Matt Schissler regarding religious violence. “I also follow the US Embassy Facebook page,” the monk said to those assembled. “One month ago, the US embassy issued the statement regarding the attack on a mosque, without confirming the information. But I was very sorry not to see a statement issued regarding the attack on a very dutiful soldier in Rakhine State.”17 A few chairs over to his left sat another monk, U Wirathu, who has become so infamous for his anti-Muslim sermons that last year TIME Magazine published a cover story with the headline “The Face of Buddhist Terror” emblazoned over his photo.18 In March 2014, U Wirathu had 29,958 followers on Facebook and was leading “media trainings” to instruct attendees in how to use Facebook.19 There are perhaps deceptively simple technological reasons why Facebook may become the dominant platform in Myanmar. Facebook is an application that can be installed on phones and tablets, to be easily mastered by people not otherwise familiar with using the Internet to search for news and information. In a country where the speed of Internet connectivity can be infuriatingly slow, the standalone Facebook aps on mobile devices will often load when other sites will not. Perhaps most important for Burmese language users, it is relatively easy to use and read Burmese script on Facebook, an issue that has long plagued users of SMS messaging, email, and even word processing software. If you have ever experienced the frustration of waiting for an Internet page to load in Myanmar, or the bewildering helplessness of trying to read a Burmese language page or document without Unicode or the right fonts installed, you will know these are sufficiently compelling technological factors to determine choice of platform. That these issues will be addressed in the near future matters little; if Facebook is already the platform where all your friends are, it is reasonable to assume that you, too, will join them there. Even more so if the company pursues special arrangements with mobile network providers to enable users to access Facebook without incurring any extra charges or requiring a data plan, as it has in other emerging markets.20 ----Over the next few years, then, people in Myanmar will have access to those same kinds of communication and information platforms that are available in the US and elsewhere. What are the consequences of this fact, in Myanmar’s current political context? Put another way: my experience viewing the 2012 elections was notable because of my vantage point in Yangon, as it threw into stark relief the degree to which my understanding of American politics on that day was filtered by a lens of my Facebook friends’ own making. What are the implications for people in Myanmar if their understandings of important events, topics, and threats are similarly filtered? These are important questions because Myanmar is attempting to transition from decades of authoritarian military rule to democracy, a process that some have called breath taking but that is nonetheless highly fraught and vulnerable. Myanmar is facing – and will soon face – its own controversies, controversies which may make disputes over, for example, who won the US presidential elections in 2000 appear minor and easily resolved. In the background, and increasingly the foreground, are bloody conflicts between Buddhist and Muslim communities. Extremely hateful rhetoric, particularly on the part of some extremist religious leaders, has already attracted international media attention; the TIME Magazine story titled “The 17 Matt Schissler, “Sleeping Dogs,” New Mandala, January 20, 2014, asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/01/20/sleeping-dogs/. 18 Hannah Beech, “The Face of Buddhist Terror,” Time, accessed March 12, 2014, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2146000,00.html. 19 Kayleigh Long, “Monk Expands Teachings,” The Myanmar Times, March 24, 2014. 20 April Deibert, “Google ‘Free Zone’ and Facebook ‘Zero’: Products Targeting Developing Populations,” Innovation Series, February 19, 2013, http://www.innovation-series.com/2013/02/19/google-free-zone-andfacebook-zero-products-targeting-developing-populations/. 5/13