e-lifesl: Ceramah

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Ceramah

I've voted in at least 3 or 4 elections so far. (Right, now you know my age!)

In the first two experience, I, and I guess same as everyone else, was very much indifferent. The opposition wasn't strong and everyone didn't think there's a need or rather chance to change things.

Internet access was limited. There were no smart phones. There were no you tubes. No twitter. No Facebook.

I believe the whole social media and internet landscape erupted in 2006-7. Twitter, Facebook, Blogs became one of the main information sources for various matters, politics inclusive.

Still, during the 2008 elections, I didn't pay much attention to political news. There wasn't much sharing back then. I wasn't into you tube viewing either.
Mainstream media was still pretty much the main exposure, for me at least. I didn't bother about attending talks (ceramah) either.

BUT. I did change my choice of vote. Not much discussion about it, I decided to 'try'to vote for a change. And apparently, everyone else (many) did the same. Hence, in 2008 a political tsunami happened in Malaysia.

Only after the elections, a friend told me that throughout the campaign season people were very supportive in attending ceramahs (talks/ diagous) by the opposition. Youtube was flooded with video clips of huge crowd rallying for the speakers, I was told.

The opposition took full advantage of the momentum created in 2008 and continued to ride on the internet and social media platform for the next five years. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Live stream became a very important source of information.

More and more people were exposed to issues that we've never pay attention to before ..simply because no one was given access to share in mainstream media.

This time around, almost everyone I know had attended at least one live ceramah. Our facebook feed is of course flooded with video clipsof ceramahs around the country and many other information.

So, as mentioned in previous post..me too was caught up watching ceramah via you tube videos.

And thanks to technology..we can even watch direct from the TV.

So, being a 'blogger' I've gotta have at least one post with live ceramah pictures, kan?

This is considered the smaller version relative to those with bigger names attending.
Still...look at the crowd! This is just a portion of them.
Many more sitting at bus stops. By the side walks. etc.