Disinformation and democracy: Challenges in social media regulation in Southeast Asia
disinformation and democracy:
Challenges in social media regulation in southeast Asia
WRITTEN BY JAPHET QUITZON
5 June 2024
Disinformation and misinformation campaigns across Southeast Asia have caught global attention. The Philippines and Indonesia, the region’s two largest democracies, are now led by leaders who were catapulted into power in part by tapping into their electorate’s frustrations through elaborately orchestrated social media-based disinformation campaigns. Disinformation has significant implications for domestic politics and national security in both countries.
Clear, unbiased media is crucial to maintaining sociopolitical discourse in a healthy democracy. With trust in mainstream media in the region at a record low, social media has filled the void, providing myriad opportunities for foreign and domestic actors to engage in manipulation and contribute to societal polarization. Barriers to freedom of the press, combined with the ubiquity of social media in many Southeast Asian countries, create a difficult environment for mitigating the impact of disinformation. Regulating social media remains a thorny issue that raises the spectre of unnecessary government censorship. Indonesia and the Philippines provide a snapshot of regional anti-democratic electoral trends — are they making efforts to improve the flow of accurate information within their countries even as press freedoms are under attack?
The threat of social media in Southeast Asia
In the aftermath of the 2016 national elections that brought Rodrigo Duterte into office, a Facebook executive described the Philippines as “patient zero” in the global disinformation epidemic. Domestically-produced disinformation and misinformation campaigns within the Philippines first caught significant international attention under Duterte, drastically changing the country’s information landscape.
Beyond its effect on domestic politics, social media also demonstrates the potential to advance the agenda of foreign agents in Southeast Asian countries.
Current President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. built off Duterte’s playbook with great success and came into power in 2022 with nearly double the votes of his closest opponent winning an unprecedentedly strong mandate. Critics attribute Marcos Jr.’s success to a decades-long image rehabilitation project — by perfecting disinformation campaigns and spreading them far and wide through Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, among other platforms, the Marcos family whitewashed its past and returned to power in a landslide.
In neighbouring Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto swept to power by following a very similar playbook, and won 58.59 per cent of the votes, more than double his closest opponent. Through choreographed TikTok videos, Prabowo traded in his strongman image from previous presidential campaigns for a new “cuddly grandpa” persona. Like the Marcoses, he swept his checkered past of alleged human rights abuses under the Suharto regime under the rug.
Beyond its effect on domestic politics, social media also demonstrates the potential to advance the agenda of foreign agents in Southeast Asian countries. In the Philippines, for example, the proliferation of Chinese-sponsored social media bots in response to the Philippine Coast Guard’s naming and shaming approach to Chinese aggression against Philippine mariners in the South China Sea has created internal divisions within Philippine society.
In the wake of the proliferation of hate speech, manipulation, and disinformation, Meta was pressured by regional countries to undertake efforts to combat the spread of harmful content on their platform in 2022. In August 2023, Meta removed thousands of accounts and Facebook pages run by operators across China, in one of the “largest known cross-platform covert operation[s] in the world”. The Philippines, like many Western countries, has identified TikTok as a potential avenue for foreign disinformation and prohibited its military personnel from using the app. TikTok was temporarily banned in Indonesia in 2018 on grounds of “pornography, inappropriate content, and blasphemy”, while its e-commerce service, TikTok Shop, narrowly avoided a ban by buying Tokopedia, Indonesia’s largest e-commerce platform in December 2023.
Implementing effective social media regulation will prove difficult given the two countries’ problematic histories of handling press freedom. Heavy-handed attempts at regulation, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, have the potential to be used as a springboard with which to silence opposition and censor anti-government opinions from the media as in Cambodia and Thailand in 2020.
Bad precedents: Press freedom in Indonesia and the Philippines
Along with many other countries in the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia and the Philippines have spotty records with protecting civil and political liberties, both suffering from declining press freedoms. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports falling press freedom scores in 26 of the 32 Asia-Pacific countries. In four Southeast Asian nations, the press situation is considered “very serious” while five others are described as “difficult”. Indonesia ranks 111th out of 180 countries for press freedom, while the Philippines ranks 134th. Moreover, the Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. As of 2023, the Philippines ranks 7th on the Global Impunity Index by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), citing the failure of Philippine authorities to prosecute killers of slain journalists within the country. In Indonesia, 89 cases of attacks against independent journalists and media were documented in 2023, the highest number in 10 years. Of these cases, 36 were perpetrated by state actors, 29 were by non-state actors, and 24 were not identified while only two of the perpetrators were found guilty. In both countries, these cases are often dismissed.
In the Philippines, the Marcos administration inherited a fraught human rights record. From 2016-2022, former President Duterte became notorious for human rights abuses stemming from his bloody war on drugs. Controversially, then-President Duterte warned journalists that they could be targeted for assassination should they step out of line. Duterte was even instrumental in the shutdown of ABS-CBN, the Philippines’ largest broadcast network that was often critical of his drug war. Meanwhile, Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler, another prominent Duterte-critical news agency, faced trumped-up legal charges that were only dismissed under the Marcos administration.
Red-tagging political opponents and administration-critical journalists proliferated under the Duterte administration. Anti-fake news bills proposed in the Philippines from 2018 to 2022 were largely opposed by journalists and media literacy advocates. The Marcos administration, keenly aware of its international image, has gestured toward the importance of human rights in the Philippines — on 12 May, President Marcos created a “super body” for human rights protection in the country, aiming to create a human-rights-centered approach toward drug control and counterterrorism. Earlier on 8 May, The Philippine Supreme Court officially defined red-tagging as a threat to individual safety, utilising intimidation to “discourage subversive activities”.
Indonesia does not fare much better than the Philippines in ensuring press freedom — in the past few years, journalists have been detained or were physically threatened for reporting. The Indonesian government, unlike the Philippine government, succeeded in passing regulations criminalising the act of “intentionally broadcasting false news or statements that incite chaos in society” in Article 14(1) of Law No.1/1946. The laws, criticised by human rights defenders and the United Nations for restricting freedom of expression, were used by the government to silence investigative journalists. Muhammad Arsul was sentenced to three months in jail for defamation in 2021 while working on a corruption case. In 2023, journalist Weren Timo’s house was burned down following several threats linked to his reporting on illegal gambling activities. Any discussion of the Indonesian military’s crackdown on separatism in West Papua is generally censored and in the wake of pro-independence demonstrations in Papua in 2019, authorities placed an Internet blackout on the region to prevent coverage.
Minimal incentives for reform
Given the democratic nature of their societies and large populations, the Philippines and Indonesia have the potential to benefit from first-mover advantage within ASEAN to spearhead balanced regulation of social media platforms to mitigate the impacts of disinformation. But, given their often-heavy-handed attempts at regulating their respective information spheres, significant efforts must be made to ensure press freedoms before meaningful change could be enacted. Moreover, given the edge disinformation operations gave their respective campaigns, neither Marcos nor Prabowo would have a strong incentive to pursue regulation.
Already, the Marcos administration is making an initial attempt to improve the situation on paper; however, it remains unclear if these initiatives will bear fruit. Prabowo has made no such commitments to improve human rights, which is especially alarming considering his record. Notably, he did not pledge to protect press freedom as his two opponents did.
Change is difficult to accomplish in Indonesia and the Philippines — with an electorate deeply swayed by candidate personality and diminishing regard for liberal democracy in both countries such press freedom guarantees may be more difficult to achieve, complicating the future of disinformation regulation in the two countries.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Japhet Quitzon is a research associate with the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Image credit: Unsplash/Muhammad Raufan Yusup.