to be aware of public opinions or discussion happening under controversial content. Careful engagement with comment threads by a few individuals may indicate a way that people act on the self-perception that they are rational thinkers, knowledgeable, and have effective approaches to interpreting posts on social media. Implications If the interpretation of Observation 1 that positive posts inspire positive comments and provide space to amplify the sentiments is correct, then positive anchor posts, amplified by their reverberating comments, may have valuable and healing effects for marginalized communities. This may be the case even where they do not directly respond with their own posts counter to hate speech. Supporting this, participants from the interviews particularly mentioned how positive portrayals make them feel good; and examples of comments are also found under positive posts that reflects such good sentiments7. We should thus not down-play the comment threads, as some people are paying attention to them, and those people appear to invest a lot of emotion in them. While more positive content would mean more positive ripple effects despite obstacles mentioned in Observation 1, it also suggests that people who are marginalized are acutely aware of the things that are being said about them and have to live or deal with them on an everyday basis. Interviewees said they are also aware of many instances where online hate-speech can transform into consequences for other aspects of their lives.8 Furthermore, the already grim situations for them can be amplified by hate speech comments online and have a negative influence on their emotional well-being. For example, a Kachin participant mentioned how news about the ongoing war in Kachin state and discussions online combine to impact her negatively, even though she lives in Yangon9. Finally, if references to the way they read comment threads suggest that people believe that they are already effective at managing information on Facebook, this may suggest in turn that there is already an established value: that people should engage with online sources critically. This is no small thing. If such a value is well-established already, that would have implications for efforts to promote digital and media literacy. For example: Efforts to promote a norm like “think before you post” could backfire if people believe they are already doing this. Emphasis on the general importance of such a norm might just make them feel good about their existing practices—which might not actually be effective. If that is the case, it would suggest that efforts need to aim not only at the general normative level but the personal level as well: they need to help people discover whether or not they actually need to reconsider their opinion of their own existing habits and skills at evaluating information, and whether these are a good fit for current media environments. This implication does not apply only to Facebook comment threads. 7 Annex 4 Annex 5 9 Annex 6 8 10