8 Blue Shirt Initiative Inside Social Media: The Blue Shirt’s Social Media Observation Six Key Events 2 M ETHODOLOGY Huygen Agreement between the SAC and the Northern Allies (January 10, 2024) To have a better understanding of how messages on the social media platforms were shaping the general public’s opinions to the current political conflicts, we decided to collect messages posted on the platforms by various political actors and analyze the content of the messages. A total of 5,413 posts and 494 messages with the highest interactions from 324 Facebook pages and 38 Telegram channels were collected to analyze between January and June 2024. We tried to measure the impact of messages by both quantifying the interaction rate and the type of the content itself. Therefore, we decided to collect the posts and messages that received the highest interactions among the social media users ranging from the highest to 1,000 total interactions on Facebook and 50 most viewers' messages on Telegram during our observation. With the highest interactions, we believe those posts and messages had a significant impact on public opinion, either negatively or positively. In this observation, instead of merely mapping out the messages posted on social media, we decided to seek out messages that contribute to societal values whether they promote liberal and democratic values or divide society by promoting hate speech and violence, and examine how citizens were mobilized and specific means to resolve the current political and armed conflicts. One caveat is that since we are focusing on social media platforms, the findings only reflect activities within this ecosystem and may not necessarily represent what is happening on the ground. Posts with contents of other political issues 116 Posts with contents of BSI 631 Messages with contents of other political issues 41 Messages with contents of BSI 69 Facebook Total Posts 5,413 Telegram Total Messages 494 Other issues 4,666 Other issues 384 Three years of Spring Revolution (February 1, 2024) From January 26, 2024 to February 8, 2024. Enactment of Conscription Law (February 14, 2024) From February 9, 2024 to February 21, 2024. Rakhine Buthidaung Incident (May 18, 2024) From May 12, 2024 to May 25, 2024. Demise of the Monk of Win Nim Thatta (June 19, 2024) From June 13, 2024 to June 24, 2024. Second Part of Operation 1027 (June 25, 2024) From June 25, 2024 to June 30, 2024. About Blue Shirt Initiative The Blue Shirt Initiative is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization working to build Research period : From January to June, 2024 Since we can only start our observations in July and with some limitations in methodology, we decided to focus on one key event per month which may have a significant impact on the current political situation instead of collecting the posts for the whole six months (January-June 2024). democratic values and strengthen democratic institutions in Myanmar through research and education. Upholding the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Blue Shirt conducts its work regardless of race, religion, and gender. Currently, the Blue Shirt is conducting social media research focusing on political communication and To ensure social media platforms serve as a marketplace for ideas or a unifier for society and to understand how key stakeholders had shaped public opinion regarding the current political crisis, the messages related to the following key areas or contents were observed; (A) Citizen participation and citizens’ mobilization, (B) Military means and violence, (C) Social division and hatred (D) Federalism and political solutions and, (E) Message concerning liberal and democratic values. information ecosystem, and surveys aimed to have a better understanding of citizens' perceptions. Get more about the Blue Shirt. Identifying Facebook pages and Telegram channels: By using 101 keywords and 99 hashtags related to the ongoing political crisis or politics, we were able to identify 1,915 Facebook pages and 760 Telegram channels that were considered politically active. Based on that, 1,915 Facebook pages and 150 Telegram channels1 were included in our observation. We only monitored 150 of the highest subscriber channels on Telegram. From January 4, 2024 to January 17, 2024. Selecting Facebook posts and Telegram messages: By using Crowd Tangle API and Telegram API, we integrated FB posts and Telegram messages into the BSI’s customized software namely “Chay-Lann”. All Facebook posts with the interactions ranging from the highest to 1,000 total interactions2 and the top 50 messages with the most viewers on Telegram, were selected weekly for analysis. A total of 5,413 Facebook posts and 494 messages from Telegram channels were collected during this observation. Fig 18. Content of the posts or messages (Overall) 1 Monitoring Period 2 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BlueShirtInitiative Website - https://blueshirtinitiative.org Email - info@blueshirtinitiative.org For media pages, the nature of interaction differs from that of other pages, so only the 10 posts with the highest total interactions were analyzed on Facebook.