Proceedings of World Business and Social Science Research Conference
25-25 October, 2013, Novotel Bangkok on Siam Square, Bangkok, Thailand, ISBN: 978-1-922069-33-7
Managing the Media for Political Hegemony: Mahathir and
the 1997 Financial Crisis
NA Aziz* and DA Bakar**
Mahathir was the longest serving Malaysian Premier who took office in
1981 and relinquished it in 2003. Malaysia was experiencing the most
developed period in its history during this era. One of his initiatives was the
launching (hesitatingly) of the globalization (open up) of Malaysian
economic. As he had predicted, this move had brought the country’s
economy into chaos when it was affected by the world economic crisis in
1997. He however had managed to overcome the problem with his own
unique way. His experiment with the usage of media had produced the
wanted result (i.e. to maintain his political control or hegemony in the
country). This study adopted the hegemony theory by Antonio Gramsci that
examines the media as one of the important social institutions in crisis
management and mechanism in maintaining the hegemony of the Prime
Minister. This study explored and reviewed literature on how the media had
played its role in the agenda setting of the Prime Minister hegemony during
the 1997 financial crisis. This study uses in-depth interviews with
Malaysian media practitioners, analysts and Mahathir himself to find out
the reasons for every action he had undertaken during the crisis. This
study found that Mahathir had successfully constructed and maintained his
hegemony during the crisis because of the role played by the mainstream
media. Among them were calming down sentiments of dissatisfaction
among the people by feeding them with positive statements on the national
economic performance. The media also represented financial crisis of 1997
as an outcome of Western conspiracy rather than the result of the Mahathir
mismanagement. Most (85%) of the coverage on the root cause of the
crisis blamed George Soros and other Western speculators as the main
culprit. The media had performed the function of agenda setting by acting
as an amplifier which disseminate statements repeatedly made by official
sources and those who supported the government. At the same time, the
editorials played the role of strengthening the interpretation of the news
reports. The media which directly owned by the ruling class were more
active in promoting their agenda and bias in dealing with the issues of the
financial crisis. This situation is unavoidable as the maintaining or
strengthening of Mahathir political hegemony can only be achieved when
the media are in support of the latter especially during a crisis as stated by
Antonio Gramsci’s Hegemony Theory
Keywords: Managing the Media, Political Hegemony, Financial Crisis
Field of Research: Management
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* NA Aziz, University of Malaya, Malaysia. Email:dia_yamani@yahoo.com
** Dr. DA Bakar, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. Email: darus04@yahoo.com
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