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and popularized by the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edward Said.74 By highlighting weaknesses and creating homogeneous cultural perceptions of the ‘alien’ minority, they become the subordinate Other. Fear of the Other often brings people together and can work to the advantage of a group hoping to boost their number of supporters. One of the difficulties with the process of othering online and through social media is that the Other are not given the chance to defend themselves against misinformation. In her report on interventions to counter hate speech, Strachan defines this characteristic of hate speech as ‘simplistic and unbalanced communication.’75 She adds that perpetrators of hate speech will often present subjective arguments as objective truth, thus violating the standards of argumentative integrity. This is true for much of the anti-Muslim narratives online in Myanmar and across the world. Hate speech of this kind often presents misinformation and fearmongering ideological statements as the truth, blaming political events or social situations on the Muslim community with no chance for them to engage in rational dialogue to defend themselves. With many of these anti-Islam Facebook pages, including Wirathu’s antiMuslim rhetoric, it is not about disagreement of ideas; it is about people and their identity group. A good example to demonstrate this point is a picture from Stop Islamization of the World’s Facebook page: 74 Said, E., (1978) Orientalism, Pantheon Books, pp. 329-352. 75 Strachan, A., (2014) ‘Interventions to Counter Hate Speech’ (GSDRC Helpdesk Research Report 1116), GSDRC, University of Birmingham. - 36 -

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

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Language

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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