Gender and Justification in Political Scandal

Scandals are an unfortunate, but important, part of the political world. We examine how citizen perceptions of politicians involved in scandals are conditional upon two important factors: the politician’s gender and their decision to provide a justification for the scandal. Using experimental evidence, we find that justification of a scandal increases perceptions of competence for politicians, regardless of gender, but only increases perceptions of likability for women. We find, additionally, that the effect of gender is conditional on political ideology: liberals generally feel more positive toward a woman involved in a scandal, while no difference emerges for conservatives.

A Million Famines

This chapter examines how the Indian democracy faces a new challenge: hunger that kills its citizens in silence. Thanks to the public distribution system, when it is applied properly, there is some food some of the time these days. But for particularly vulnerable groups, such as tribes whose livelihoods have historically been tied to the forests that are increasingly being appropriated for mines and factories, and who now have to depend on uncertain menial work, it is still not enough. The scale of dispersed and slow-motion famine that afflicts Indian democracy should be an ethical and political scandal, but it is hardly ever an election issue. In the world’s fifth largest economy, starvation deaths sometimes do cause brief media outrage when they occur. But a conspiracy of silence by incompetent officials, ephemeral media attention, and the indifference and complacency of well-fed citizens helps to temper outrage. Avoiding words like starvation — using malnutrition instead — and hiding hunger under the garb of diseases allows India’s million famines to go untreated, debilitating the social foundations of its democracy.

MALAYSIAN NETIZENS’ PERCEPTIONS OF 1MDB: A THEMATIC ANALYSIS

Background and Purpose: This article analyses the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) political scandal as a case study to examine how an issue is discursively shaped online by netizens’ perceptions of the scandal. The study has two objectives: firstly, to explore netizens’ perceptions of 1MDB and how they reacted to the news reported based on the online exposés appearing throughout 2015. Secondly, it aims to examine whether the discourse regarding 1MDB among netizens on an online platform, The Malaysian Insider Facebook page, meets the characteristics of a practical discourse in an online context, as proposed by Jurgen Habermas. Methodology: A total of 1950 Facebook comments related to 210 1MDB articles in 2015 were analysed. The articles were linked and published by The Malaysia Insider Facebook page. The analysis was conducted using thematic analysis via NVivo software to explore the perceptions of the selected netizens about 1MDB and how the online discourse on 1MDB matched the characteristics proposed by Jurgen Habermas for practical online discourse. Findings: Four themes emerged, namely Najib as the Prime Minister, the 1MDB Debate Controversy, the Opposition position on 1MDB and the investigation of the 1MDB scandal. Based on the online discourse, it was evident that consumption of 1MDB news on Facebook led Malaysian netizens to form their own perceptions of the scandal. The emergent themes also illustrate that the online discourse met the characteristics of practical discourse suggested by Jurgen Habermas. Contributions: This empirical contribution fills a gap in the current knowledge as few studies have been conducted on the online discourse of the 1MDB political scandal among Malaysian netizens. Currently, no research is documented on the 1MDB political scandal from the netizens’ perspective other than the first author’s PhD thesis. This research is, therefore, beneficial to new media studies as researchers normally investigate or explore a specific issue when it has a conclusion; here, a risk was taken to conduct the study while 1MDB was still under investigation. Keywords: 1MDB, 2015, Najib Razak, netizens, Malaysia. Cite as: Mohd Nor, N. H., & Baharuddin, Z. (2021). Malaysian netizens’ perceptions of 1MDB: A thematic analysis. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(1), 351-372. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss1pp351-372

Political Scandal and Public Figure

Indonesian society is familiar with the terms 'public figures' and 'celebrities', but the distinction is often not understood properly. The public's interest in content that focuses on entertainment, lifestyles, and gossip, as well as the presence of a media that facilitates such content, makes the process of 'celebrating' common. This process has resulted in the private space of public figures being transformed into objects of public consumption.Scandals are often quite popularly discussed among the public, especially when their subject is a public figure. However, studies of how scandals affect the public and its political behaviour have not been widely documented. In 2018, Indonesian news media began widely covering the divorce of well-known politician Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (BTP/Ahok) from his ex-wife Veronica Tan, and this brought questions of extramarital affairs to the surface in the midst of a heated local election atmosphere. This situation was divisive, and received various public responses. Previous studies have shown that scandals tend to negatively affect popular attitudes towards the politicians involved in them. In Indonesia, scandals have been common, widely recognised by the public, but their effects are never discussed in depth. Therefore, this study, which involved around 400 respondents, seeks to provide an overview of how the Indonesian public responds to politicians involved in scandals and how such scandals affect politicians' electability. The results of this study show that scandals do affect the public's political attitude, but not in the ways suggested by existing studies.

Scandal and Malay Politics: A Question of Dignity Against Anwar Ibrahim and Azmin Ali

Political scandal has become very common in a democratic country as political rivals bid to discredit one another. An open and free media allows politicians from different sides to publicize alleged wrongdoings by their opponents. There are different scandals ranging from financial, political to moral scandals. Using dignity as a framework, this paper argues that moral or sex scandals are most effective to defeat a Malay politician in Malaysia because a section of the Malay population looks upon virtuous conduct to evaluate the capability of a leader. Specifically, this paper uses homosexual accusations against Anwar Ibrahim and Azmin Ali to show that this is the type of scandal that is convenient to bring into question their dignity. The paper concludes that after the same tactic is used over the decades, it appears that voters are reaching a saturation point, especially among middle-class Malays.

Scandal, Hypocrisy, and Resignation: How Partisanship Shapes Evaluations of Politicians’ Transgressions

Hypocrisy is a common feature of political scandal. Yet, it is unclear how individuals evaluate hypocritical misconduct differently based on a transgressing politician’s partisan identity. Using survey experiments, this article assesses how exposure to different frames of wrong doing involving actual members of congress spill over on to the evaluation of parties distinctly among co-partisans and out-partisans. I find that Republicans feel more positive towards their party after reading about the resignation of a hypocritical co-partisan politician compared to merely reading about the politician’s hypocrisy. In addition, Republicans feel warmer about their party when reading about a hypocritical versus non-hypocritical out-party transgression. However, Democrats do not change their party evaluations after being exposed to different scandal frames involving co-partisan and out-partisan politicians. This suggests that Republicans and Democrats have different attitudes towards hypocrisy and/or differently apply information about individuals when evaluating parties.