Whitten-Woodring et al. 3 The Rohingya, estimated at 1 million before 2017, constituted around a third of the population of Rakhine state,5 which is otherwise dominated by Buddhists. According to Thawnghmung (2016), the Rohingya are seen as foreigners (and referred to as “illegal residents”) in Myanmar, partly because of their darker skin color, but mostly because they are Muslims. Moreover, not all ethnic groups in Myanmar are officially recognized as “indigenous populations.” Although some groups have lived in Myanmar for several generations, they were not accepted by the military government as full citizens of Myanmar and have faced discrimination in employment, benefits, and education. Fink (2018) notes that many of the Rohingya, who claim both colonial-era migratory roots and local ancestry (in Rakhine state), had citizenship documents after independence from the British. Yet, their citizenship status deteriorated in the 1970s when the government ceased to issue new citizenship cards to them. In 2012, the government began referring to the Rohingya as “Bengalis,” essentially framing them as illegal residents from Bangladesh (Fink 2018). As a result, many Rohingya have no citizenship status or legal rights in Myanmar (Thawnghmung 2014; Wade 2017; Ware and Laoutides 2018). In sum, as an ethnic and religious minority with limited access to citizenship, the Rohingya have always occupied a tenuous place in Myanmar, but their recent persecution is worse than past oppression (Zin 2015). Extant research points to Myanmar’s transition to democracy and the resulting reshuffling of political and social power as important contextual factors that have increased the vulnerability of the Rohingya. Writing before the 2017 escalation of violence, Zin (2015) argued that democratization has amplified polarization in the country, especially among different Buddhist groups, the government, and various ethnic groups, causing numerous factions to fend for their interests and leaving the Rohingya without a political ally. Similarly, Lee (2016) argues that liberalization has opened a window for ultra-nationalist Buddhists, who are often anti-Rohingya, to try and assert their influence over the government and military. Other research has connected the increase in violence toward the Rohingya to media liberalization (e.g., Lee 2019). When Myanmar gained independence in 1948, its media were considered among the freest in the region because the 1947 constitution guaranteed freedom of expression (Zaw 2002). But any semblance of press freedom came to an end in 1962 when the military established an authoritarian regime and broad media censorship. Myanmar maintained one of the world’s most restricted media systems for decades (Whitten-Woodring and Van Belle 2014). In 2012, the government ceased its practice of pre-publication censorship. Yet, the availability of diverse information remained limited. Less than 1 percent of the population enjoyed Internet access (International Telecommunication Union [ITU] 2019). That same year though, the price of SIM cards plummeted from thousands of dollars (US) to hundreds, making Internet access more attainable via mobile phones (Lee 2019). In 2014, the price of SIM cards dropped to about $1 (McLaughlin 2018). By 2015, mobile phone penetration reached 56 percent and Myanmar was the world’s fourth fastest growing telecommunication market (McLaughlin 2018). During this time, Facebook became synonymous with the Internet and an important source for news (McLaughlin 2018). This was in part due to Facebook’s “zero-rating” or