1. Introduction
Five years of systemic human rights atrocities have preceded the military’s attempt
to finalise its coup objectives by holding long-promised elections phased between
December 2025 and January 2026. The polls were widely condemned by the
international community as a sham and failed to gain recognition from regional
bodies, including ASEAN.
A previous report in this series documented how the military captured Myanmar’s
digital infrastructure in advance of the elections, blocking access to the media. A
second report showed how the media have faced systematic rights violations on
social media platforms during the voting period.
1 Feb '21
3 Feb
Internet,
TV, and
radio shut
down
Facebook
blocked
5 Feb
Twitter,
Instagram
blocked
8 Feb
5 media
banned;
VPNs
blocked
13 Feb
14 Feb
Media
websites
blocked
1st
journalist
detained
This report tracks the media on Facebook, comparing the pre-coup period in 2021
to the period during the contested elections from October 2025 to January 2026. It
analyses the impact of the coup alongside the media’s parallel resilience. The first
sections of the report are focused on understanding the scale and depth of the impact.
The later sections look more closely at the different types of impact.
The findings are grounded in the standards in Article 19 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and international programmes like
the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. They
evaluate the extent to which the people of Myanmar can exercise their right to seek,
receive, and impart information on Facebook. Through this lens, the report assesses
the actions of both the military and global tech companies in following international
human rights standards.
1.1. Methodology
To understand the impact of the military's censorship, we conducted a longitudinal
study of the media landscape on Facebook. We analysed 12 billion data points from
a sample of 50 media outlets in 2021, 2025, and 2026.
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