Malaysia is an often cited example of a semi-authoritarian regime in which the Internet is seen as an important tool to counter a government-controlled media hegemony. The election results in 2008 in particular have been accredited with mobilizing voters through the use of online media and are seen as a challenge to Malaysias ethnic-based political system. In this article, however, it is argued that ethnicization, as one of the fundamentals of this system, is more complex and resistant and that, thus, simply having access to different kinds of information does not necessarily change ethnicized perceptions. Using the theoretical framework of manifestations and implementations of ethnicization, this paper aims to identify the ambiguities and contradictions that result from the impact of the online media in an ethnicized society, and demonstrates that the online world eventually reflects offline structures of power, wealth and knowledge.
