Written by Syazwan Zainal
Everyone was buzzing with excitement as we headed to Perlis on Friday afternoon. We met at Subang Airport and took the plane to Kuala Perlis, eager to learn about Politics, Laws and Institutions. Being the first workshop for the National Unity Youth Fellows after our initial introduction in Kuala Lumpur in early February, everyone was looking forward to a weekend of discovery and enlightenment.
The first night was spent discussing some of the findings from the Merdeka Center for Public Opinion, presented by Ehsan Shahwahid. Some of the points raised by the surveys conducted by the Merdeka Center were, at first glance, counter-intuitive. For example, initially everyone thought that the higher the exposure of an individual to the Internet, the higher the likelihood for that individual to be open to revamping affirmative action policies in Malaysia. Interestingly, the survey established the opposite result. At first everyone puzzled over the finding. Surely, if an individual was exposed to the Internet, that individual would be perceived to be more open-minded, liberal and urbane. But after much group discussion, we felt that the main explanation for the Merdeka Center findings lay in the polarising nature of social media. During the discussion, we specified four challenges to national unity: communication and distrust amongst the different groups in Malaysia; the racialisation of policies; the increasing religiosity in public discourse; and the differing goals of different groups in Malaysia.
Everyone was buzzing with excitement as we headed to Perlis on Friday afternoon. We met at Subang Airport and took the plane to Kuala Perlis, eager to learn about Politics, Laws and Institutions. Being the first workshop for the National Unity Youth Fellows after our initial introduction in Kuala Lumpur in early February, everyone was looking forward to a weekend of discovery and enlightenment.
The first night was spent discussing some of the findings from the Merdeka Center for Public Opinion, presented by Ehsan Shahwahid. Some of the points raised by the surveys conducted by the Merdeka Center were, at first glance, counter-intuitive. For example, initially everyone thought that the higher the exposure of an individual to the Internet, the higher the likelihood for that individual to be open to revamping affirmative action policies in Malaysia. Interestingly, the survey established the opposite result. At first everyone puzzled over the finding. Surely, if an individual was exposed to the Internet, that individual would be perceived to be more open-minded, liberal and urbane. But after much group discussion, we felt that the main explanation for the Merdeka Center findings lay in the polarising nature of social media. During the discussion, we specified four challenges to national unity: communication and distrust amongst the different groups in Malaysia; the racialisation of policies; the increasing religiosity in public discourse; and the differing goals of different groups in Malaysia.