Cyber Resistance in Myanmar: Fighting the Military Online and from Abroad

• In Event: Media-Based Drivers and Consequences of Protests

Abstract

After nearly a decade of democratization, Myanmar experienced a military coup in early 2021. However, there has been significant resistance to the military regime online. Online resistance to the military regime in Myanmar can be understood as cyber resistance – where the goal is to “overthrow political regimes” (Hossein, 2023). That said, the military government also uses social media to spread (mis)information using computational propaganda, which scholars view as a “serious threat to the democratic potential of social media” (Hossein, 2023). In this paper, we use in-depth interviews with people in Myanmar to examine the role of social media in resisting the military’s high jacking of Myanmar’s democracy. We also examine the prevalence of computational propaganda and other ways the military seeks to extinguish the resistance (e.g. through internet shutdowns, social media surveillance, etc.). We go beyond existing research by not focusing on activists both inside and outside of Myanmar. We show the outsized importance of the online diaspora in helping fight the war inside Myanmar. The purpose of this research is to understand the effect of internet and social media use in on political conflict. More specifically, we hope to answer a central question in political communications research, namely, how the internet, and social media in particular, contribute to the expansion and/or erosion of democracy in non-Western contexts.

Authors

• Mona S. Kleinberg, CUNY - Queens College

• Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, University of Massachusetts - Lowell

• Myat Su Tin, University of Massachusetts Lowell