DEMOCRACY DISCONNECTED: SOCIAL MEDIA’S CAUSTIC INFLUENCE ON SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FRAGILE REPUBLICS BRANDON PALADINO EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Contrary to once idealistic expectations that social media would usher in a new era of unity and democratization, technology’s empowerment of the masses seems to have engendered societies in which people are more isolated and polarized than ever before. Southeast Asia serves as a particularly interesting case study on the pernicious effects that social media has exerted on the political environment. In the absence of moderating influences such as a strong education system, well-developed legal framework, and robust, independent media, rumors and falsehoods have spread largely unimpeded online. Such disinformation has stoked long-standing communal conflicts and provided an opportunity for domestic and foreign actors alike to stymie and potentially reverse democratic gains. These detrimental effects on fragile democracies along China’s periphery threaten to erode Washington’s influence in the region, which in turn is likely to have more far-reaching effects. Southeast Asia is poised to be the fastest growing internet market in the world by 2020. The vast majority of people in the region access the internet using their mobile phones, a development made possible by a combination of favorable policies and technological advances that have sharply reduced the costs of cellular communications for consumers. Facebook in particular has become the social media platform of choice for many living in Southeast Asia, largely owing to the fact that it has been adapted to operate on the low-end feature phones that are prevalent in more impoverished countries. The ubiquity of social media alone, however, does not account for its outsized influence. Such online communication platforms have contributed to the acceleration of information flows characteristic of our modern era. The ambiguity arising from this deluge of information challenges the basic human propensity to minimize uncertainty. Mental shortcuts that individuals rely on to aid their decisionmaking can make them more susceptible to the disinformation that they are routinely exposed to. Compounding this problem, the increasing personalization of the internet limits the scope of knowledge Foreign Policy at Brookings | 1