Figure 1. Reinforcing the process of disinformation impact in volatile contexts.
All three forms of disinformation with their differing cultural trajectories result in a process that
curtails a free and plural media discourse and facilitates human rights abuses. Violent actions
within the persisting conflicts, like physical attacks of political opponents in Malaysia or the
persecution of Myanmar´s Rohingya, and their legitimization through power holders and citizens
lead to hatred and structural discrimination in the analyzed societies. This accelerates social
polarizations/stratifications, as seen in Thailand´s red/yellow shirt conflict or between Malaysia’s
ruling elite and it´s opposition, and leads to the spread of hate and harmful disinformation in all
three contexts while giving rise to a disinformed public deliberation process. This circuit
repetitively fuels the process of violence and disinformation (see figure 1).
In contexts where human rights situations are fragile and accompanied by xenophobia, racism,
homophobia or other hostilities in the form of extreme speech and disinformation, these
components should be considered as potential facilitators for human rights violations and analysed
in terms of such potential.
Concluding Remarks
Three examples of disinformation in Southeast Asia indicate that different combinations of context
factors give rise to divergent types of extreme speech and disinformation. It is evident that they
cannot be captured sufficiently by universal and indistinct conceptions of “hate speech” and “fake
news”. Further analysis should consider disinformation as manipulative political communication
and harmful disinformation practices intended to disturb social harmony, equality, and freedom;
practices that facilitate manipulated and vitriol speech and are related to human rights violations
(Sirsch, 2013). Although this article considers harmful speech in opposition to civil free speech, it
has argued for an approach examining the origins of harmful speech (as condensed in Figure 1)
85 | Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, Vol. 18, No.2