The internet’s political impact and the penetration/ participation paradox in Malaysia and Singapore

It verges on tautology to say that internet use depends on internet availability. Obviously, the former will not occur in the absence of the latter. However, it is quite another thing to claim that there is a simple linear relationship between availability and use. It is conceivable that, once the diffusion of a communication technology has reached a certain critical threshold, every additional unit of that technology does not generate improved use, either quantitatively or qualitatively. The use to which any given level of technology is put may depend on other, non-technological factors. Accordingly, a country with lower penetration levels of a medium may, paradoxically, exhibit superior utilization of that medium than a country with higher penetration. This proposition is illustrated by comparing two neighbouring countries in Asia that implemented early and aggressive programmes to roll out public access to the internet, Malaysia and Singapore. These two states introduced the internet to their populations at about the same time, and within broadly similar regulatory regimes. Malaysia, being the larger and less wealthy of the two countries, has predictably achieved significantly lower levels of internet penetration than Singapore. In 2000, Singapore had 32 internet users and 48 personal computers per 100 inhabitants, while Malaysia had 17 and 9, respectively. In absolute terms, Malaysia was five times as populous as Singapore but had only three times the number of internet users: 4 million versus 1.3 million (ITU, 2001, 2002). In 2002, Harvard University’s Center for International Development released the results of a study ranking 75 countries’ preparedness and potential to participate in a networked world. The ‘Networked Readiness Index’ placed