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Chapter Two: Analysing Online Hate Speech and its Impact on Buddhist/Muslim Tensions in Myanmar The rapid development of online platforms such as social media has enabled a wider and instantaneous distribution of content that we did not have access to before. These platforms provide significant information about both the community and the outside world. Furthermore, whereas political parties and the government would have had control over news and information being sent out to the public in the past, the internet rarely faces these restrictions; online, everyone can be a publisher. While this can be a good thing in a country such as Myanmar, where freedom of expression, particularly concerning politics, was heavily restricted by censorship laws until 2011, the ease and rapidity of the creation and dissemination of hate speech make propaganda even more difficult to trace and control. This chapter aims to evaluate how the internet allows individuals and groups to incite hatred, and why this can be so detrimental to those targeted by hate. After a detailed analysis of the real harm of online hate speech - looking at theories from Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech and Foxman and Wolf’s Viral Hate, I will discuss how it is being used in Myanmar to incite fear towards the Muslim community, using evidence from my own field research. Understanding a) how social media is used as a platform for hate and b) the impact that recurrent hate speech can have on minority groups, particularly in country with protracted internal conflicts such as Myanmar, is essential before devising methods to prevent and counter hate speech. How Hate Spreads on the Internet To understand why the internet is so important regarding hate speech we must ask how hate spreads online. Every hate organisation and what we might class as ‘extremist’ groups (such as ISIS or the Ku Klux Klan) have their websites and social media sites, and these all act as a source for hateful propaganda and lies. The internet provides members of these groups a shield of online anonymity where they can speak more openly about their ideas than they would in front of an audience, and facilitates communication with like-minded individuals or groups across the world. The low - 30 -

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Religion, hate speech and social media in Myanmar: Analysing methods of intervention

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English

Topic

Hate Speech
Rohingya Crisis

Author(s)

Bethany Davis

Date Published: Dec 1, 2015

Abstract: Myanmar is home to one of the longest running intrastate conflicts in the world, involving a series of ethnic and religious clashes that have caused harm to all parties involved. The ideology of a homogeneity based on Buddhism and the Bamar ethnicity has marginalized minority groups, which make up a third of the population, and has particularly affected the Rakhine state’s Buddhist and Muslim communities, the latter of which are subject to what international human rights organizations are calling an ethnic cleansing. Since the government relaxed restrictions to the access of foreign websites, the social media site Facebook has become a popular means to disseminate misinformation and rumours, and this has created mistrust and hatred against Muslims across the country, heightening the polarization between Buddhist and Muslim groups. This study will combine conflict analysis with the assessment of different approaches of countering hate speech to propose which methods of intervention are most suitable for this situation in Myanmar. Lederach argues that to counter hatred and avoid reoccurrence of violence, deep alterations of the parties’ relationships is needed. This idea forms the basis for chapter three which examines educational methods, interfaith projects and social media campaigns to both prevent and change negative attitudes towards the religious ‘Other’. It argues that education and awareness campaigns are more effective than the implementation of legal regulation as we need to combat the underlying issue. In addition to secondary sources, this study involved field research to collect information about how the youth are influence by hate speech and counter hate campaigns in Myanmar.

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Religion, hate speech and social media in Myanmar: Analysing methods of intervention

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