Southeast Asia’s Online Problem

• Online manipulation in Southeast Asia is set to become a serious and widespread problem due to a convergence of factors – the rapid growth of the region’s online populations, its importance to US-China strategic competition, and its still-evolving political systems
• To guard against manipulation, Southeast Asian nations must invest more heavily in independent and non-partisan education efforts to inform citizens of the threat
• But to maintain trust in these efforts, a firewall between public education and fact-checking bodies must be established
• Regulation of social media platforms – the common policy prescription for governments – will become less effective over time as information networks will become more diffused and private and hence, more challenging to regulate

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Ever since the ills of online manipulation were put on full display three years ago in the United States, policymakers around the world have eagerly sought solutions against the dangers of fake news and influence campaigns that rely on the spread of online fabrications. In the past year, governments across Southeast Asia have introduced various measures aimed at tackling the problem.

Because the present threat of online manipulation is not equal across the region, responses to it have also been mixed. In states with historically strong central control – such as Myanmar, Vietnam, and Singapore – new laws have arrogated more powers to the authorities to control content hosted on social media platforms since there already existed national security regulations that dealt with persons spreading malicious content.

As a result, these states now had a justification for expanding historic investments in the control of communication channels to corporate entities on top of individuals.

In Southeast Asian states where public communicative spaces are relatively open and competitive, aggressive legislation against online manipulation have brought additional legal liability to individuals. Naturally, there were vigorous objections from activists fearful that any new laws could also be aimed at quelling rights to speech and expression. A fake news law was even scrapped in Malaysia.

No consensus has been reached on the threat of online manipulation in Southeast Asia given the variety of state responses. This is despite countries in the region possessing common features that render online manipulation a serious problem for all of them.

One feature is the growth of internet usage in the region. With more than 400 million Internet users and growing, Southeast Asia is the fastest expanding digital population in the world and has already the “most engaged mobile internet users in the world.”

This growth has been supported by rapid urbanisation, internal migration to city centres, and the development of telecommunications infrastructure. Southeast Asia’s digital population includes not only young “digital natives” familiar with the Internet, but also older “digital immigrants” who have had to adapt as delivery of essential services come increasingly online.

Second, as the US and China compete more vigorously in the coming years, Southeast Asia (and by extension ASEAN) will become a centrepiece for mass influence campaigns, public opinion shaping, and agitprop. Online manipulation will continue to remain a low cost method for achieving these goals since it rides on long-term consumer trends that lend themselves to exploitation.

Third, many Southeast Asian nations do not yet have long and matured political systems by virtue of their colonial legacies, ongoing domestic conflicts, and military or semi-military rule. As these states experience the disruptiveness expected in maturing polities, there is a high latent risk that existing fault lines could be used to stir up populations against each other – particularly during elections – further handicapping political development. In this regard, ethnic and religious fault lines are most perilous and therefore easily agitated, even in considerably more stable and peaceful societies such as Singapore and Malaysia.

These common features represent a problem that is set to grow widespread in the foreseeable given that the vast majority of Southeast Asian countries have not invested in the defensive capabilities necessary in addressing online manipulation.

The usual policy program against online manipulation that involves tough regulation of media firms and increased penalties for fake news peddling will become less effective over time, not just because the appeal of mass social media platforms is in decline, but because regulating private networks (such as Whatsapp group conversations and Telegram channels) presents great challenges to even the most authoritarian of states.

As communication networks become more diffused and private, the most effective means of tackling online manipulation in the long-term is the establishment of independent and non-partisan education efforts to inform citizens of the threat and to illuminate them on how to identify false messaging.

However, for education initiatives to be trusted they must function separately from fact-checking bodies run by the government or by the news media in order to avoid the politicisation that is inherent in the exercise of judgments of fact.

This separation of roles is also necessary as online manipulation is increasingly perpetrated by domestic actors – sometimes by governments themselves – that will call into question any fact-checking process managed by the authorities.

As Southeast Asia attempts a large-scale economic integration over the next few decades, domestic pressures will begin to bear a large influence on this endeavour.

Online manipulation that affects individual countries will also impact the stability of the region as a whole as more of the region’s prosperity will depend on managing nationalist tides that so often cause barriers to doing business together.  

For policymakers this will mean treating the issue not merely as a nuisance to governance but more importantly as a real danger to social stability. Addressing it will require the gradual building of trust between government and people through the judicious and appropriate use of a new generation of laws against fake news.

By Benny Sulaiman