ABSTRACT
When I first started to look seriously into the Internet in Malaysia, much of what turned out later to be pivotal events and developments had yet to occur. For example, few had any idea that the day would arrive when blogging would be a platform from which two Malaysians would be elected Members of Parliament at the 2008 General Elections — the GE08. 1 The story of new media's role in the minor opposition parties' triumph over the long-serving Barisan Nasional (National Front) government in five out of thirteen states has since been rehashed many times. Following then Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's admission that his ‘biggest mistake’ was to neglect online campaigning (Abdullah: Big mistake to ignore cyber-campaign, 2008) and the dubbing of the upset as a ‘political tsunami’ (K. S. Lim, 2008), the idea that the election results were due to the overwhelming force unleashed by new media was planted.
