Mobile Myanmar: The Impact of Social Media on Young People Living in Conflict-Affected Regions of Myanmar BACKGROUND CONTEXT ON FOCUS AREAS Rakhine State – key demographic, conflict, and other relevant information Rakhine State has been the epicentre of recent intercommunal and religious violence that has made headlines around the world. Violence against the Rohingya Muslim community has drawn criticism from the UN and most leading members of the international community, and the role of social media – particularly Facebook – in enabling and instigating violence in Rakhine has been the subject of intense scrutiny by international organisations and international media (McKirdy, 2018). Given the current conflict context, accurate state-wide data (including estimates on Rakhine’s population) are hard to collect and therefore highly contested. However, Rakhine State has long been one of the poorest and least-developed states/regions in Myanmar, and the ongoing conflict has only exacerbated the situation for Rakhine’s population of roughly 3 million people (World Bank, 2018). According to a recent nationwide living standards survey, Rakhine ranks 14/15 states and regions on number of households not connected to electricity and has by far and away the highest incidence of households without toilet facilities and access to clean water (World Bank, 2018). Rakhine’s population is also on average slightly younger (with a media age of 26) than the Union average (27 years; Grizelj, 2017). Although precise data on mobile phone penetration in Rakhine is not readily available, it is worth noting that Rakhine, alongside Chin, was the last state/region in Myanmar to receive coverage from new market entrants Telenor and Ooredoo (Tun, 2016). As few as 50% of households own at least one smartphone (only Chin State has a lower figure), and only 15% of people reported using the internet daily in the previous 7 days, ranking it third from bottom out of the 15 states and regions on that metric (World Bank, 2018). Despite the relatively low access to and use of mobile phones and mobile internet suggested by the above data, there is little doubt that social media – and particularly Facebook – plays a key role in the dissemination of hate speech and other forms of online abuse between Rakhine residents. As far back as 2013, aid organisations like MSF International reported Rakhine staff being subject to personal attacks and death threats via Facebook (MacGregor, 2013), leading to resignations and ultimately MSF’s temporary withdrawal from Rakhine (Hodal, 2014). In 2015, as part of a wider investigation into six locations that had recently experienced intercommunal violence, The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) reported a number of enabling dynamics in Sittwe (state capital of Rakhine State) which allowed fake news, hate speech and rumours to spread more rapidly. High amongst them was the community segregation put in place after the 2012-13 intercommunal violence. With little if any offline interaction between members of Sittwe’s Muslim and Buddhist communities, people had little information with which to verify increasingly incendiary claims made about those from a different faith group (Kirkham, 2015). Research conducted by Internews in 2016 looked more closely into ‘information ecosystems’ in three locations in Rakhine – Sittwe, Buthidaung and Thandwe. The Internews research team sought to understand the ways in which information circulates in Rakhine State, what information people say they need and can access, how they meet their needs through informal and formal networks, which channels of information they trust, the role of rumours, and the impact of ICT and telecommunications. One of their findings in particular correlated with those of CPCS – Buddhists claimed that Muslims listen to Imams, while Muslims claimed Buddhists listened to monks, yet during the interviews and focus groups religious leaders were not deemed particularly influential with regards to trust and information flows (Thu, 2016). The research also unearthed granular insights into how different ethnic and religious groups in Rakhine had very different attitudes to different sources of information. Rakhine Buddhists, for example, reported to place more trust in local media, whereas Rohingya and Kaman communities placed more trust in international media. Facebook was the most popular social media across all groups, but Viber was also playing a growing role in Kaman communities (Thu, 2016). Mobile phones more generally are playing a vital role in connecting the fragmented Muslim communities who face restrictions on movement. They are used by religious and community leaders in Muslim communities to coordinate needs and share information between villages that are otherwise unable to communicate (McKay, 2018a). 21