Digital rivalry in post-coup Myanmar

In cooperation with the convenor, Nhu Truong, New Mandala is happy to share a collection of articles based mostly on papers introduced on the Folks’s Energy and Resistance in Southeast Asia Roundtable on the thirty fifth Biennial Convention of the Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Research. You may learn Nhu Truong’s introduction right here.

Within the digital manifestation of coup-related rivalry in Myanmar, the army each initiatives a picture of itself as championing “true democracy” and reframes resistance actions as damaging for political stability. Then again, dissident forces focus their on-line activism totally on anti-military narratives and broadcasting protest actions in an effort to inspire and mobilise grassroots resistance to the coup. Whereas on-line anti-military content material has been simpler at attracting engagement than pro-military content material, this hole has narrowed over time. This implies that dissidents have more and more confronted digital limitations to mobilising regardless of widespread public assist.

Since March 2021 now we have used CrowdTangle, a social media monitoring platform owned by Meta, to gather the 20,000 most viral public Burmese posts from all Burmese-language Fb pages and teams per day. We then created a random pattern of 5,200 posts over 13 weeks, from the start of March to the top of Could 2021, to acquire a basic understanding of digital rivalry within the early months following the coup. As Fb is by far the most well-liked social media platform within the nation, analyzing Fb content material permits us to seize the essence of Burmese social media.

Present experiences declare the Tatmadaw has actively employed public and covert propaganda to govern narratives that body protestors as criminals, in an effort to flip public opinion towards the resistance and in favour of the army. In our authentic dataset, we discover related content material throughout pro-military pages and teams. This consists of labeling Civil Disobedience Motion (CDM) individuals and ethnic armed teams as riotous; blaming CDM medical doctors for the third wave of COVID-19; spreading disinformation accusing activists of destroying colleges, universities and monasteries, and of attacking harmless civilians; and even framing individuals who withdraw cash from their financial institution accounts as sabotaging the army administration.

Nonetheless, pro-military on-line content material was contained and had restricted affect. Just one% of whole posts or 3% of coup-related posts have been pro-military, and most of those posts attracted beneath 200 interactions. An vital query is whether or not social media merely replicate a pre-existing lack of assist for the army or whether or not, by promulgating quite a lot of voices that debunk army propaganda, these platforms themselves generate higher mistrust within the Tatmadaw’s rhetoric.

In distinction to pro-military content material, most dissident content material highlights resistance actions and army repression. Additionally it is comparatively prevalent amongst coup-related Fb posts, being shared by numerous forms of primarily political and news-oriented pages and teams. Two NUG-related pages are among the many prime 10 pages with viral posts. Six activist teams, three of that are NUG-related, are among the many prime 10 teams with viral posts.

Because of this, dissident posts obtained a median of 1000 interactions. The preferred submit was CRPH’s announcement that they might type a parallel authorities, with greater than 300k interactions.

Desk 1. Prime 10 pages & teams with viral posts

Desk 2. Prime 10 viral web page posts

Desk 3. Prime 10 viral group posts

Whereas dissident content material generated extra on-line engagement amongst Myanmar netizens general, two extra tendencies warrant mentioning.

First, amongst dissident posts, content material expressing assist for democratic values or the parallel Nationwide Unity Authorities obtained much less engagement on common than posts highlighting army abuses or basic anti-coup resistance actions. Moreover, amongst coup-related content material, posts that point out army crackdown towards activists obtained considerably extra damaging reactions than others. This implies that there’s extra unity round rivalry towards the army than assist for any explicit faction inside the broader anti-coup motion, corresponding to federal democracy or the NUG. As dissidents and strange social media customers can broadcast scenes of army crackdowns and resistance to intensify in style grievances and facilitate coordination, this has possible led extra individuals to have interaction in anti-coup activism. Authoritarian repression is extra more likely to backfire within the digital age.

The second pattern is extra sudden. We discover that the prevalence of activist content material and engagement with this content material on public pages and teams really decreased over time whereas pro-military content material and engagement elevated. This might be on account of certainly one of two causes: both lower in public curiosity and assist for activists, or the migration of activist content material to non-public teams or different encrypted platforms like Telegram in an effort to keep away from infiltration, monitoring, and arrest. Professional-military customers, however, might have mobilised later and felt comparatively safer with safety from the army.

In brief, the Tatmadaw’s disinformation marketing campaign for the reason that coup has neither managed to dominate social media nor considerably sway public opinion in its favour. Most netizens don’t belief or assist army propaganda. Then again, its standard methodology of cracking down on activist content material on Fb, by arresting on-line customers who have been discovered to make use of VPNs or submit anti-coup narratives, appears to have curtailed the affect of dissident voices over time. However for now, on-line content material exposing army repression and broadcasting resistance actions continues to proliferate regardless of the specter of arrest. The widespread use of social media by dissidents on this current episode of anti-military wrestle has possible facilitated a civil disobedience motion with higher grassroots assist than ever—a growth that the Tatmadaw may discover tough to halt.