Talking politics to the touchscreen generation

SPECIAL REPORT | Lying in her bed just before turning in for the night, Hannatul Alia Ahmad slides her finger up and down her phone screen to check out posts by some of the 239 people she follows on Instagram.

“Before sleeping every night, I like to see some beautiful stuff and also to see how other people live their lives.”

For her, Facebook has taken a back seat to Instagram. “I only open it once a week,” she said.

Twenty-two-year-old Hannatul (below) began using Facebook when she was in Form One. She then thought it was a "very cool” platform to connect with her school friends.

However, she began to move away from Facebook when she noticed she was increasingly being bombarded by advertisements.

When the 12th general election was held in 2008, Hannatul was just a Standard One student. After school, she used to sit in front of her computer surfing the blogs of friends and celebrities. At the time, smartphones were not very popular and SMSes were still the order of the day.

But since then, there has been a tremendous transformation in digital technology. Mobile data plans became more common and just about everyone is signed up to Facebook.

By the 13th general election, as winds of change blew through the whole country, political messages, too, were quickly transmitted through these new technologies.

Some political speeches even went viral on Facebook and YouTube. The borderless world had arrived.

Instagram a new trend

It is now known that by collecting and analysing their users’ data, Facebook can figure out their preferences and send targeted advertisements to them.

Like Hannatul, Puteri Nurdiyana Khir Anuar (photo), 22, also became annoyed with these messages and she too began to abandon Facebook.

“Facebook kept showing the video of Ustaz Azhar Idrus. My father loved watching those speeches and was deeply affected (by them). But I hate those things, which is why I hate Facebook!” said Puteri rolling her eyes.

Puteri is a student of Visual Arts at UiTM. Instead of Facebook, she is now addicted to Instagram by her own admission. She spends a lot of time sharing her artworks and following the accounts of some artists.

“I don’t know how many times I open my Instagram in a day. I lost count! I open it when I'm in class and also when I'm eating [...] so maybe more than 20 times in a day...