Written by Shafiaina Izhar

 

The Internet is the popular medium to reach the audience without spending a lot of money and time. The online tools such as website or social media site can reach a huge number of audiences with minimum effort to make.

However, social media is reportedly as a main platform for fraud activities. By using a corporate marketing and communication tools, fraudsters can be hijacked or getting any personal details of someone with malicious intent, for example, spamming users and misrepresenting the brand itself.

Fraudsters especially, it will make them easy to make their movements look real and credible to choose a victim and sometimes, it is hard for investors to tell the difference between fact and fiction. While these online tools may give vary benefits for investors, it also can make it as an attractive target for criminals. But, to avoid the social media fraud to happen on any sites, we need to be an educated investor.

The popular social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn have become a key tool for some investors such as in the United State (US). The investors always turn back to social media sites for some activities like seeking background information on a broker-dealer, up to date news or simply want to discuss the market with others and so forth.

What a study say about it?

A statistic shows that from April until June 2016, there are 10 top brands across different industries were identified and analyzed across social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. A total of 4,840 brands were found to be associated with these companies which are almost 19 percent were fraudulent.

Fraudsters usually have their own most common practices. By offering free gifts or discounts, or posing as customer support or software updates are the famous common practices by them.

One of the most familiar situations that we can see as their practices is when they closely imitate another brand to make fun of the company or its customers. So that victims cannot be sure either that is a fraud or not. They are motivated by a political agenda and create fraudulent accounts to attack a brand’s image.

So, fraudsters use a social media as their efforts to appear legitimate and to hiding their identity and also as the easy way to reach many people at low costs in minimum time. As a precaution step, always be wary of unsolicited offers to invest. This unsolicited sales pitch may be part of a fraudulent investment scheme.

 

Written by: Nazmi Suraya Bt Ruslan

 

 

Feminism today is portrayed as a thing of the past that many people believed that we don’t need it anymore because the society thinks that women already have the equal rights. It is actually great that women today feel like they already have the equal opportunities as men. This is all because the past feminist movements that stood out and without them, who know where we could be today. Even though the goals almost completely achieved, feminism is actually still needed and we will continue to need it until every other women in the world feel the same way. As we realize, some women may be lucky enough to feel that way, however, there are still many who can’t.

Feminism isn’t a gender issue but women fight for it because it is a humanity issue. For example, we still need feminism because we want to educate and give awareness to women on how to prevent rape, instead of telling people to stop viewing women as sex objects as women often being told that walking alone at night is dangerous which made them as an easy target for rapist. Even though the victims here are women, the society will still blame women for being alone at night or being sexy and attractive. Rape victims are often be blamed for their own rape. Then, if women can’t be alone at night, how can they go home after work? Where are their rights for being whatever they want to? Is it really fair that men only can do whatever they want? Women do not exist to be sexual beings and take the blame for what they didn’t do.

 

 

Another reason why we need feminism because people are still blind and agreed that women don’t need the equal pay for the same work as men, that they accepted the indifference and injustices in society as a way of life. Says who? This is why feminism still relevant as long as gender inequality continues to exist.

Being a feminist does not mean that women can’t speak for themselves, it means that people should realize that it isn’t about telling women what to do, it is giving them the ability and freedom to be able to choose to do whatever they want to be. The purpose here is to create a society of equality, to provide people with the freedom of choice, rather than limited choices of assumption.

 

Written by Ahmad Mubin Rasydan bin Ahmad Faiz

Herman and Chomsky’s (1988) Propaganda Model was conceptualized to explain how the dominants and elites filter the raw material of the news according to their values and agendas. In most cases, this model has been utilized successfully by the state governments to control the political economy of news production. Whilst this is true is many countries, Malaysia’s unique multiethnic population and its inequality of the distribution of wealth is challenging the status quo of such model.

Malaysia’s population in 2016 consists of around 80 different ethnic groups, comprised of three major races; 68.6% of Malay, 23.4% of Chinese and 7% of Indian. As the largest ethnic in Malaysia, the Malays have always been in the driving seat of running the government. As with other state governments, the Malaysian government has control of several newspapers to serve as a propaganda material for their agendas. However, although Chinese is the second largest ethnic group in the country, it is a well-known fact that they possess economic superiority. The great purchasing power they possess generates high level of attraction to the advertisers, developing marketing campaigns to specifically target this group.

This is where the first and second filters of the Propaganda Model comes into discussion.   Most newspapers are highly reliant on the advertising money coming in from businesses and large corporations. These corporations on the other hand, are relying on the purchasing power of the consumers, which are within the reach of the newspapers. In Malaysia, The Star, owned by a Chinese political party affiliated to the government currently has the highest readership, especially among the middle-upper class Malaysians, which comprises mostly of the Chinese ethnic group. As the advertising money continues to be pumped in by large multinational corporations, The Star’s position as the most influential news provider in Malaysia among the non-Malays is strengthened. As the size of its parent company, Star Media Group Berhad becomes more established and holds substantial stakes, the paper is obligated to deliver news slanting to the preference of its readers. Hence, news reporting in The Star newspaper can be found to be somewhat critical of the decisions and actions of the Malay-led government, especially in regards to issues pertaining the privileges of the Bumiputeras in this country.

The third filter in the Propaganda Model refers to the utilization of official sources and experts to disseminate information or agendas convincingly to the public. As mentioned earlier, unlike other newspapers which the state government has vested its interest in, The Star is getting their financial support from businesses and corporations. The reciprocity of such support is to portray news which will benefit these establishments. The Public Relations arms from these corporations will be given high importance during news reporting. In addition, social related agendas also benefitted from this filter. In the recent formation of G25, which is comprised of former high-ranking individuals with liberal ideologies, The Star was seen to be giving this group an extensive coverage. It depicted them as experts in multiethnic relations and as champions in fighting against racial discrimination, thus reflecting the newspaper’s need to appease their readers, as well as their advertisers’ needs and affiliation.

By now, it should be mentioned that the elites controlling the newspaper is aware that they are threading a thin line between propagating their agenda for equality among Malaysians and their duty to work alongside the Malay-led government. This leads us to the fourth filter of news production which involves flak. Flak refers to threats or disciplinary actions that can be administered to the newspaper as an act to ensure that agendas are carried out dutifully. The dominant owner of The Star, which is the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), understands that they could not afford to allow the newspaper to publish extreme news about the Malay-led government therefore “flakking” is an option to exert control on the editors.

The final filter talks about anti-communism. However, to make this filter more relevant to present time, we shall refer this as an ideology filter that conforms to the majority of its readers.   As an example, the implementation of Hudud has been rejected widely amongst its non-Malays readers. Therefore, The Star is constrained to discuss the issue from an alternative point of view that differs from the dominant’s beliefs and values, so that its bottom line will not be affected.

As a conclusion, even though it is proven that the Propaganda Model manages to explain the political economy of news production, the concept perhaps need to be further deliberated to suit the climate of a multiethnic country such as Malaysia.

Written by Nurhanis Hazry

Communication plays a vital role in improving the health’s awareness among society. It is impossible to disseminate and to promote healthy choices if we could not communicate. As stated by Northouse (1998), communication is an important, instrumental, powerful and purposeful process that involves a verbal and non-verbal transaction in sharing information by using a set of common rules. In health communication, communication is an effectiveness process that comes to fruition when society received and responded to the messages (Kiger, 2004).

Health communication helps in promoting the successful exchange of information among the society. It takes place in many levels, including the individual, group, organization, community and mass media. The addition of ‘health’ in communication acts as a resource that allows the health messages to be used in avoidance of any illness and viruses. This type of communication implies two-way communication that moving away from the traditional concept of one-way communication towards any multi-way communication (Kreps, 2003).

The utility of communication in health awareness campaigns need to be constantly updated for the society’s information in any public health settings. Society acts as an important determinant of the public health awareness (Schein and colleagues, 2010). Society facing challenges when they cannot be understood the health’s terms without the aid from media to clarify those terms. The reason is- citizen’s knowledge about science comes largely through mass media that not directly through scientific publications and direct involvement in science field (Corbett and Durfee, 2004: 130).

Other article written by K. Bruce Newbold and Sarah Campos (2011); Media and Social Media in Public Health Messages: A Systematic Review defined the development of communication has fundamentally changed the interaction between the society beyond the boundaries. The role of communication provides a base for the health publication to the users to read on it (Schein and colleagues, 2010). However, communication is usually blamed for the uncertainty in many health messages. The blended information about those messages will create a curious among society.

The uncertainty of health messages commonly gave a margin error in health related messages (Pielke, 2007: 55). A study was done by Stephen A. Rains and Riva Tukachinsky (2014) notes that, uncertainty occurs when the details of the situations are ambiguous, complex, unpredictable or probabilistic. The uncertainty also occurs when the information is unavailable or inconsistent and when people feel insecure in their knowledge and environment (Brashers, 2001, p.478).

In health communication, uncertainty also has been recognized as an important element (Babrow, Kasch, & Ford, 1998; Brashers, 2001; Mishel, 1988) when individuals appraise uncertainty for meaning that can motivate the attempts to manage it (Brashers, 2001, 2007; Brashers & Horgan, 2013). Here, communication plays a vital role in communicating scientific knowledge and helps in shaping the public understandings, important issues and rankings of risk. The standards of the professionals compiling risk statistics with it story-telling and affective impact is a key question for those considering the media reporting as uncertainty messages.

As a conclusion, communication is responsible in spreading the awareness and benefits of health messages among society. It also helps in clarifying the uncertainty of those messages disseminating through the health users (society). In order to promote health and reduce the ill health successfully, health communicators should design the ways and interventions by using several communication concepts for successful health promotion campaigns. The potential factors or leverage points in communication skills may influence the successful outcomes in the way of health promotion.

Written by Samiyah Nur Hasyimah

The introduction of “year of digital economy” has opened the opportunity to people in Malaysia to expand their market to worldwide through “Digital Free Trade Zone”. Through this, we can see how advertising roles has changed the media landscape in Malaysia by using online digital platform as an alternative for advertiser to advertise their product and services.

The introduction of digital advertising has transformed the media landscape from traditional media to digital advertising where the cost of digital advertisement does not cost lot of money as much as the traditional form.

Advertising through social media platform can help the advertiser to understand the current trend that happened among social networks users. Thus, it can give the benefits to advertiser to collect information of current trends on social media in order to positioning their product and brand.

Social media can also help the advertisers to analyse its users’ data behavior and interest which can lead to good amount of unique and high number of traffic using paid advertisement such as Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Instagram ads and also Youtube Ads. From that, we can conclude that digital platform does help advertising industry to expand its platform through social media.

This innovation has caught the attention of Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato Sri Haji Mohammad Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak, where the government has allocated RM162 million to Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) in order to boast Malaysian economy. This initiative has involved Jack Ma from china to play its roles as digital economy adviser for Malaysia. Thus, it opens the gate between China and Malaysia to get closer with each other in order to strengthen Malaysia-China economy.

Written by Rafidah Abdul Aziz

We may have overlooked at the existence of Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (Act 709), which is aimed at protecting individuals’ personal information from falling into the hands of irresponsible parties, especially without permission, in the context of commercial transactions. Act 709 seeks to protect personal data from being misused by those who process, store or possess personal data of other individuals. Examples of personal data are names and addresses, identity card numbers, passport numbers, health information, e-mails, photos, images in CCTV, personal file information, bank account details and credit card details.

Image courtesy of Berita Harian.

Normally, these criminals obtain our personal information through third-party applications. Most social media sites have applications that request our permission to access to our social account information before we can install them. This is one way which allows hackers to steal our personal details and commit fraud. We may unconsciously share some of our personal details through our social media accounts, giving away information such as our full names, date of birth, pet names, hobbies, hometown, office and home addresses. The fraudsters can easily manipulate our personal details to do fraudulent activities. Every time we post updates of our activities on social media, we are putting ourselves at risk for identity theft. Updating our whereabouts may also attract burglars.

Everyone should be smart about what we post or update on our profiles. We can still enjoy engaging in social media sites without jeopardizing our personal details. Here are some tips to consider in avoiding crucial information from falling into the hands of criminals:

• Be in control of the information we provide online. Never allow our personal information to be available to third-party applications.
• Never provide our identity card (IC) numbers online.
• Avoid giving out credit card details through third-party apps.
• Consider changing a few details like date of birth (on social media).
• Only invite or accept invitations from people we know. Avoid accepting strangers to our network.

Therefore, all of us must first assess the good and the bad before sharing personal data online so that the shared information will not bring any harm to our families, our friends and ourselves. Society should constantly take initiative to know and understand their rights as data owners before giving consent to other parties to access their personal information. Being cautious of how much information we share online, and how the information is used is the key to protect ourselves against fraud and identity theft.

Written by Irfarina Ahmad Nazli

Much is said about advertising’s powerful and persuasive influence over audience’s attitude and behaviour. Advertisement reflects a society’s aspirations through its socio-cultural narratives with the use of perfected images, creating a desire for people to attain such level of perfection. According to CBS News, a person is exposed to about 5,000 advertisements in a day, compared to just 500 back in the 1970’s. This revelation speaks volume about how advertisements can influence an individual’s perception.

In beauty advertisements, stereotypical depiction of women is especially extensive. The brand ‘Fair & Lovely’ for example, has been propagating fair skin as the ideal beauty and makes it as a factor to attain anything in life. Scholars view this as racism in beauty, simultaneously demoting a woman’s capabilities to solely depend on physical appearance.

This portrayal is not limited to advertisements in India alone. Countries like the United States and Australia too promote stereotypical roles of women, to which traditional roles are favoured, omitting women’s actual potential. Such phenomenon is related to Gerbner’s Cultivation Analysis, to delve on media effects.

Based on the theory, it is believed that heavy media consumption can overwhelm audiences, cultivating normative ideas on existing cultural constructs of body image and gender roles. Reinforcement of this later dominated the media, exerting a hegemonic process.

Advertisement concepts like substance, music and pictures, paralanguage, situation, co-text, intertext, participants, and function are all elements used by advertisers to influence viewers while also manipulating them into purchasing their products.

Summarizing several of Fair & Lovely’s advertisements, it can be said that the women characters in the advertisements were only able to get social approval from friends, family, and society after seeing results of fairer skin from using Fair & Lovely. It shows how women are objectified and this increased marginalization onto people of darker skin. A woman’s capabilities and talent is undermined by her skin colour.

To counter such biasness, people in India have begun to promote a campaign, just last year, called #unfairandlovely to challenge the idea that only fair skin people are considered attractive. Advocates instil the idea that dark skin too, can be beautiful. This new campaign gained BBC News’s attention and sparked a global interest, especially in social media, amassing more than 1,000 supporters whom have posted their pictures on Instagram, as well as being widely debated on Twitter and Facebook.

Image courtesy of BBC News

However, even though awareness is pushed for in this modern era, it is still difficult to eradicate such hegemonic representation of women in advertisements as constant use of it has made it become normalized. Therefore, more scholarly engagement is hoped to be able to turn the table around.

 

REFERENCES:

Jaggi, R. (2013). Women in Indian TV Advertising: The Discourse in the Fair & Lovely Ad Campaign. The Journal of Computer Science, Management & Journalism, 8(2), 181-188. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269397254_Women_in_Indian_TV_Advertising_The_Discourse_in_the_Fair_Lovely_Ad_Campaign

Johnson, C. (2006, September 17). Cutting through advertising cluster. CBS News. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cutting-through-advertising-clutter/

Pandey, G. (2016, March 12). #unfairandlovely: A new social campaign celebrates dark skin. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35783348

 

Written by Nur Hawa Shafiqa

Over the past decade, technology has transformed our social landscape. Social apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more are designed to share information. Social sites are intended to connect people; even long lost friend can meet. Not only that, the apps are also important to business organization especially to expand their business and for marketing approach – social media can reach wider audiences.

Today, over 2.5 billion people have signed up to social media for own purposes and Facebook is on top of list (Social Pilot, 2017). To date, more than 250 billion photos have been uploaded to Facebook – is it safe?

Social media users should know that sharing pictures online have several disadvantages. Today’s smart devices come with GPS technology. When users uploaded photos on social sites, it will disclose user’s location via geo-tagging. Social apps friends or anyone who can see the post (depends on users’ setting) are aware that the owner of the house is away during the posting time. This can invite anyone to break the house while the owner was not at home.

Smartphone geo-tagging is high risk enough. But there are more risks associated with photo posting that user unaware of. A photo in front of the house could reveal the address of yours. Any photo such as children’s school logo could expose, thus possibly let any *lurkers know which school your children attended to. Such pictures can also expose users’ personal information without they realized it, which can be unsafe if it falls into the wrong hands.

*lurkers – people who look at your social media and do not leave comments or messages.

A simple right-click on computer’s mouse and you can steal someone’s photos without their knowledge while screen shot are the option to steal photos for the site which users’ choose to disable downloads. Stealing photos uploaded in social media is a terrible thing. The perpetrators may have bad intention – edit the photos to be nude photo and probably sell it to the public for money.

Remember to turn on your privacy setting and control everyone who can see your post. Remove anybody from your social sites’ friend lists who you do not know well to avoid such things mentioned above happen in future.

 

Written by Fiqa Jamal

Photography during vacation is always a hot commodity on the internet where users will upload interesting pictures of their vacation spots in their social media such as Instagram. ‘Insta-worthy’ means a picture with value, meaning or beautiful enough to be uploaded to the Instagram page. Insta-worthy pictures can influence followers to track the location and thus contribute to increase tourist arrivals and generate the economy of a destination.

In the era of a borderless world, the power of images which are uploaded to social media with either simple or catchy caption together with the use of hashtag (#) cannot be denied as it can attract people to visit the location. Nowadays, social media has become one of important medium in improving the tourism industry for present and future. The trend of sharing of photos on social media builds an online community network which creates an interaction of shared interests and activities amongst internet users.

If you plan to visit Melaka during this weekend and looking for a ‘hipster’ location, you no longer have to worry about it, because Melaka is indeed a place that is ‘instagram-able’ where it is already popular in social media. Wherever you take pictures around Melaka, it is always nice to upload the photos to your Instagram feeds and spoil your followers’ eyes, and get ready to receive a lot of likes!

If you want to take pictures at the architectural site of the building, Melaka has many traditional houses that you can visit such as in Morten Village, Chitty Village and some other villages. In addition to traditional houses, you can also visit buildings known as Chinese Mansion, Peranakan House, Baba Nyonya House, Chinese building or western-inspired buildings such as Colonial & Classic and Dutch Architecture.

These buildings are not only found in the area of Melaka City, but can also be found in rural areas, such as in Alor Gajah , Merlimau, Jasin and many more around Melaka rural region. Houses around the Jonker Street, Tengkera, Brisu have unique architectural structure. So, if you go there, what you need to do is to get ready of your camera, adjust the camera angle, capture and upload the photo to Instagram because the photo of the buildings will be definitely insta-worthy!

If you want to feel like the ‘hipsters’, you can walk along the Melaka River where on the left and right, the building walls are painted with vibrant paintings and colors. If you are adventurous person, there are also 3D paintings behind a building in Jonker Walk and around Banda Hilir, you can also spot the largest murals of ‘My Kliehl Heritage’.

Not only that, for those who just want to relax in hotel, you can choose unique hotels which offer nice interior design such as classic themed hotels in Melaka. Muzaffar Hotel, rated as six stars Hotel at Ayer Keroh has a touch of traditional luxury elements in it. Next, Rosa Malacca Hotel embodies classy interior decorating elements, rustic vintage decor with an architectural element of Europe in the cafe lobby room as well as rooms. Meanwhile those who want to get to know the ‘Melaka Peranakan Culture’ can stay in Estadia Hotel. This hotel has the element of Chinese Peranakan culture in every detail including floor, interior furniture, and crockery.

Other than the attractions of tourism products, there are some other popular attractions which are ‘insta-worthy’ in Melaka such as the Sand Dune Caper in Klebang, the sunset hours of the Melaka River or the Straits of Melaka Mosque known as Masjid Selat or Masjid Terapung, The Shore Sky Tower which tourist can enjoy the beautiful scenery from the highest building in Melaka and many more.

Apart from that, there are of hipster’s cafes around Melaka which also become favorite location of tourist in and out from Melaka. Each cafés have their own theme so, the tourists can enjoy the dishes and beverages, socialize with friends and family at the same time keep their wonderful moments to upload to the Instagram to share with the followers. The popular cafés in Melaka are Street Kitchen, Fix Daily, Le Que and many more. To find the top lists of cafes in Melaka, all you can do is ask the locals or ‘google’ the place and Waze will bring you to the right location!

Walking at Jonker Street at night is best night time activity for those who love to walk. Jonker Street is a popular place where you can shop around and buy souvenirs for your family and friends as well. For who loves to enjoy car boot sales, or preloved things, and bundle, you can visit Dataran 1 Malaysia, Klebang and Porto Historia in every weekend starting from 7pm till midnight. All of the places have a lot of moments to capture, with the decoration of the place and the views of lighting and the scenery, it will make you feel happy and it will attract a lot of likes in your picture, once you upload it. Try it now!

If you look at the Instagram photos trend today, the pictures of the food and the places of interest definitely caught the attentions of the followers and even received a lot of likes. This is because hand phone camera technology or mobile photography has grown so rapidly and it is said to be able to rival, or even greater than the DSLR cameras to help Instagrammers to produce ‘Insta-worthy’ pictures.

So, with this technology advancement together with photography skills and astonishing places here, take a lot of pictures around Melaka and perhaps, it could really help to attract people to visit Melaka and contribute to the local tourism industry.