DEMOCRACY DISCONNECTED: SOCIAL MEDIA’S CAUSTIC INFLUENCE ON SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FRAGILE REPUBLICS While some of the vitriol online has come about organically, there has also been a coordinated campaign on the part of the ultranationalist Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha to use platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to spread a false narrative about the Rohingya. The group’s leader, Ashin Wirathu, who has been dubbed the “Buddhist Bin Laden,” has risen to international prominence in large part because of his reliance on social media to spread his hateful rhetoric.51 Given the virulent nature of such emotionallycharged content online, these postings have become increasingly ubiquitous as they are frequently shared and, in turn, receive more prominent placement in Facebook feeds.52 In the wake of the ARSA attacks, the Facebook group for Ma Ba Tha supporters registered a significant spike in anti-Rohingya messages, illustrating the powerful tendency of such online associations to amplify and reinforce the thoughts of its individual members.53 The hate speech and misinformation online has not just played a major role in tearing at the social fabric of Myanmar, it has also exerted a contagion effect abroad by galvanizing Muslim sympathizers to voice support for the Rohingya through their own use of falsehoods and misinformation. In one high-profile incident, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Mehmet Şimşek, posted photographs to Twitter purporting to show atrocities committed against the Rohingya, but which were subsequently found to be from unrelated events in other countries. Although he later posted a correction in which he noted the error, his original message had already been retweeted over 1,600 times.54 The communal tension between Buddhists and Muslims spurred on by social media has similarly played out in neighboring Thailand. The country has witnessed repeated violence over the years in its southernmost provinces, where a long-running separatist insurgency seeking to create an independent Muslim state has resulted in thousands of deaths.55 Buddhist nationalists, feeling under duress, have taken to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pantip to spread anti-Muslim rhetoric and false narratives. Most notably, in October 2015, a popular monk named Phra Apichart Punnajanto posted a message to Facebook in which he said that a mosque should be burnt down for each Buddhist monk killed in the southern conflict. Although he has since been defrocked, the controversy bolstered his popularity and led to an outpouring of support on social media.56 While social media has been fanning the flames of communal violence domestically in Thailand, it may also be influencing similar clashes outside the country’s borders as there is evidence that Buddhist nationalists in Thailand, Myanmar, and nearby Sri Lanka have been interacting with one another over social media to amplify fabricated versions of events.57 https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/02/facebook-free-basics-quietly-pulled-myanmar/. 51 Tej Parikh, “Social Media Exhibits Its Disruptive Power in Myanmar,” The Diplomat, November 9, 2017, https:// thediplomat.com/2017/11/social-media-exhibits-its-disruptive-power-in-myanmar/. 52 Megan Specia and Paul Mozur, “A War of Words Puts Facebook at the Center of Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis,” The New York Times, October 27, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/world/asia/myanmar-governmentfacebook-rohingya.html. 53 Michael Safi, “Revealed: Facebook Hate Speech Exploded in Myanmar During Rohingya Crisis,” The Guardian, April 2, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/revealed-facebook-hate-speech-exploded-inmyanmar-during-rohingya-crisis. 54 “Turkish Deputy PM Denounced for Misleading Twitter Pictures on Rakhine Conflict,” The Irrawaddy, September 4, 2017, https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/turkish-deputy-pm-denounced-misleading-twitter-pictures-rakhineconflict.html. 55 Maximillian Morch, “The Slow Burning Insurgency in Thailand’s Deep South,” The Diplomat, February 6, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/the-slow-burning-insurgency-in-thailands-deep-south/. 56 Abby Seiff and Rin Jirenuwat, “A Thai Monk Is Using Social Media to Preach Violence Against Muslims,” Newsweek, April 4, 2016, http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/15/thailand-monk-apichart-social-media-muslimviolence-443698.html. 57 Devon Haynie, “The Regional Reach of Buddhist Nationalism,” U.S. News & World Report, November 7, 2017, 12 | Foreign Policy at Brookings