Modeling malaysian public opinion by mining the malaysian blogosphere

Abstract

Recent confrontations between Malaysian bloggers and Malaysian authorities have called attention to the role of blogging in Malaysian political life. Tight control over the Malaysian press combined with a national encouragement of Internet activities has resulted in an embrace of blogging as an outlet for political expression. In this paper we examine the promise and difficulties of monitoring a local blogosphere from the outside, and estimate the size of the Malaysian ‘sopo’ (so-cial/political) blogosphere.