Media With Me

Politicians around the world are benifited from utilizing the new media. This phenomenon is more and more prominent in the recent years. In UK, Prime Minister, Tony Blair launnched the first Youtube channel for Labour Party. He also uploaded his home-made video on Youtube to congratulate Sakozy for winning the French presidential election. UK Conservative Party Leader, Dave Cameron has lauched his own website: web Cameron with a lot of podcasts done by himself.  In the US, the new media are playing significant role in the 2008 presidential election. Three Democratic preidential candidates (Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards) announced thier candidacy on the internet instead of through conventional means of press conferences. The traditional media are leverging on the rise of “e-politics”. CNN, for example has organized Democratic candidates debates thorugh Youtube.

How about Hong Kong? Rikkie L.K. Yeung in hkjournal.org thinks that the progress of political use of the new media in Hong Kong seems lagging behind UK or US. However, as the people engaging in political parties is getting younger (belong to internet-sawy generation), and the internet penetration rate is getting higher in Hong Kong, more politicans are willing to explore the potential of “e-politics”. They use the new media in a variety of ways for variety of purposes, but the effect is especially well-known during special political events, like elctions. During the Chief Executive election last March, both the two candidates, Alan Leong and Donald Tsang created their blog for election campaign. Coming to the Legislative Council by-election this month, most of the seven candidates have used the blogs provided by Yahoo. Regina Ip and Anson Chan have joined the facebook gorup. Anson Chan podcasted her speech on facebook. The two ladies both recieved more than hundred of comments on the facebook. The new media allow them to have interactive dialogues with the public.

Although the candidates’ engagements in the internet have created much excitement for the election, Raymond Wong, an experienced critic on media and the Chairman of League of Social Democrats in an interview with me does not believe the romanized impact of “e-politics” in Hong Kong. He appreciated that the new media have provided more means for politician’s promotion and more platforms for the marginalized sexual and racial groups to espress their ideas. In his opinion, the target audience of a politician’s blog, for an example, is narrow and limited. Most popular blogs as such accumulate not more than several hundred thousand hits. Moreover, its impact on political results is always indirect as the new media in Hong Kong politics are mainly found with the democracy movement and opposition to government policies, like his My Radio.

Raymond Wong suggested that mass media’s impacts on political event may include to reinforce voters’ intentions, set political agenda, increase voting rate, but it cannot easily affect voters’ choices. The new media which he sees as a narrow communication would not has a more powerful political impact than those of mass media. Although the political use of the new media partly contributed to the high voting rate (52%) of the Legislative Council by-election, the temporary popularity of political use of the new media quickly disappear after the end of election.  

Although the political impact is not prominent in this stage, Raymond is not pessimistic about the opportunity of the political use of the new media. The crucial advantage of the new media is the idea of digital democracy. The digital media tools are accessible, affordable, interactive to empower individuals to participate in politics and enrich grassroots democracy despite there are still many internet restriction and  blocking in some countries. According to Raymond Wong, due to some political reasons, he can no long be the programme host of any radio stations in Hong Kong which he was used to be. The new media provide the platform for him to express his political view when all the main stream media which affraid to bare the risk of his anti-China opinions close the door for him.

Raymond Wong is like many other political bloggers, internet radio operatiors and activist journalists who are facing the challenge of funding and manpower sources. My Radio is now founded by Wong and another friend of him. He is looking forward to accumulating more audience which may allow him to find sponsors for the web site.  In this way, the web radio can be self-sustainable.