Opportunities and Challenges in Southeast Asia, 2019 (Bangkok, Thailand) CHAPTER 2 Digital Rights in Southeast Asia: Conceptual Framework and Movement Building Tan Jun-E Abstract This chapter builds a conceptual framework for digital rights by drawing from digital rights advocates in Southeast Asia, and provides a snapshot of the digital rights movement in the region through the advocates’ areas of work, challenges faced, and recommendations for advancing the movement. The conceptual framework proposes four spheres of digital rights, as follows: 1) conventional rights translated to digital spaces, 2) data-centred rights, 3) rights to access to digital spaces and services, and 4) rights to participate in the governance of the digital or the Internet. Empirical observation of the digital rights movement in Southeast Asia reveals that most work has been done on conventional rights translated to digital spaces. The lack of technical capacity is a major gap in addressing digital rights violations that require a deeper understanding of how the technology functions. Introduction With sixty percent of its population online1 and many more getting connected every year, Southeast Asia has stepped into the digital era. Communication is revolutionised with the shrinking of time and space constraints, bringing benefits such as economic empowerment and access to knowledge at an unprecedented level. Yet, as the region reaps these developmental benefits (admittedly, at an uneven rate), the darker side of the digital world also manifests in the form of new authoritarian controls and corporate interests which are little understood by most of the people using the new technologies. Digitally transmitted misinformation is rife, and marginalised communities are targeted by cyber attacks and hateful speech. Civil society celebrates new capabilities and forms of organising afforded by the technology but is taken aback at the speed in which human rights violations are facilitated by the new platforms. In general, civic space in Southeast Asia is limited and has been observed as narrowing (Gilbert, & Benedict, 2018). Governments in the region have kept a tight grip on its citizens, using mechanisms such as draconian laws to restrict civil freedoms. This 1 Source: Internet World Stats (2019). See Table 6 for more details. 11