Note: Registration is now required to join the conversation.
Date and Time: March 26, 3PM – 4:30PM Bangkok time (UTC+7)
Room: Zoom (to be emailed to registrants prior to the event)
Description:
Global platforms, such as Meta, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and Telegram, have faced widespread criticisms for facilitating authoritarian repression of dissident voices, especially in the Global South. In response, human rights defenders have increasingly launched advocacy efforts toward the foreign platforms to defend free speech. Despite the varying forms and effects of such transnational efforts, there lacks research that systematically examines their dynamics.
This research advances a concept of pro-democracy platform advocacy and scrutinises the extent to which such advocacy might affect Big Tech’s practices and curb platform-mediated repression in the Global South. The comparative empirical evidence comes from Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia, as there exist similar combinations of digital repression while the human rights advocates adopt varying advocacy approaches during 2020–2024.
The research conducted an exploratory mixed methods analysis of an original dataset of 38 semi-structured expert interviews, 6000 Facebook posts, and relevant Meta’s Transparency Reports. The researchers find that platform advocacy efforts are more likely to generate significant impact if the advocates focus on issues that resonate with Western democracies, promote campaign publicity via prominent international allies, and are able to engage marginalised dissidents. The research makes important contributions to both the platform governance and transnational advocacy scholarship by underscoring the unique dynamics of Big Tech governance under authoritarianism in the Global South. Methodologically, by strictly limiting the scope of social media processing to publicly available content with carefully selected accounts and keywords, this research showcases a promising big-data design that minimises privacy risks to vulnerable social media users.
Guest speakers:
Mai Van Tran is an inter-disciplinary researcher of digital cultures in Southeast Asia. She is based at the Centre for Digitalisation, Democracy and Innovation of the Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research has focused on how social dynamics change with the emergence of new social media platforms.
Haymarn Soe Nyunt is a student unionist and researcher focusing on social movements, displacement, labor struggles, and education. He works as a researcher at the Hta Naung Institute and is a member of the Virtual Federal University (VFU). He holds the position of Head of the Education and Research Committee at the University of Yangon Students’ Union and acts as a representative for the University of Yangon – University Interim Council (UYUIC). His writings have been featured on platforms such as Tea Circle, Visual Rebellion, Equal Times, and IJBS, among others.
Tuwanont Phattharathanasut is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His research lies at the intersection of political sociology, youth, activism, and transnationalism, with a particular focus on transnational activist networks in East and Southeast Asia. In addition to his academic pursuits, he is engaged in dialogues with scholars and activists to explore the broader implications of his findings for current sociopolitical challenges.
