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Facebook has a strict policy to remove groups from the site that makes racial, gender, religious, or sexual orientation attacks against individuals or groups. However, Facebook’s existence is based on being a free and open social media platform; it therefore permits offensive content that it does not deem as threatening. As one member of focus group one noted, a page can be reported many times yet it may not be taken down. Marne Levine, VP of Global Public Policy has said on behalf of Facebook that they have found that posting insensitive or cruel content often results in many more people denouncing it than supporting.129 We prohibit content deemed to be directly harmful, but allow content that is offensive or controversial. We define harmful content as anything organizing real world violence, theft, or property destruction, or that directly inflicts emotional distress on a specific private individual (e.g. bullying)130 However, this does not fully consider the impact of the existence of what may be brushed off as mere bigotry, satire or humour, but is actually a manifestation of prejudice and hate. As reporting the content in an attempt to remove it from Facebook may not be an effective method of intervention, a better method may be the monitoring of hate speech. To highlight the value of online monitoring methods, Strachan uses the example of Umati, a project that monitored Kenya’s online space to produce a database of hate speech.131 She observes that this type of intervention often serves as a foundation for further intervention, which is the case for one Umanti report that aimed to understand where most ‘extremely dangerous speech’ can be found online. For example, this report revealed that Facebook is ‘the online space where most online users prefer to engage in dangerous speech’ within their community, with more activity deemed as ‘dangerous hate speech’ than twitter, online news articles, or 129 Levine, M., (2013) ‘Controversial, Harmful and Hateful Speech on Facebook’, Facebook.com, available at: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-safety/controversial-harmful-and-hatefulspeech-on-facebook/574430655911054 [November 2015]. 130 Levine, (2013). 131 Strachan, (2014) p.5. - 55 -

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Religion, hate speech and social media in Myanmar: Analysing methods of intervention

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Language

English

Topic

Hate Speech
Rohingya Crisis

Author(s)

Bethany Davis

Date Published: Dec 1, 2015

Abstract: Myanmar is home to one of the longest running intrastate conflicts in the world, involving a series of ethnic and religious clashes that have caused harm to all parties involved. The ideology of a homogeneity based on Buddhism and the Bamar ethnicity has marginalized minority groups, which make up a third of the population, and has particularly affected the Rakhine state’s Buddhist and Muslim communities, the latter of which are subject to what international human rights organizations are calling an ethnic cleansing. Since the government relaxed restrictions to the access of foreign websites, the social media site Facebook has become a popular means to disseminate misinformation and rumours, and this has created mistrust and hatred against Muslims across the country, heightening the polarization between Buddhist and Muslim groups. This study will combine conflict analysis with the assessment of different approaches of countering hate speech to propose which methods of intervention are most suitable for this situation in Myanmar. Lederach argues that to counter hatred and avoid reoccurrence of violence, deep alterations of the parties’ relationships is needed. This idea forms the basis for chapter three which examines educational methods, interfaith projects and social media campaigns to both prevent and change negative attitudes towards the religious ‘Other’. It argues that education and awareness campaigns are more effective than the implementation of legal regulation as we need to combat the underlying issue. In addition to secondary sources, this study involved field research to collect information about how the youth are influence by hate speech and counter hate campaigns in Myanmar.

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Myanmar Internet Project

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Religion, hate speech and social media in Myanmar: Analysing methods of intervention

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