Malaysia’s 13 th General Election: Political Communication Battle and public agenda in Social Media Tham Jen Sern and Hasmah Zanuddin Department of Media Studies Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of Malaya jstham87@gmail.com and hasmahz@um.edu.my Abstract In a mediated democracy, politicians strive hard to determine what is on the front page of the newspapers, or the leading item in the news. While media are said to set the public agenda, the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) or online social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, etc is growing tremendously in 21 st century politics. Everyone has a voice and can broadcast it to the world. We hear about the old maxim of media do not tell people what to think but what to think about. Under this theory or approach, a key function of political communication is to make the public think about an issue in a way that is favorable to the sender of the message. In a democracy, political communication is seen as a crucial for the building of a society where the state and its people feel they are connected. Thus, this is a study on how social media (e.g., Facebook, blogs and YouTube) used in the domain of Malaysian politics during the 13 th General Election campaigning period in order to set their agenda to form public opinion. The study found that Facebook was the most popular social media tool that actively engaged by political parties during the 13 th General Election campaign period. Apart from that, issues pertaining to election were significantly highlighted by the political parties in the social media especially Facebook. However, other important issues such as economy, crime and education were not sufficiently highlighted during the election campaign periods that were also important to the people. This indicates that the political parties influence the public on what to think about using the social media. Keywords: Political communication, 13 th General Election, social media, Social Networking Sites (SNS), agenda setting, public opinion