ethnic groups, interviewees clarified that this does not lead to a constructive pluralism because information is focused on the respective ethnic/religious group (Yang & Rycker, 2017), allowing the political elite to manipulate media reporting to spread hatred against one another along racial conflict lines (qua racism). All interviewees harshly criticize the stratification of the Malay media market and consider it one of the most significant factors affecting the degree of media freedom through the manipulation by political elites. Steven Gan (personal communication, 30 March, 2017), among others, considers the mainstream media a “party organ […]; so basically, that’s where you see a lot of censorship, a lot of spinning, a lot of reporting half-truths […].” Zaharom Nain (personal communication, 4 April, 2017) pointedly criticizes the consequences of the ownership structures and refers to the media as propaganda organs. Regarding ownership structures, the “mainstream press in particular and the media in general is a crude manifestation of the symbiotic relationship between the state and the media” (Anuar, 2005, p. 27). This symbiotic relationship leads to the antagonism of negative campaigning in Malaysia and biased “positive campaigning” in the mainstream media. This positive campaigning goes as far as the mainstream media for example “can’t have an opposition MP in the photograph doing something good.” (S. J. De Rosario, personal communication, 5 April, 2017). This underpins the deep polarization between the ruling elite and the opposition, with their accompanying media outlets, as a basis of negative campaigning and hence a highly biased and manipulated public sphere. The manipulation of a polarized Malay society and publics, which is based on a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society, in combination with a strongly enforced supremacy of religious norms and values, mainly fans the fire for extreme speech and disinformation. Altogether, the political power struggle between the fragmented multi-lingual, multi-ethnic society and social injustice spreads hatred and provides the breeding ground for violent negative campaigning and offline violence which again fuels Malaysia´s social stratification. “Racist Propaganda” on “Hatebook” Facilitates Disinformation and Human Rights Abuses in Myanmar´s Rohingya10 Refugee Crisis. In Myanmar, the currently strongly criticized and internationally well-reported Rohingya refugee crisis mirrors connotative context factors such as racism, persistent conflicts, national security, multi-ethnicity, supremacy of religious norms and values, and nation-building/national identity (Ahsan Ullah, 2016), which in turn significantly impact political and social processes, such as media reporting in Myanmar. After a Human Rights Council (HCR) fact-checking mission in the Rohingya refugee crisis “call[s] for the investigation and prosecution of Myanmar’s Commanderin-Chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and his top military leaders for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes” (OHCHR, 2018) the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Den                                                                                                             ��           10 The so called Rohingya people are a Muslim minority, mainly stateless, living in the north of Buddhist majority Myanmar. In August 2017 more than 700,000 Rohingya have fled across the border into Bangladesh after brutal crackdowns by the military in which they “took the lead in killing thousands of Rohingya civilians, as well as forced disappearances, mass gang rape and the burning of hundreds of villages” (OHCHR 2018). Winter 2019 | 78