BN’s media exposure drastically declines after it became the opposition

It has been over a year since Pakatan Harapan (PH) took over the government on May 9, 2018. Then, Barisan Nasional (BN) was defeated in the GE-14, ending its 61-year streak as Malaysia’s ruling coalition.

According to media intelligence, BN had high media exposure a month prior to GE-14, during the campaigning period in April 2018, appearing in over 15k articles.

While during the election month (May 2018), BN’s exposure reached its peak with almost 19k articles published on the coalition.

In the following months, the BN’s media exposure returned to normal, with about 6k to 7k articles each month. However, during the last quarter of 2018, its media exposure drastically reduced to about 4k articles each month.

The trend changed in early 2019, when the coalition received coverage in over 8,500 articles in January. Then, BN direct member Ramli Mohd Nor won the Cameron Highlands by-election. He is not only the first Orang Asli parliamentary member, he is also the first direct member of BN to be elected as a parliamentary member.

Nevertheless, BN’s media exposure started to decline in the following months, despite winning the Semenyih by-election in March and the Rantau by-election in April.

In June 2019, the coalition suffered the least media coverage in the recent times, being mentioned in just about 1,250 articles. Whereas, in August 2019, BN appeared in less than 2,000 articles.