To censor and oppress : the political and discursive weaponization of 'fake news' by the authoritarian state in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Fake news acquired salience as a political issue in contemporary society following the conduct of the 2016 US presidential elections, where its widespread dissemination impinged upon the integrity of the elections, stunning the world. While the initial focus of politicians and scholars were directed towards understanding of the empirical effects of fake news on democratic institutions, emergent research increasingly points to the potential of fake news being weaponized by state actors as a discursive tool to achieve a variety of political ends – from manipulating public opinion through the use of fake news to instrumentalizing the issue to justify crackdowns against civil liberties. In that light, this thesis sets out to analyze the dynamics of political responses to fake news in authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia. As over-arching research focuses, it asks: (1) how have authoritarian states in the region politically responded to fake news, (2) what are the outcomes and consequences of these responses, and (3) what are the motivations behind these responses? The thesis is presented as a research collection comprising five articles organized as standalone chapters that address key separate yet related questions on fake news and disinformation. The first chapter employs discourse and textual analysis to analyze the political implications of the discourses of fake news as advanced by SEA authoritarians. The next two chapters present case studies that employ securitization theory to examine the cases of Singapore and Malaysia, analyzing authoritarian responses to fake news, their social implications as well as explaining why the securitization process failed in the case of Malaysia. The fourth chapter examines the differentiated impact of fake news and disinformation on minorities in Indonesia, as well as the effectiveness of state responses. The final chapter presents a case study of the implementation of Thailand’s new anti-fake news measures, employing legal analysis to unpack its compatibility with enshrined guarantees to the freedom of expression and suggesting a normative path forward. Primary data for these projects was collected through, respectively, discourse and textual analysis, the conduct of national surveys and interviews, and legal analysis. Overall, this thesis reveals that (authoritarian) governments have sought to construe fake news as existential security issues in order to justify the adoption of wide-ranging criminal legislation restricting free speech and expression, as well as in pursuit of political capital. This highlights how fake news can be damaging to important democratic institutions not only as a result of its empirical dissemination, but also through the discursive instrumentalization of the term to curb liberties and justify crackdowns. Further, it suggests that implementations of broad punitive legislation may not be an optimal approach towards fake news, given that they are likely to be more motivated by political circumstances than by the objective resolution of the problem. This thesis contributes to the scholarship on authoritarianism, fake news/misinformation and securitization theory, facilitating an understanding of how authoritarian regimes respond to the issue of fake news, shedding light on the social implications of these responses as well as empirically explaining the heightened political salience of the issue of fake news in Southeast Asia. Theoretically, it contributes to scholarly debates on securitization theory including critiques about its Eurocentricity and the understudied issue of failed securitizations.