State, Society and Information Technology in Asia

Alterity Between Online and Offline Politics

Alan Chong, Faizal Bin Yahya

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472443793
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317050285
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Many maintain that the arrival of computers networked across sovereign borders and physical barriers is a liberating force that will produce a global dialogue of liberal hues but this book argues that this dominant paradigm needs to be supplemented by the perspective of alterity in the impact of Information Technology in different regions. Local experts draw upon a range of Asian cases to demonstrate how alterity, defined here as a condition of privileging the hitherto marginal and subterranean aspects of a capitalist world order through the capabilities of information and communications technologies, offers an alternative to the paradigm of inevitable material advances and political liberalization. Calling attention to the unique social and political uses being made of IT in Asia in the service of offline and online causes predominantly filtered by pre-existing social milieus the contributors examine the multiple dimensions of Asian differences in the sociology and politics of IT and show how present trends suggest that advanced electronic media will not necessarily be embraced in a smooth, unilinear fashion throughout Asia. This book will appeal to any reader interested in the nexus between society and IT in Asia.

PART I

Social Politics of IT

Chapter 1

National Contexts and the Negotiation of Islamic Internet Identity by Southeast Asian Undergraduate Students

Nasya Bahfen

Introduction

The phenomenon of blogs by Muslims in Singapore, the publication of information and news for the consumption of Muslim audiences in Jakarta, the online calls for reformasi amongst Muslims in Kuala Lumpur and the proliferation of website forums run by Muslims in Melbourne and Sydney are examples of how members of Islamic communities use Internet technology in the negotiation of their religious identity and alterity. The embracing of the Internet in Southeast Asia and Australia by these Islamic communities reflects both the fluid nature of religious identity as an ongoing process (Baumann and Gingrich, 2004; Peek, 2005) and the dependence of alterity on relationships with both other human beings and technology (Latour and Venn, 2002). Alterity can be seen in the effects of offline political, social and cultural processes on their online communication, through the construction of imagined Muslim communities and in the output of news and information received by Muslim audiences online.

This chapter outlines some of the author’s research into Internet usage by Muslim tertiary students in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. It looks at whether such usage reflects or is reliant on offline political processes – specifically, whether the exploration of Islamic identity and community among these Muslim students varies because of the religious and media environments evident in each country, including:

1. the nature of the state,

2. the politico-legal position of Islam and its adherents,

3. the political economy of the Internet, and

4. the nature of Islam as a national social movement.

On the one hand, these factors reflect national cultures that frame the boundaries of meanings available in identity formation, negotiation and transformation. On the other hand the Internet allows a transnational flow of perspectives and interpretations that facilitates the articulation of a wider Islamic identity (or range of identities) that goes over and beyond the nation-state. The broad finding of this research is that while the nature of Internet technology use in South East Asia does not share the overtly democratizing or empowering characteristics noted in its use in the Arab Spring (Al-Momani, 2011; Chokoshvili, 2011) the Internet plays a role in facilitating the construction of a shared sense of Muslim identity within nation states, and across some of the borders of these nation-states, helping the young Muslim students who use it in the knowledge and practice of their faith. Moreover, the relation of the State to Islam as a social reality, and the State’s relation to the Internet as a communication environment, interact to produce a highly politicized context for the exploration and constitution of Islamic community, for young Muslims in this region. These themes emerged after taking into account the questions about Islam that have increased since the September 11 attacks in the United States of America, as well as the significant amount of news coverage devoted to people and incidents related to Islam.

Identity and Southeast Asia’s Online Public Sphere

Working definitions of identity stress its fluidity and multidimensional nature, speaking of identity as the defining of a person or group of people based on social subjectivity (Baumann and Gingrich, 2004) and taking into account factors such as group affiliation, sense of self, and social status whether perceived or real (Peek, 2005). Lim (2004) believes that through the formation of alternative social projects, Internet use can be linked to communication and construction of identity, such as in the case of Indonesia where technology played a documented role in a change in that country’s power relations. Religion and its relationship to identity is framed differently according to whether a specific religious community is part of a dominant or minority population: the role of religion plays a larger part in the formation of group identity in instances where that group is comprised of migrants or minorities (Zine, 2008; Ng, 2002). It is through constant communication and relationships with others (both other human beings, and an ‘other’ in the form of technology) that it becomes difficult to define identity on an individual basis – a meaning to which Latour and Venn (2002) ascribe notions of alteration or alterity.

The development of technology and the use of online media has made possible the negotiation of religious identity through an active online public sphere, in which discussion takes place about issues of faith, practice, and interfaith relationships. For instance, for Jewish communities the Internet has provided an opportunity to address the middle east conflict with Arab youth (Yablon, 2007). Lerner (2008) found communities of Orthodox and Haredi Jews use of the Internet spanned religious, communal, personal, and educational purposes including the maintaining of web sites for theological and social information, and that the online presence of these communities reflected the breadth of Jewish religious diversity. The negotiated use of the Internet has also been observed among female members of ultra-Orthodox Jews for whom the medium is officially frowned upon as a carrier of secular values (Livio and Weinblatt, 2007).

The intersection of Islam and the Internet has given rise to a global e-ummah – a phrase referencing the ‘global village’ (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967) used (not exclusively) by McLuhan to describe a future where the main barriers to human communication – the severities of time and distance – could be altered, and the word ‘ummah’ referring to followers of the Prophet Muhammad (i.e., Muslim communities). For religious minorities such as British Muslims, the Internet quickly became an important communication tool for the expression of Islamic identity (Bunt, 1999). Members of young Muslim minorities in Western, non-Muslim countries such as the United States use the Internet to engage in the formation of Islamic community and identity on the basis of visibility, individual choice, transnationalism and social ethics (Schmidt, 2004). Young people in both Muslim majority countries and members of Muslim diasporas are adept at Internet communication and use, and mediate their religious identity and practice online, in the process of obtaining both spiritual and material aims (Echchaibi, 2009).

It has often been suggested that the Internet is a manifestation of McLuhan’s predictions (Van der Laan, 2009; Hodge, 2003) in that it enables people to talk within international arenas, businesses to reach markets across geographical boundaries, and movements to expand above national or local frameworks. Perhaps most importantly, it demonstrates a process of alterity by allowing entire societies to begin a process of redefinition and engagement, through new modes of communication – thus fulfilling McLuhan’s assertion that society was evolving from the timely and methodical linear projection of culture by books and newspapers of the print media era, to a world where the impact of fragmented and instantaneous output of electronic media could be received, literally, at the click of a button; and consolidating Anderson’s concept of imagined communities (Anderson, 1991) where a ‘nation’ is imagined by the users of media because of the impossibility of experiencing it in real time and space.

Studies on societal perceptions of religious communities through the media have focused on newspapers (for example, Ahmad, 2006; and Leth, 2005) or television (for example, Cañas, 2008; Miladi, 2008; Banaji and Al-Ghabban, 2006; Buhle, 2006; and Stratton, 2005), or comparative content and textual analyses of media coverage of Islam or Muslims – for example, Martin and Phelan (2002)’s research on the coverage of Islam by five US based TV networks (CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX). The research that has looked at the portrayal and self-representation of Muslims online has focused on Islamic communities outside of Asia, such as Europe and the United States (Echchaibi, 2009; Schmidt, 2004; Bunt, 1999). By contrast this chapter focuses on the alterity present in comparing the use of online communication among Muslim students in Southeast Asia, against the backdrop of the relative offline social and political positions that Islam holds in each national situation.

National Contexts

Each of the four countries or societies studied has a unique set of circumstances with regards to the size of its Muslim population, the levels of freedom in which its media operates, and the information technology and infrastructure available to its citizens.

Australia is the home of a slowly consolidating Muslim culture that is the result of a nascent Islamic community comprised of both émigré Muslims and converts. Its members engage in the practice of their faith online to build networks, form and maintain relationships, and spread and consume news and views in an alternative Islamo-public sphere. Australia can be said to operate under a libertarian media environment under which freedom of speech is seen as a vital feature of a functioning democracy, and the media according to this system is seen as a marketplace of ideas in which anything can be published or broadcast for supply to media consumers (Sani, 2005). With first world infrastructure and information technologies available to this Islamic population, the Internet is also used to support the working, educational and social aspirations of particularly younger Australian Muslims – a trend that is observable in Australian society as a whole (Madden and Savage, 2000).

Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, but its modern history is one of overwhelmingly pluralistic national identity encompassing multiple faith histories. Throughout its modern history political and social upheaval combined to alter its media policies and the environment its media (including the Internet) operated in. The collapse of the New Order regime which dominated the Indonesian political landscape for 30 years resulted in a slew of new publications and broadcasting outlets, while surviving older ones were able to enjoy a new environment of media freedom (Eng, 1998). Internet and email played a role in Indonesia’s media revolution, proving to be a turning point for the different ethnic and religious groups who became the users of the new medium. The freer post-Suharto media environment also saw the explosion of political tabloids, some of which had an Islamic orientation and explored the relationships between ‘reformasi’ (the reform movement) and Islam (Tornquist, 2000). Internet practice in Indonesia is marked by its use as a form of alternative media through its contribution to Indonesia’s public sphere, but there are gender and economic dimensions with its use given that the country was the hardest hit by the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 and took the longest to recover. While the cost of home Internet access is prohibitive to most Indonesian families, public Internet kiosks (‘warnet’), universities, wireless hotspots at malls, and workplaces all provide access to users who are predominantly members of the young urbanized population. The digital divide and lack of infrastructure prevents rural Muslim and poorer Indonesians from being able to access the Internet (Hill and Sen, 2002). Indonesia’s Islam is pluralistic, and the theological interpretations of various groups establish online presences.

Like Indonesia, Malaysia has a majority Muslim population and minorities of other faith groups. But Malaysia is economically more advanced, with policymakers explicit in declaring entry to the first world as one of the country’s development goals (Mahathir, 1999; Barlow, 1997). Malaysian Internet usage reflects an online manifestation of the country’s diverse racial composition, and the promotion and support of the Internet from government levels for a computer-literate society. Malaysia’s population appears to have embraced the government’s push for technology-driven development, with large numbers of Malaysians taking up Internet access of whom the overwhelming majority are young people below the age of 30 (Hashim and Yusof, 1999). However, Malaysian media operates in a restricted environment, and the use of the Internet by political activists and opposition parties signal it as a source of alternative media (Gan, 2002). Blogs and websites are actively used as a source of independent, non-government-sanctioned news about opposition party policies and critical of the ruling party (Holmes and Grieco, 2001). At the same time, young Malaysians use the Internet for business and social purposes (for example specific social network sites. The Malaysian government therefore finds itself juggling two different but critically important goals: the need for technology-led economic development and the importance of a vibrant, flourishing and free Malaysian Internet environment.

Singapore is perhaps the most ‘wired’ country out of the four studied; economically stable and advanced, its information technology infrastructure is used by its citizens and supported by its government (Kalathil, 2003). Its citizens enjoy high rates of education, home ownership and employment, in addition to an affluent standard of living. However, Singapore’s media environment is tightly controlled and offers little space for genuine debate, allowing the Internet to fulfill the role of maintenance of a public sphere (George, 2003). The Internet gave Singaporean underground activism an outlet for the publication of views considered too subversive for the mainstream newspapers and broadcasters. The Singaporean government has attempted to control the publishing opportunities the Internet offered (Wang, 1999), for example through including the Internet in regulatory mechanisms for traditional media. Although Muslims in Singapore comprise the biggest minority (and a politically strategic one) at 16 per cent of the country’s population, socioeconomically Singapore’s Muslim minority are lacking in representation at the professional level. This disparity has implications for the future of the Malay Muslim community in Singapore, often described as becoming an underclass (Lai, 2003).

Data Sources and Methodology

With Internet usage dominated predominantly by young people in all four countries studied, the material used as the basis for the research also reflected a youth bias. An online survey involving respondents from Australia and Southeast Asia was used as the source of data for this chapter. The respondents were Muslim tertiary students recruited through campus Muslim student organizations. It was proposed that four offline political and social parameters constrained and directed Internet use by these young Muslim students (the nature of the state, the position of Islam and Muslims, the political economy of the Internet, and the nature of Islam as a national social movement). The research methods adopted seek to test out whether these parameters are determinant in the way suggested, and how variations country by country affect the way in which the Internet is used.

Surveys administered online have much appeal to social science researchers. Sourcing respondents via email postings and requesting responses through an Internet survey results in faster turnaround time; permits easier facilitation of international respondents; allows instantaneous recording of data; negates the chance of respondents being affected by interviewer bias; and offers the ease of self-administration of the survey. Online surveys are appealing because of ‘the power of self-administration and interactivity on the one hand, and the advantages of speed and massive reductions in cost over interviewer-administered surveys on the other’ (Couper, Kapteyn, Schonlau and Winter, 2007). Granello and Wheaton (2004) cite a faster response time, lower cost, and ease of data entry as some of the advantages of engaging survey respondents online. However, an online survey’s main limitation is that the method contains inherent difficulties in obtaining a representative sample. In addition, the possibility of low response rates comprises a second limitation with this research methodology. The online survey is therefore a double-edged sword: it offers advantages and links to the topic of Muslim Internet users, but it has limitations.

The survey respondents represented a very specific sub-community of Muslims in Australia and the three Southeast Asian countries that were the focus of the research: those who identified as ‘Muslim’ with no reference to whether they were Shi’a or Sunni, and who were members of Muslim student organizations at universities in the countries studied. Although Muslims comprise of two main sects (and several schools of thought within each) in practice, university Muslim student organizations will not tend to identify as, for example, a ‘Hanbali Sunni Muslim Student Society’. Therefore in this survey the category of ‘Muslim’ is treated as all-inclusive, in a targeted sample size that was used for several reasons. Young people and students are at the front line where early adaptation of new technology is concerned (Clark, Frith, and Demi, 2004; Jones, 2002) and this holds true in the countries whose Islamic populations are the focus of the research – Australia (Kennedy, Judd, Churchward, Gray, and Krause, 2008), Indonesia (Lim, 2004; Suryani, 2007), Malaysia (Bahfen, 2008) and Singapore (Cheong, 2008). In addition, the Islamic communities in two of those countries (Australia and Singapore) are minority populations. As Islam grows in popularity in predominantly non-Muslim majority nation-states (Abbas, 2007; Haniff, 2003; Smith, 2002) there have ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction State, Society and Information Technology in Asia: Alterity between Online and Offline Politics
• Part I Social Politics of IT
• Part II Governmental Steering and Policy Alterity
• Index