and social relations as well as overtly political undertakings such as election campaigning (Jeffrey and Doron 2013; 2012). What, then, are established communication practices in Myanmar that might be disrupted – or align particularly powerfully – with the growing use of new technologies and media that will arrive along with telecommunications infrastructure? In order to illustrate potential interactions between these established practices and new technologies, and consider their potential relationships to anti-Muslim antagonism and violence like that experienced in Mandalay, this chapter will make use of existing anthropological literature as well as my own experiences living in a working class neighbourhood along the Yangon River. Although this was not a premeditated ethnographic undertaking, while actively participating in a variety of civil society initiatives that seek to, inter alia, promote peace and prevent Buddhist-Muslim conflicts, I began employing a methodological approach of ‘observant participation’ (Vargas 2008: 165) in line with what some have described as an ‘activist’ or ‘engaged’ scholarship (Hale and Calhoun 2008). Wherever possible, observations discussed below are selected from those already published in occasional posts to a popular blog.6 While other reflections will also be included, those experiences already subjected to online discussion, debate, and re-interpretation are particularly well suited for a chapter concerned with the circulation of discourses on social media. New Technologies During the year 2012, when I first moved into western Yangon, only one friend in my ward had a mobile phone; within less than two years, nearly all of them did. This is an experience in the country’s urban centre, but it is being replicated nationwide. Myanmar's erstwhile state monopoly over telecommunications is breaking up and mobile phones, once available to only the handful that could afford expensive SIM cards, are becoming more common. In 2013, an estimated less than four per cent of the population had mobile phones, though government statistics claimed 10 per cent – still the lowest penetration rate of any country in Asia save for North Korea (Ferrie 2013). In early 2014, two international telecoms companies, Ooredoo and Telenor, received operating licenses to establish new infrastructure across Myanmar; Ooredoo's publicly stated target is to extend coverage to 97 per cent of the population within five years (Reuters 2014). Telenor’s goal is 90 per cent (Srisamorn 2014). The target set by U Thein Sein, Myanmar's president, is slightly more modest: 80 per cent of the population by 2016 (Eleven Myanmar 2014a). In 2014, meanwhile, the costs of mobile phones and tablets that can handle basic Internet functions are dropping precipitously. Myanmar’s regional neighbours are useful indicators in this respect and, where they have seen increased mobile access, that now also entails access to the Internet (We Are Social 2014). Elsewhere in the region, too, Internet access has meant large percentages of the population using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. A journalist commenting on recent data about the use of social media in Asia perhaps put it best: Facebook is not a website visited by Internet users, ‘Facebook is the Internet’ (Russell 2014, emphasis added). This is likely to hold true in Myanmar, with social media not as one website among many but as the dominant platform by which people make their way online. 6 The posts were first shared on Facebook, and then kindly published by New Mandala, a Southeast Asia focused blog affiliated with the Australian National University. See, http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/author/matt/. 3