DEMOCRACY DISCONNECTED: SOCIAL MEDIA’S CAUSTIC INFLUENCE ON SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FRAGILE REPUBLICS This impulse is frequently borne out on social media, which is rife with scapegoating and conspiracy theories, especially in the hours after tragic and often complex events. Unfortunately, it is precisely this sort of novel and anger-inducing information that studies have shown tends to resonate the most with others online.39 In addition to these psychological mechanisms that lend social media its influence broadly speaking, it is worth noting that certain societal conditions may also help to explain the medium’s hold within Southeast Asia more specifically. Informal communication channels are nothing new to a region that has long been beset with authoritarian regimes bent on shaping their respective national narratives. Prior to political reforms in several countries, state controls on the media and restrictions on speech caused individuals to become reliant on trusted friends and family for information that they would otherwise not have access to.40 Notwithstanding the democratic strides that have been made in these places, media controls that have been imposed in recent years have ushered in a new era of press suppression marked by the arrest of journalists and the shuttering of news outlets.41 The introduction of social media has, in effect, marked a return to a reliance on the sort of word-of-mouth communication that has traditionally played a central role in transmitting information, albeit with a 21st century twist. However, technological innovation often brings with it new vulnerabilities, and some in Southeast Asia see an opportunity ripe for exploitation. SOUTHEAST ASIA’S SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATIONS Social media has certainly been used to positive effect in Southeast Asia. In 2007, the Myanmar military’s harsh suppression of demonstrators during the country’s “Saffron Revolution” drew international attention and condemnation as images of Buddhist monks being beaten by soldiers were shared online via social media platforms.42 Several years later, these same online tools would once again play an important role in generating support behind opposition forces in the country when Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) used them to propagate the party’s democratic message to the masses ahead of historic elections that brought the NLD to power. Elsewhere in the region, people in Thailand took to Twitter en masse in 2011 amid devastating floods to share information, call for help, and commiserate in the face of a haphazard government response.43 In 2013, the upstart Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) pursued grassroots organizing online to amass giant crowds for rallies leading up to general elections that resulted in a surprisingly large loss of seats by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which had maintained an overwhelming grip on 39 Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online,” Science 359, no. 6380 (March 2018): 1146-1151, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146; Rui Fan et al., “Anger is More Influential than Joy: Sentiment Correlation in Weibo,” PLoS ONE 9, no. 10 (October 2014): 1-8, http://journals.plos. org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0110184. 40 Bridget Di Certo, “Hip to be Squar,” Southeast Asia Globe, December 9, 2013, http://sea-globe.com/hip-squarmyanmar-southeast-asia-globe/. 41 Alexandra Wake, “Amal Clooney No Match for Trump and China in Southeast Asia Press Clampdown,” The Interpreter, April 9, 2018, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/amal-clooney-no-match-trump-and-chinasoutheast-asia-press-clampdown. 42 Mridul Chowdhury, “The Role of the Internet in Burma’s Saffron Revolution,” (Cambridge, MA: The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, September 2008), http://cyber.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.harvard. edu/files/Chowdhury_Role_of_the_Internet_in_Burmas_Saffron_Revolution.pdf_0.pdf; Saadia Gardezi, “The Politics of Social Media in South East Asia,” IDG Connect, July 1, 2014, http://www.idgconnect.com/abstract/8467/thepolitics-social-media-south-east-asia. 43 Byron Perry, “Social Media Innovation Flourishes During Thailand Floods,” Tech in Asia, November 21, 2011, https://www.techinasia.com/thailand-flood-social-media-innovation. 10 | Foreign Policy at Brookings