Many Southeast Asian countries have made significant strides in developing their digital infrastructure and rolling out e-government services. The region's E-government Development Index (EDGI) in 2022[1] was higher than the world average. Furthermore, over half of the region saw an improvement in its EDGI score in this round of the survey. However, along with these advances, there have been signs of regression in terms of internet freedom, in line with global trends.
It appears that while states have improved their digital architecture to provide better public services and develop their digital economy, the bolstered digital capacity can also be used as an instrument of state repression to infringe on citizens' rights.
Overall, most countries tend to avoid internet shutdowns and blocking of websites despite having the capacity to do so. Once again, research data confirm that states make a cost-benefit calculation when employing digital repression tactics. Particularly, there are socioeconomic tradeoffs to be considered when using overt and broad-based tactics like shutting down the internet or blocking access to certain websites, such as the risk of losing economic productivity and raising social tension.
Digital Repression
Contemporary view of repression emphasizes the broader repertoire of state actions, including non-violent methods such as surveillance, censorship, and control of information flows. The term digital repression thus encompasses a range of actions and policies employed by governments to suppress opposition, including the use of digital technologies.
Freedom in using the internet can be measured by the following factors (as identified by Freedom House):[2]
Using these factors, the Freedom on the Net (FOTN) of a country can be measured resulting in FOTN score.
Most Southeast Asian countries either saw a drop in FOTN scores from 2022 to 2023 or no progress, except for Malaysia and Cambodia. There also seems to be variations in how countries perform in different aspects of digital freedom once we look at the composite indexes. For instance, Malaysia has seen a two-point improvement in its FOTN score and now ties with the Philippines as the best-performing countries in the region due to its ability to reduce the obstacles to online access by expanding 4G mobile connection and ensuring access to stable internet connection nationwide. The number of individuals given prison terms or held in pretrial detention for online activities has decreased, leading to an improvement in the parameter measuring violations of user rights.
Additionally, the Digital Society Project (DSP) provides the categories of digital repression tactics: surveillance, censorship, social manipulation and disinformation, internet shutdowns, and targeted persecutions of online users.
Infrastructural manipulation as a tactic of digital repression refers to states attempting to capture the digital infrastructure in order to control the information/communication grid of the nation. On the other hand, informational manipulation--commonly known as information operations (IOs)--is a method used to alter the information architecture with dis/misinformation. So, while informational manipulations influence what kind of information individuals get, infrastructural tactics aim to control how/whether they get that information.
In terms of the capacity to control digital infrastructure through internet shutdowns, filtering and social media monitoring, most Southeast Asian countries seem to have bolstered their capabilities in the past decade; especially since 2015. While different countries may experience digital development differently, one of the global phenomena of that decade was the emergence of social media in the political arena, particularly as a tool for social movements. The Arab Spring that saw the overthrow of some dictators in 2010 serves as an archetypal example of digital activism. For a region-specific case, one can look to the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) protest in Thailand in 2013 to see how social media was used to mobilize and coordinate collective actions against the sitting government.[3] As we know, governments are quick learners when it comes to what concerns their survival. Therefore, it is plausible that the empowering potential of the internet and social media for ordinary citizens to go up against their government incentivized the enhancement of infrastructural controls in Southeast Asia. Studies show that there is no discernible divide between high-income versus low-income countries, or even regime types. Myanmar, the poorest ASEAN country in 2023,[4] has almost the same capability of internet filtering and shutdown as Singapore, the region's richest country; and even surpasses it in social media monitoring capability. This corroborates existing studies showing that digital repression is ubiquitous as well as reinforcing of the "need-based" logic of state repression that political control and survival can drive states to repress their people, or in this case, build their capacity in anticipation of security threats.[5]
However, having high capacity does not ascertain action. Particularly, having the ability to block access to websites or shutting down the internet entirely does not mean that a government would act accordingly.
With socioeconomic risks substantiated, it is intuitive for states to resort to an internet shutdown only when necessary. Such necessity, from a state's perspective, can be seen in post-coup Myanmar. The Myanmar junta has been facing harsh criticisms and fierce resistance from the public. As such, shutdowns are needed not only to cut the information channels from within and outside of Myanmar but also to make it more difficult for the revolutionary forces to communicate and coordinate against the junta. Myanmar citizens have been experiencing vast, intermittent internet shutdowns since the coup in 2021. The longest complete shutdown lasted for a total of seventy-two days and service blockage (e.g., blocking access to social media, VPNs, some websites, etc.) has been ongoing for 1,091 days since the coup.[6] Consequently, the country has foregone US$953,631,077 on GDP (PPP) and US$117,864,732 on FDI since the beginning of the coup in shutting down the internet. Other Southeast Asian governments seem to prefer softer, more imperceptible approaches such as social media surveillance and censorship for infrastructural control.
As for informational manipulation, all states appear to engage in some level of disinformation campaigns or information operations, though the magnitude varies. However, it is difficult to pinpoint the reasons or incidents in each country that drive the selection of such a tactic from the data alone. On aggregate, state-sponsored information operations are more prevalent in countries in which the situation requires the government to seek approval and support or convince the populace of something--usually of its legitimacy or performance. It is also imperative to note that one of the factors contributing to the popularity of dis/misinformation campaigns is that it is relatively more affordable compared to other types of digital repression. Therefore, a "cybertroopers" phenomenon has become rampant in the past few years.[7] Furthermore, it can be further supplemented by regulatory frameworks and laws that aim to suppress dissent. For instance, someone who posts on social media criticizing the government in Thailand runs the risk of being charged under the Computer-Related Crime Act B.E. 2550 (2007); and if they criticize the royal family, the prosecutor can add Article 112--known as lèse-majesté law--on top of that, too.
Highlights of the Situation in Southeast Asia
The situation in Southeast Asia regarding freedom in using the internet can be described as follows:
This is an edited short version of the article of the author entitled "How Means for Digital Repression in Southeast Asia Have Unfolded in Recent Times," published by ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in ISEAS Perspective on 27 August 2024. The full article is available at www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2024-65-how-means-for-digital-repression-in-southeast-asia-have-unfolded-in-recent-times-by-surachanee-hammerli-sriyai/.
Surachanee Sriyai (Hammerli) is a Visiting Fellow with the Media, Technology and Society Programme at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. She is also the interim director of the Center for Sustainable Humanitarian Action with Displaced Ethnic Communities (SHADE) under the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD), Chiang Mai University.
For further information, please contact: Surachanee Sriyai (Hammerli), email: hs.sriyai@gmail.com or shade.rcsd@gmail.com, website: www.hssriyai.com.
[1] The United Nations' Department for Economic and Social Affairs, "UN E-Government Knowledgebase," Regional Data on EDGI, 2023, https://publicadministration.un.org/egovkb/enus/Data/Region-Information.
[2] About Freedom on the Net, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net.
[3] Benjamin Nyblade, Angela O'mahony, and Aim Sinpeng, "Social Media Data and the Dynamics of Thai Protests," Asian Journal of Social Science 43 (2015): 545-66, https://doi.org/10.1163/15685314-04305003.
[4] International Monetary Fund (IMF), "Report for Selected Countries and Subjects," World Economic Outlook Database, 2023, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weodatabase/2023/April/weoreport?c=516,522,536,544,548,518,566,576,578,582,&s=NGDPD,PPPGDP,NGDPDPC,PPPPC,LP,&sy=2021&ey=2028&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1.
[5] Erica Frantz, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, and Joseph Wright, "Digital Repression in Autocracies"(Gothenberg, Sweden, 2020), https://v-dem.net/media/publications/digital-repression17mar.pdf;
Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age (MIT Press, 2011); Jennifer Earl, Thomas V. Maher, and Jennifer Pan, "The Digital Repression of Social Movements, Protest, and Activism: A Synthetic Review," Science Advances 8, no. 10 (2022): 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abl8198.
[6] Internet Society, "Global Internet Shutdowns," 2024, https://pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns.
[7] Used here as a catch-all term though different countries may refer to the state-sponsored/paid social media agents differently; such as "cybertroopers" in Thailand; "paid buzzers" in Indonesia, etc.