Abstract
This chapter investigates the disruptive impact of social media in politically volatile contexts in the Global South. The controversial role of Facebook in facilitating hate speech and disinformation that led to widespread violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar will be discussed. The chapter will also analyze the role of Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp in allowing the circulation of disinformation during the 2018 general elections in Brazil, won by controversial far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro. The chapter discusses the problematic role of social media platforms as arbiters of global political speech, as their affordances and incentives tend to favor sensational and inflammatory content. The problem is compounded by the inability of State institutions, particularly in countries with a weak democratic tradition, to exert control and enforce oversight on the content of social media platforms.
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Notes
- 1.
“Since the 1970s, successive Burmese governments have sought to reduce the Muslim population in parts of Rakhine State by not issuing them new citizenship cards, and restricting their access to healthcare, educational institutions, and economic opportunities, among other means” (Fink 2018).
- 2.
United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. (2018). Myanmar: UN Fact-Finding Mission releases its full account of massive violations by military in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23575&LangID=E.
- 3.
BBC News. (2017). “Rohingya crisis: Suu Kyi says fake news helping terrorists”. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41170570.
- 4.
Rannard, G. (2017). “Rohingya crisis: What’s behind these 1.2 million tweets?” BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41160953.
- 5.
Long, K. (2019). “The war for truth in Myanmar’s cyberspace”. Coda. https://codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/myanmar-facebook-conflict-rakhine/.
- 6.
As an example, a widely circulating picture supposedly showing Rohingya militants was in fact a photograph of Bangladeshi fighting in the 1971 independence war. See Head, J. (2017). “Myanmar conflict fake photos inflame tension”. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41123878.
- 7.
On top of several inaccurate historical claims, the book also included several fake photographic documents, according to a Reuters report published by The Guardian. See The Guardian. (2018). “Myanmar army fakes photos and history in sinister rewrite of Rohingya crisis”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/31/myanmar-army-fakes-photos-and-history-in-sinister-rewrite-of-rohingya-crisis.
- 8.
Long (2019).
- 9.
Hatmaker, T. (2018). “Facebook Free Basic program ended quietly in Myanmar”. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/facebook-free-basics-ending-myanmar-internet-org/.
- 10.
The service was discontinued after September 2017, officially as part of a regulatory effort by the Myanmar government.
- 11.
“Telecommunications data indicates Facebook accounted for as much as 80 percent of daily in-country web traffic at its peak, with most browsing of external sites taking place through the platform” (Long 2019).
- 12.
This phenomenon is not limited to Myanmar, but it is common to other developing countries. See Mirani, L. (2015). “Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet”. Quartz. https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet/.
- 13.
Taub, A., & Fisher, M. (2018). “Where countries are Tinderboxes and Facebook is a match”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/world/asia/facebook-sri-lanka-riots.html.
- 14.
Stecklow, S. (2018). “Why Facebook is losing the war on hate speech in Myanmar”. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate/.
- 15.
Long (2019).
- 16.
Stecklow (2018).
- 17.
Taub and Fisher (2018).
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Stecklow (2018).
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Rennó, R., et al. (2018). “WhatsApp: The widespread use of WhatsApp in political campaigning in the Global South”. Tactical Tech. https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/whatsapp/.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Tardáguila, C., et al. (2018). “Fake news is poisoning Brazilian politics. WhatsApp can stop it”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/opinion/brazil-election-fake-news-whatsapp.html.
- 24.
Magenta, M., et al. (2018). “How WhatsApp is being abused in Brazil’s elections”. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45956557.
- 25.
Rennó, R., et al. (2018). See also Tactical Tech. (2018). “Brazilian elections and the public-private data trade”. https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/overview-brazil/.
- 26.
One of the most famous examples of false images was a picture purporting to show a young Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil impeached in 2016, next to Fidel Castro, suggesting that she had had been his student. Mrs. Rousseff was not, however, the woman of the picture. Still, as noted by Tardáguila et al. (2018) “such images are effective in smearing Ms. Rousseff and the Workers’ Party — of which Mr. Haddad is a member — in a country where there is much antipathy to communism among the middle class”.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Rennó et al. (2018).
- 29.
Rocha, Y. (2018). “How Brazil’s Trump is using WhatsApp to win election”. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/90256810/how-brazils-trump-is-using-whatsapp-to-win-election.
- 30.
Phillips, D. (2018a). “Bolsonaro business backers accused of illegal WhatsApp fake news campaign”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/18/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-whatsapp-fake-news-campaign.
- 31.
PT stands for ‘Partido dos Trabalhadores’ (Workers’ Party).
- 32.
Bolsonaro was accused of wanting to increase taxes on the poorest, and fake stories started spreading after a knife attack that left Bolsonaro seriously injured one month before the elections, alleging that it had been staged to boost his popularity. See Phillips, D. (2018b). “Brazil battles fake news ‘tsunami’ amid polarized presidential election”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/18/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-whatsapp-fake-news-campaign.
- 33.
Phillips (2018b).
- 34.
Tardáguila et al. (2018).
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
“One clip purporting to show leftwing supporters attacking a car with a Bolsonaro sticker was found to be from a 2017 protest against the current president Michel Temer. A viral image showing the leftwing VP candidate Manuela D’Avila with tattoos of Vladimir Lenin and Che Guevara was quickly found to be false”. See Kaiser, A. J. (2018). “The Brazilian group scanning WhatsApp for in run-up to elections”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/26/brazil-elections-comprova-project-misiniformation-whatsapp.
- 37.
Rennó et al. (2018).
- 38.
Long, C. (2018). “Why WhatsApp is Brazil’s go-to political weapon”. The Brazilian Report. https://brazilian.report/society/2018/04/13/whatsapp-fake-news-elections/.
- 39.
Amis, L., & Fiori, J. (2018). “The torturer”. The Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-torturer/?fbclid=IwAR12RgOZu0UM4OjCpd3llgraVVDvSwsODW98OLXaxNtj2C6eW7Cs9wgKrrU.
- 40.
Fisher, M., & Taub, A. (2019). “How YouTube radicalized Brazil”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-brazil.html.
- 41.
Cotroneo, R. (2018). “Brasile, allarme fake news su WhatsApp alle presidenziali. Il Tribunale elettorale: «Ci vogliono misure severe»”. Corriere della Sera. https://www.corriere.it/tecnologia/18_ottobre_16/brasile-allarme-fake-news-whatsapp-presidenziali-tribunale-elettorale-ci-vogliono-misure-severe-2b012770-d158-11e8-81a5-27b20bf95b8c.shtml.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Daniels, C. (2018). “How WhatsApp is fighting misinformation in Brazil”. Facebook. https://about.fb.com/news/h/how-whatsapp-is-fighting-misinformation-in-brazil/.
- 44.
Tardáguila et al. (2018).
- 45.
Goel, V., et al. (2018). “How WhatsApp leads mobs to murder in India”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/whatsapp-india-killings.html.
- 46.
Tardáguila et al. (2018).
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Cosentino, G. (2020). Tribal Politics: The Disruptive Effects of Social Media in the Global South. In: Social Media and the Post-Truth World Order. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43005-4_5
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