Mobile Myanmar: The Impact of Social Media on Young People Living in Conflict-Affected Regions of Myanmar Community Information Flows to Reduce Inter-Communal Violence in Burma Organisation/Author: Emily Speers Mears for Search for Common Ground Date: December 2015 Relevance: Although the study is now almost 4 years old, it provides a series of relevant insights, drawing on a sophisticated conceptual framework on rumours, informed by SFCG’s work in Africa, which is worthy of deeper exploration (Mears, 2015). Its main objective was to understand the impact of rumours and manipulated information on inter-communal conflict and outbreaks of intercommunal violence in its areas of study. Its focus on two locations with a recent history of intercommunal conflict – Amarapura and Lashio – will be a useful precursor to learn from given the current study’s focus areas of Rakhine State and Kayah State. The study was the inception for an initiative by SFCG and the Myanmar ICT for Development Organisation (MIDO) – ‘Community Information Management to Reduce Intercommunal Violence in Burma’. Of particular interest was its analysis of how attitudes and behaviour towards information on social media were affected by the conflict context, as well as positioning these in a longer historical context of community information flows in Myanmar pre-2011. Methodology and limitations: The research areas were selected as sites particularly vulnerable to intercommunal violence, based on the presence of clear ethnic and religious divisions, a history of violence, economic inequity between communities, high unemployment, and ease of accessibility for the research team. Fieldwork was undertaken by a small research team of six Myanmar nationals, led by an international consultant. The team had history of working together before and were not externally recruited for this research. It took place two weeks prior to and two weeks following Myanmar’s November 2015 election, and consisted of 10 FGDs and 20 Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) in Amarapura/Mandalay and 9 FGDs and 17 KIIs in Lashio. Participants were gender-balanced, and from a wide of range of socio-economic backgrounds. Due to the heightened political sensitivity of the research period, and the brevity of the research duration (just 10 days in each location), the findings are only a snapshot, taken during a time where many were reluctant to talk openly – or at all – about any topics considered remotely sensitive. Key findings: The report sets out to test in Myanmar the overriding conclusion of the academic literature on rumours that “ambiguous situations create a vacuum which rumour fills” (Donovan, 2007, p. 59). SFCG’s own work on this identified five conditions in which negative rumours like ‘hate speech’ or ‘fake news’ were more likely to spread, including lack of education, lack of transparency, and lack of media credibility. These conditions were found in Amarapura and Lashio, and were exacerbated by a history of conflict and present insecurity, making people more susceptible to sharing, believing, and responding to rumours, true or not. The study looks at how this translates into social media use, but not extensively. Even as far back as 2015, people in both locations reported a high level of skepticism about local news on Facebook, and professed to check for themselves on its veracity by analysing the sources of information, fact-checking with trusted friends and family, or in the case of local news going to the source to check for themselves in person. However, the study also notes that “people are not always as diligent as they say they are in the way that they check the information they receive, and it is certainly the case that when people feel threatened or frightened, they are less likely to check information before they share it on, or respond to it” (Mears, 2015, p. 4). Relevant academic work on social media use in Myanmar Although the pool of relevant academic work conducted in Myanmar to draw on for this literature review is still small, there are academics working in this space whose work is worth noting for thematic and/or geographic reasons. For example, Gerard McCarthy draws on his ethnographic and survey research in central-east Myanmar (Bago Region and Kayin State) through 2015/16 to provide insight into the link between online and offline behaviour (McCarthy, 2017). His doctoral research explores informal institutions and the contemporary social, political, and moral legacies of military rule in provincial Myanmar. As part of his work he has focused on the internet, cyber-spaces, and social media activism. Drawing on social media related trends and behaviours encountered during his fieldwork, he highlights the transformational role Facebook has played since its arrival. It has: accelerated local grievances into national, and even 17