In Malaysia supremacy of religious norms and values is reflected in the vehemently enforced primacy of Malays and Islam, which leads to social stratification (Chin, 2016), and the fragmentation and polarization of the media landscape with a strong elite-media parallelism (Strout, 2016). The fragmentation of the media market reflects social stratifications along many lines: “new and old media, fragmentation between the rural and urban areas, fragmentation is equally important between Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia” (Z. Nain, personal communication, 4 April, 2017). Zaharom Nain also points to the link between the ideology of powerful elites and language in the fragmentation of the media market: “But it’s not so much the multilingual, it’s what goes behind that, it’s the link within language and ideology, language and ethnicity.” (Z. Nain, personal communication, 4 April, 2017). Although in multi-ethnic Malaysia the three largest ethnic groups (Malays, Chinese, Indians) are well incorporated in a multilingual media market, the deep social stratification between ethnic groups, predominantly Malays and non-Malays, leads to daily communicative violence and to offline political violence: “That means violence outside polling stations, violence during political rallies, violence related to voting, blocking voters physically, motorbike gangs, (…).” (J. Gomez, personal communication, 21 March, 2017). Before previous elections in May 2018, for a short time, Malaysia was the first country in the world to have implemented an anti-fake news law. The plan for an anti-fake news law had already been announced by the previous government in early 2017 “to police the online environment in order to avoid violence” (J. Gomez, personal communication, 21 March, 2017). After the elections in 2018 not only was the widely criticized law repealed, but it was also the first time in the Malay history that an opposition party won the general election. The previously ruling coalition BN, dominated by a political ethnic elite of the Malay-nationalist UMNO (United Malays National Organization), “divide[d] and rule[d] through ethnicity and religion” since independence in 1957 (Z. Nain, personal communication, 4 April, 2017). Malay sovereignty and Islamization of the society is implemented on various levels, for instance in the education system and government structures, and thus reflected in a social stratification as many of my interviewees assert (Ting, 2009; Chinyong Liow, 2014). Among others, Zaharom Nain emphasizes the impact of the three R's: “royalty, religion and race” of the “Malay Sovereignty” (“Ketuanan Melayu”) policy (personal communication, 4 April, 2017). This policy encompasses a privileged treatment of Malays, e.g. for scholarships, research funding, public-service jobs, public-private partnerships/contracts and an overall Islamization policy in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation (Chinyong Liow, 2014; Ting, 2009; Zunar9, personal communication, 6 April, 2017). Therefore, supremacy of (religious) norms and values is highly relevant for the analysis of the Malay media landscape and its specific form of harmful manipulative political communication practices. Malaysia´s social stratification is exploited by the government and elites to manipulate different factions of society for their power maintenance and leads to social grievances, as interviewees highlight critically. While the multilingual media market in Malaysia does represent the main                                                                                                                         9 Zunar is the pseudonym of the political cartoonist Zulkiflee Sm Anwar Ulhaque   77 | Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, Vol. 18, No.2