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Strategic Censorship in a Hybrid Authoritarian Regime? Differential Bias in Malaysia's Online and Print Media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Jason Abbott  and
John Wagner Givens
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Abstract

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We analyze and compare three separate efforts to code bias in Malaysia's media and find strong empirical evidence of an ongoing and profound progovernment bias in coverage. We also find, however, significant variation in bias between different types of news outlets. While Malay and Anglophone sources tended to be strongly progovernment, Chinese-language and online outlets were far more impartial. We demonstrate that both the general bias and the variation in it are largely the result of two factors: (1) government censorship and (2) ownership structures that link many major outlets to the ruling coalition. These findings provide a detailed view of the struggle for media independence in a less-than-democratic regime and supply insight into media bias across both authoritarian and democratic regimes in Asia, as well as outside it.

Keywords

censorshipnew mediaelectionsMalaysiaelectoral authoritarianismnewspaperspolitical bias
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , December 2015 , pp. 455 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by the East Asia Institute 

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