Loh, Benjamin Y. H. and Somiah, Vilashini and Ali, Sarah (2022) Shame and shamelessness: Changing discourses in Najib Razak’s social media campaign. SEARCH, 14 (3). 41 – 57. ISSN 2229-872X,
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
After his political fall, former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has industriously worked to reinvent his public persona to regain political mileage. His campaign, “Malu Apa, Bossku?” (What is there to be ashamed about, my boss?), has allowed Najib to refashion himself as an everyman, a rebranding which resonated with and garnered support from certain segments of society, particularly younger Malay-Muslim supporters. While it is tempting to draw parallels with other right-wing authoritarian leaders, we observe that what Najib did is different. By “misappropriating” his public shame in the wake of the 1MDB sovereign fund scandal and his political losses in 2018’s 14th General Election, he has achieved a certain degree of success through his campaign, albeit by subverting his original political messaging. By utilizing a critical discourse analysis of Najib’s social media output, this paper proposes a theory for assessing the effects of subverting shame to rehabilitate the image of a disgraced politician. This was achieved through the humanizing of Najib’s public persona to make him more relatable to working class Malays, utilizing social media to drum up and amplify public support, and misappropriating shame as a shield from criticism and weapon against his political foes. By reframing his corruption charges as baseless slander, he draws similarities with the same negative stereotypes associated with urban Malays and a means to subvert political shame commonly associated with corruption. Through the strategic and targeted use of social media, this has resulted in remaking Najib as an influential voice in Malaysian politics where his popularity rivals that of the two recent sitting Prime Ministers. © SEARCH Journal 2022.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Funders: | None |
| Additional Information: | Cited by: 0 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Digital demagogues; Najib Razak; Political shame; Populism; Social media campaigns |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences > Gender Studies Programme |
| Depositing User: | Ms. Juhaida Abd Rahim |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Nov 2023 05:13 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Dec 2023 01:34 |
| URI: | http://eprints.um.edu.my/id/eprint/44050 |
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