Digital and Social Media: Connecting with the World Outside, Part 1
The social impact of digital media communication is more encompassing than that of earlier technologies of communication. Digital forms mediate often disjointed, fragmented, and episodic narratives that are visually and emotionally charged, circulate rapidly through social networks, and appeal to diverse, trans-local audiences whose agency is informed by social media messages. Indeed, contemporary digital technologies enable different realities – in time, space, and identity – and render them into constant features of social life. Our constant access to digital communication largely forecloses the possibility of living in an exclusively emic or homogeneous imaginary.
After 2011, Myanmar’s economic liberalization was accompanied by open access to international news sites as well as to Burmese news sites in exile. Although certain restrictions on freedom of expression via press media or in public speeches continued to be enforced by the state, access to both print and digital media was vastly expanded. While digital access is now available in most towns and cities, the penetration of cellphone towers to areas beyond the heartland remains a challenge. Yet, in combination with solar power sources, digital communication, television, and cellphone use have emerged and are used side-by-side with manual agricultural labor practices, despite the lack of mechanized agriculture in remote areas. The picture below shows a solar panel next to a recently built monastery.
As the map below shows, conflict-prone regions with minimal human development are more prone to conflict and also have less access to digital communication.
For those with connectivity, the sudden access to new media enabled leap-frogging and access to a wider, global discourse amidst rapid economic growth. With nearly half of the population using cell phones, individuals and organizations have become adept users of digital media in order to create social networks, shape public opinion, and mobilize supporters (Brooten et al. 2017).
New and widespread access to digital media on cell phones spurred the resurgence of a “free Myanmar.” Connectivity was tied to the increase in unfiltered reactivity among users who were unschooled in public speaking and its potential impact. As a result, all forms of media and the press are exploring new boundaries of civil discourse. Freedom of expression, though still constrained in many ways, has amplified public discourse through the advent of social media that functioned largely outside the reach of information censorship. New freedoms in the use of print and digital media have played critical roles in opening up the range of opinions that can now be expressed and contested through public media. The range of opinions expressed speaks to a salient search for a renewed relevance of Buddhist practices in the rapidly changing contexts of the contemporary era. Civil discourse became collateral damage, as Lisa Brooten wrote in her essay on “The (Lost?) Art of Civil Discourse: Rise of media use in Myanmar.”
Digital communication technologies quickly took hold via cell phones, texting, images, and other forms of objectification out of context, facilitated by soundscapes, TV, cassettes, and SIM cards. The sound of Buddhist sermons and chanting has become an almost ever-present soundscape in shops and other public places. The rapid growth in the use of new media had far-reaching consequences for new developments in Buddhist discourse and groups amidst growing communal tensions. Heightened styles of communications can either disrupt or augment established Theravada discourse and practices and almost always increase their impact on social networks. With the arrival of new media, new Buddhist sentiments began to be articulated to rally and mobilize communities. New articulations of Buddhist identities responded to liberalization and concurrent anxieties about the nation’s future.
A range of religious actors employed new communication technologies, including Buddhist TV broadcasts and digital media like chat rooms, texting, and Facebook pages of monastic and lay organizations involved in propagating the Buddhist religion (thathana pyu thi) and mobilizing their supporters. Some voices used digital communications technologies to advocate for a Buddhist nationalism or to incite anti-Muslim hate speech.
Digital mobilization enabled the rapid growth of Buddhist nationalist sentiments articulated by the now-outlawed organizations of Ma Ba Tha. Their spokesperson, Wirathu, is known for fomenting Buddhist Islamophobia and encouraging anti-Muslim rioting. “U Wirathu, a leader of the ultra-nationalist and anti-Islamic 969 movement, made [the following] statement at a press conference at his monastery in Mandalay on 6 July 2014. His message to Muslims was simple: they don’t belong in Myanmar” (Cable, 2014). Communal tensions often followed Wirathu’s sermons in Arakan and around the country, and he was prohibited from preaching in 2017. His organization’s use of digital media fomented hatred of Muslims and the corresponding rise of Buddhist nationalist sentiments online, while its ideology was also delivered through the organization’s network in preaching, dhamma talks, and Sunday school lessons throughout the country.
Example: Listen to this podcast about the history of Buddhist Nationalism in Burma
