Media landscape in Myanmar This subsection will briefly provide a short history of the media landscape in Myanmar, and how the 2021 coup transformed this environment. The media industry in Myanmar has endured stifled freedom since the initial military takeover in 1962, a situation that continued through the brief period of quasi-civilian governance from 2011 to 2021. Under military rule, all forms of media production, including print media, television broadcasts, radio, films, and more, faced stringent oversight by the scrutiny board. The reorganisation of the military junta after the 1988 Uprising led to an intensified prohibition and censorship of the media industry. The violent confrontation between security forces and protesters, which culminated in 3,000 deaths and prompted 10,000 individuals to flee the country, was followed by the arrest of numerous editors, journalists, and writers, alongside widespread bans on media outlets. Moreover, the military banned foreign international news agencies, a restriction that remained in place until 2007. The imposition of these bans inadvertently catalysed the emergence of the alternative media industry in the 1990s, including exile media stationed along the borders of Thailand-Myanmar, India-Myanmar, and Bangladesh-Myanmar (see Brooten et al. 2019). This alternative media consisted of independent media without specific ethnic affiliations, such as The Irrawaddy, and ethnic media that reported stories about the interests of Myanmar’s ethnic minority communities, such as the Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN). Ethnic media established a strong presence in the ethnic minority-dominated borderlands, areas often under the control of ethnic armed forces, which have historically leveraged media to cultivate and express their ethnic nationalities and were not highly affected by the 1988 military reconfigurations. 11