Mohd Safar Hasim

Factors affecting sustainability of internet usage among youth

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors that affect sustainability of internet usage by Malay youth in Kota Bharu, a rural town in the north east of peninsular Malaysia.Design/methodology/approach – The study used survey research for obtaining data. Some 225 respondents were sampled from the young Malay internet users in Kota Bharu, Kelantan. They were interviewed using a standard questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were used to analyse the data. The descriptive statistics included frequency, percentages, means and standard deviation while the inferential statistics included reliability test, computed means and multiple regression.Findings – From the results there is sustainability of internet usage among Malay youth. As far as factors that have positive effects on sustainability of internet usage is concerned, the results of the study showed that interpersonal and social network and perceived and realized benefits have significant positive effects on su...

Journalists’ Development Journalism Role Perceptions: Select countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa

Development journalism remains an important concept in the journalism studies literature, but it has, at the same time, suffered from a lack of empirical research. Drawing on a survey of 2598 journalists from eight South Asian, Southeast Asian, and sub-Saharan African countries, which was conducted as part of the Worlds of Journalism Study, this study assesses the importance journalists ascribe to three key development journalism roles—social intervention, national development, and educating people. It also compares these perceptions across the countries, between government- and privately owned news media in these countries, and between these countries and 19 Worlds of Journalism Study countries in Western Europe and North America, which profess to adhere to an objective and democratic press function. Findings suggest that journalists from the eight countries, across government- and privately owned media, considered development journalism important, and detached, adversarial journalism as less important. Their rating of the latter roles differed considerably from those of journalists from the 19 comparison countries. Results suggest that journalists were more likely socialized into their roles rather than being forced into the same by the heavy hand of government.

Small is Beautiful: Informatiiation Potential of Three Indian Ocean Rim Countries

This paper reviews the arguments of the Utopians and the dystopians on the current communication revolution, and makes the case that countries have no alternative but to join that revolution to compete in the world material economy. It uses a revised version of Kuo’s (1993, 1994) model to document and analyze the three main dimensions of informatization–people, infrastructure and economy–as they pertain to three relatively small Indian Ocean Rim countries–Malaysia, Mauritius and Sri Lanka. Using the backdrop of the countries constituting the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, it argues that smaller countries, as well as ‘fertile spots’ in larger countries, with high achievements on the people dimension can leapfrog into ‘cyberspatial heights’ in the global information society. Malaysia is in the process of setting up its Multimedia Super Corridor determined to implement its Vision 2020. Mauritius, with its Informatics Park set up in 1994, has the potential of beating Malaysia in mai...

Journalists in Malaysia

The typical journalist in Malaysia is a female, in her early thirties and holds a university degree in a field of journalism or communication. Of the 368 interviewed journalists, 184 were women, making for a proportion of 52.6 percent of the overall sample. On average, Malaysian journalists were 35.46 years old (s=10.84); half of the journalists were younger than 32 years. Journalists tend to be well educated: 82.8 percent of the respondents held a degree from a graduate program and 74.2 percent held a Bachelor’s degree. However, there were no journalists with a doctoral degree among the respondents, while 3.6 percent had undertaken some university studies but did not complete their studies. Of those respondents who held a university degree, a slight majority (34.0%) had not specialized in communication or journalism. Across the whole sample of Malaysian journalists, 32.8 percent had specialized in journalism, 21.3 percent had studied in another communication field, and 11.9 percent had specialized in both journalism and another communication field.