The Content Forum has released its 20^th Year in Service annual report, highlighting its year-long rebranding exercise toward an improved content landscape in the country.

The report detailed the organization’s commitment toward industry players, stakeholders, and members of the public moving into 2022 and beyond, to stay current, relevant, and adaptable. This rebranding effort is also a testament to the organization’s commitment to maintaining the public’s trust by being transparent, progressive, and inclusive.

Content Forum Highlights From The Annual Report

The Highly Timely Revamping Of The Content Code

One of the biggest highlights in the Annual Report was the highly timely revamping of the Content Code, given the ever-evolving content landscape in Malaysia.

Initially drawn up in 2004, the code is a set of guidelines outlining best practices and ethical standards while offering guidance on self-regulation for content creation and consumption across all digital media platforms.

Kenny Ong, the Chairman Of Content Forum stated:

The challenge for us back in 2021 was to educate the public on the importance of self-regulation and to update the Content Code that caters to a world of multiple complexities resulting from a new era of User Generated Content such as piracy, fake news, online scams, cyberbullying, hateful messages, e-commerce complaints, as well as invasion of privacy and misleading information on products, services and platforms. With such a broad scope to cover, we would only be able to get to the nitty gritty details of each issue if we work with all the related industry players and join forces to come up with regulations to better regulate these matters.

Kenny Ong, the Chairman Of Content Forum

Moving Towards Charting Greater Engagement And Broader Inclusivity For Self-Regulation Across The Industry

Increased engagements in 2021 also helped heighten public awareness about the Content Code and Content Forum, where the organization further zoomed into Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL), especially public universities, in a bid to have the Code incorporated into their education modules and to inculcate the habit of self-regulation among students.

This move was well received by these institutions, which are now committed to introducing self-regulation and the Code’s guidelines into their syllabus. The universities also agreed to collaborate in research activities, benchmarking exercises, and providing updates on the Content Code and Content Forum in their publications. Content self-regulation training will also be included in the institution’s training and awareness programs.

The Executive Director of Content Forum, Mediha Mahmood said:

The Content Forum will continue to move forward with greater engagement and more dialogue in our efforts to be progressive and adaptable. We believe that constructive involvement of stakeholders and members of the public greatly facilitates a robust self-regulatory ecosystem and ensures that the Malaysian content industry is propelled towards responsible growth.

Mediha Mahmood, the Executive Director of Content Forum

She also added that while the Content Forum continues to promote self-regulation, its Complaints Bureau takes complaints received from all parties very seriously, while seeking to address underlying issues within these complaints in the Content Code.

To keep the momentum of 2021 going this year, Content Forum has plans to increase public awareness of the Content Forum and the Content Code, followed by the development of supplementary guidelines which will complement the regulations stipulated by the revamped Content Code. A Content Governance Centre will also be established, to serve as a one-stop-center in listing all relevant guidelines pertaining to content regulation in Malaysia, for the ease of reference by the content creators and consumers. To read more on the Content Forum Annual Report, kindly visit Content Forum 2021 Annual Report.