New media and civil society : a study of Native Customary Rights (NCR) Land and Community-based Organisations (CBOs) in Sarawak, Malaysia

Civil society generally refers to a sphere where individuals exercise their freedom and rights through voluntary, independent associations. Spurred by world political events, the discourse of civil society shifted to a democratising mission against the tyranny of the state. It was also during the 1980s in Malaysia, middle-class non-governmental organisations (NGOs) blossomed and advocated for human rights issues such as feminism, labour and environment. In the late 1990s, the Internet was hailed as the platform to widen the public sphere in the oppressive environment of media in Malaysia, especially its broadcasting industry. The following two decades witnessed how websites, blogs and social media became the staple platform to influence public opinion especially before general elections.This thesis explores the relationship between civil society and new media using the study of native customary rights (NCR) land community-based organisations (CBOs) in Sarawak, Malaysia. Sarawak, the largest state of the Bornean Island, formed the Federation of Malaysia with Sabah in 1963 bound by an agreement that secured their oil royalty and native status as Bumiputra (prince of the soil). Sarawak is rich with natural resources, flora, fauna and cultural heritage with over 27 ethnic groups residing on the land. However, over the years, Sarawak lost much of its assets due to illegal deforestation and native land grabbing. Since the 1970s, environmental groups and activists have fought hard to reinstate the definition of NCR against state-given provisional leases (PLs) awarded to logging and palm oil manufacturing companies.This research uses the analytical framework from Italian social theorist Antonio Gramsci’s notion of civil society to understand the potential of new media in expanding the NCR land advocacy in Sarawak. Gramsci sees civil society as an arena of struggles between ruling and ruled classes to achieve hegemony, referring to cultural domination by shaping consent. To Gramsci, this consensus has to be constantly maintained through superstructural institutions such as religion, education, media and tourism. Therefore, civil society is the complex sphere where the state exerts its authority without having to resort to military forces, unless the hegemony is broken. The current state of literature suggests that the contribution of new media to Malaysian political changes is more to do with instantaneous online activities and rarely related to ongoing organising processes. Academic research studies about native customary land in Sarawak are largely technical, focused on geological mapping and land laws. By taking on the Gramscian framework, this thesis rejects the liberal paradigm that defines civil society as an autonomous sphere that unanimously aims for the common good, participated in by rational individuals. There is more to explore beyond the celebratory claims of freedom brought about by NGOs and new media. Characterising civil society as a complex arena of conflicting interests and actors is a more realistic way to understand the CBOs’ empowerment efforts related to Sarawakian subalterns and their interests. Interviews with the CBOs personnel and web-based analysis of their online platforms showed deep-seated distrust not only toward the state and new communication technologies, but among NGOs, indigenous ethnic groups, and churches. The Gramscian civil society framework allows the research to synthesise the potentials of new media in the CBOs’ organising activities as separate yet interrelated entities against the background of the lower status of Sarawak indigenous people. The research further contributes insights into the sturdy trenches of civil society that protect the state – officially sanctioned media systems, education, religion and national identities. By way of conclusion, the research suggests that the CBOs should consolidate their advocacy and venture into the site of hegemony to establish and normalise their cultural image

The jurisprudence of labour and industrial laws in Malaysia: conservatism or activism in court judgements?

The area of judicial activism in labour and industrial jurisprudence is not a widely undertaken or debated area of law in Malaysia. Judicial activism as opposed to conservatism often depends on decisions pronounced by competent courts dealing with labour and industrial matters. There are decisions which strictly abide by precedential authority and there are decisions which deal with more flexible intrusions into legislative authority. The research problem is that majority of the resolutions made at the labour court or industrial court in Malaysia are more prone towards conservatism rather than activism. The research objective is to inquire whether such decisions in turn affect an employer and employee relationship in a social justice context. It is to be noted that Malaysia is a signatory to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which sets minimum standards to be adhered by each country in governing its labour and industrial laws. The research was undertaken for a detailed study of statutes and law cases related to labour and industrial matters in Malaysia to determine whether the judiciary is indeed favourable to conservatism. To this end, analysing statutory provisions such as the Employment Act 1955 and Industrial Relations Act 1967 as interpreted through cases in the labour court, industrial court and civil court gave an end picture of the research objective. Neither could we deny nor be unaware of the influence of colonial laws of England on our jurisprudence which to date has remained more conservative compared to the American and Indian judicial systems. The importance of this research is to enable more just labour and industrial law practices for the ultimate good of social justice and perhaps a reformulation of these laws. The research findings indicated that there was a lack of judicial activism in Malaysia with an inclination towards conservatism. With this finding, recommendations were made in important areas of labour and industrial laws in order to encourage amendments, introduction of new legislations by the legislature and strengthening the judicial decisions by the judiciary

Probabilistic model checking multi-agent behaviors in dispersion games using counter abstraction

Accurate analysis of the stochastic dynamics of multi-agent system is important but challenging. Probabilistic model checking, a formal technique for analysing a system which exhibits stochastic behaviors, can be a natural solution to analyse multi-agent systems. In this paper, we investigate this problem in the context of dispersion games focusing on two strategies: basic simple strategy (BSS) and extended simple strategies (ESS). We model the system using discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC) and reduce the state space of the models by applying counter abstraction technique. Two important properties of the system are considered: convergence and convergence rate. We show that these kinds of properties can be automatically analysed and verified using probabilistic model checking techniques. Better understanding of the dynamics of the strategies can be obtained compared with empirical evaluations in previous work. Through the analysis, we are able to demonstrate that probabilistic model checking technique is applicable, and indeed useful for automatic analysis and verification of multi-agent dynamics.No Full Tex

Detecting Zero-day Polymorphic Worms with Jaccard Similarity Algorithm

Zero-day polymorphic worms pose a serious threat to the security of Mobile systems and Internet infrastructure. In many cases, it is difficult to detect worm attacks at an early stage. There is typically little or no time to develop a well-constructed solution during such a worm outbreak. This is because the worms act only to spread from node to node and they bring security concerns to everyone using Internet via any static or mobile node. No system is safe from an aggressive worm crisis. However, many of the characteristics of a worm can be used to defeat it, including its predictable behavior and shared signatures. In this paper, we propose an efficient signature generation method based on string similarity algorithms to generate signatures for Zero-day polymorphic worms. Then, these signatures are practically applied to an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to prevent the network from such attacks. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed approach compared to other existing mechanisms