DEMOCRACY DISCONNECTED: SOCIAL MEDIA’S CAUSTIC INFLUENCE ON SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FRAGILE REPUBLICS Education will need to be the cornerstone of any successful effort to inoculate the public against the viral scourge of online disinformation. Initiatives should be pursued to promote digital literacy at all age levels to help individuals better learn how to cope with today’s information-rich environment. An experimental high school curriculum introduced in Italy in 2017 that is designed to help students recognize fake news may offer one model of how such 21st century lessons can be incorporated into traditional educational methods.106 Within Southeast Asia, non-profit and governmental organizations are already beginning to take on the task of educating the public about social media responsibility in countries where online hate speech has stoked communal tensions. In Myanmar, an innovative grassroots campaign called Panzagar, or “Flower Speech” in English, has taken to Facebook to promote conscientious free speech as a way of staunching the propagation of harmful narratives.107 Panzagar’s advocacy is not just limited to its online presence, however, as the organization also arranges public workshops and distributes material in schools and on the streets to get its message of tolerance out.108 Similarly, the regulatory Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has launched a “Click Wisely” campaign designed to promote responsible internet use that has included the creation of a website used to debunk viral fake news stories.109 To Facebook’s credit, the company has also taken the initiative to run digital literacy programs in countries across Southeast Asia and has been working with local nongovernmental organizations to publicize its community standards.110 This educational approach must go beyond just seeking to reduce the current spread of toxic vitriol online through the encouragement of civil dialogue and an emphasis on fact-checking. A longer-term solution necessitates addressing the underlying factors that have made segments of the public susceptible to social media’s siren song of disinformation, namely the discomfort of some people with living in an ambiguous world. Toward this end, individuals should be made aware of the cognitive biases that hold sway over them so that they can learn to be more deliberative in their thinking and mitigate their susceptibility to deception online. At the same time, there is also much that can be done to encourage people to simply break out of their comfort zones and come to embrace the unknown. Educational curricula that emphasize multidisciplinary learning would likely instill a number of important skills including enhanced creativity and a greater appreciation for complexity. The study of second languages languages, for instance, has been shown to help bolster people’s tolerance of ambiguity while also making them more empathetic to other cultures.111 A broad exposure to a multitude of subjects also lends itself to the serendipitous discovery of knowledge that can help 106 Jason Horowitz, “In Italian Schools, Reading, Writing and Recognizing Fake News,” The New York Times, October 18, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/world/europe/italy-fake-news.html. 107 Mari Michener Oye, “Using ‘Flower Speech’ and New Facebook Tools, Myanmar Fights Online Hate Speech,” Religion News Service, December 24, 2014, https://religionnews.com/2014/12/24/using-flower-speech-newfacebook-tools-myanmar-fights-online-hate-speech/. 108 Hereward Holland, “Facebook in Myanmar: Amplifying Hate Speech?” Al Jazeera, June 14, 2014, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/06/facebook-myanmar-rohingya-amplifying-hatespeech-2014612112834290144.html. 109 Paige Occeñola, “Fake News and Freedom of Expression in Southeast Asia,” Rappler, November 22, 2017, https://www.rappler.com/technology/social-media/188573-fake-news-freedom-expression-southeast-asia. 110 John Reed and Hannah Kuchler, “Why South-East Asia’s Politics Are Proving a Problem for Facebook,” Financial Times, April 3, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/9b84a5a4-33ff-11e8-a3ae-fd3fd4564aa6; Mathew Ingram, “In Some Countries, Fake News on Facebook is a Matter of Life and Death,” Columbia Journalism Review, November 21, 2017, https://www.cjr.org/analysis/facebook-rohingya-myanmar-fake-news.php. 111 Amy Thompson, “How Learning a New Language Improves Tolerance,” The Huffington Post, December 12, 2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-us/how-learning-a-new-langua_b_13579718.html. Foreign Policy at Brookings | 21