price. Most people are sadly unable to discern critically which information is true, false, partly both and how significant it may be.
At a benign stage, it is merely stuff like urban myths and hoaxes but it can quickly turn malignant if irresponsible people and groups purposely create pictures and articles as propaganda. Sometimes it is organised and sometimes, it can be just a loner trying to get some attention - the validation comes from the number of likes and shares on social media.
Unfortunately, as this maelstorm of information continues unabated, the easy option is to fall back on preconceived prejudices and emotions as the lens with which to view such articles and whatnot.
To that end, Malaysians (being one of the most active Facebook population in the world, apparently) have taken to disparaging everything about our country - I sometimes think it has more to do with their own frustrations because I can't seem to see any kind of critical thinking in their comments - thus would tend to discount their opinions as basically valueless.
The upshot of all this is that the majority buys into this negative thinking and ultimately, we are sucked into a vortex of lost confidence in the economy, governance and civil service.
If this continues, we will be the architect of our own destruction.
The freedom of expression offered by blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on was seized upon with glee by Malaysians who have long felt that the officially sanctioned opinion was the only voice of the media.
Therefore, the democratization of opinion grew at an unprecedented pace.
However, such freedom also comes at a price. Most people are sadly unable to discern critically which information is true, false, partly both and how significant it may be.
At a benign stage, it is merely stuff like urban myths and hoaxes but it can quickly turn malignant if irresponsible people and groups purposely create pictures and articles as propaganda. Sometimes it is organised and sometimes, it can be just a loner trying to get some attention - the validation comes from the number of likes and shares on social media.
Unfortunately, as this maelstorm of information continues unabated, the easy option is to fall back on preconceived prejudices and emotions as the lens with which to view such articles and whatnot.
To that end, Malaysians (being one of the most active Facebook population in the world, apparently) have taken to disparaging everything about our country - I sometimes think it has more to do with their own frustrations because I can't seem to see any kind of critical thinking in their comments - thus would tend to discount their opinions as basically valueless.
The upshot of all this is that the majority buys into this negative thinking and ultimately, we are sucked into a vortex of lost confidence in the economy, governance and civil service.
If this continues, we will be the architect of our own destruction.
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