Crude and dehumanizing anti-Muslim imagery and language is regularly woven into “memes” that “go viral” through social media and text messaging apps. Two examples that were particularly popular in our observations are included below; one involves an image of bestiality with Arabic script all over and another shows a supposed image of the Prophet Muhammed being orally penetrated.59 It is worth noting that both examples are screenshots of images taken from Android smartphones and re-posted on Facebook. These examples of crude bigotry can often support much bigger official campaigns, such as the 969’s attempt in 2013 to disrupt the business of Ooredoo, a rapidly expanding telecommunications provider from based in Qatar, a Muslim-majority country.60 The image below on the right shows a “meme” that was associated with the campaign and “went viral.” It includes a digitally altered version of the Ooredoo ad with the original text, “Something exciting is happening in Myanmar.” The anti-Ooredo ad replaces the original image with another that depicts Muslims as violent.61 62 Image 4: Popular crude and dehumanizing anti-Muslim memes repeatedly observed by analysts during course of study Image 5: An altered advertisement of the Ooredoo advertisement; “Something exciting is happening in Myanmar” Anti-Muslim narratives are often framed in terms of a Muslim threat. This fear appears vastly disproportionate to the reality, but is at least partially driven by a large volume of circulated information that appears to reinforce and validate these pre-existing stereotypes. Much of this information is false or taken out of context, but is still regarded as true among many in Myanmar’s still relatively unsophisticated media audience, who, after decades of media isolation, often lack an understanding of basic media biases and photo manipulation techniques.63 One example on the right addresses the pervasive perception that Rohingyas are not citizens of Myanmar, but rather, are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who bring crime and danger to Myanmar. The social media post from October 2012 purports to shows an arms seizure from Bangladesh into Myanmar. However, a reverse image search shows that the picture was of a seizure by Egyptian security forces in Cairo in 2012. 64 Regardless, the post was “liked” 8,400 times and shared over 42,700 times, as of October 2015. Other pieces of misinformation can border on absurdity. One post depicts “Bengalis as cannibals,”65 using fairly obvious fake pictures of ‘human butcher shops’ that were originally from a video game marketing stunt in London. 66 This post was “liked” over 9,100 times and shared almost 40,000 times, as of October 2015.67 Image 6: Social media post regarding the ‘arms seizure’ from Bangladesh to Myanmar 10