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Southeast Asia and Disinformation

2024/12/12
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Ibrahim Suffian (Ben)
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Sutawan Chanprasert (Ploy)
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Sutawan Chanprasert (Ploy): 我主要关注信息紊乱与东南亚民主和人权的关系,通常观察到的是国内发生的虚假信息,其目标是支持东南亚的威权政权或政府。但我也注意到来自中国相关的虚假信息来自国外,虽然目标不同,但同样具有政治性。中国希望主导全球政治,尤其是在东南亚,菲律宾受到了中国虚假信息宣传的影响,因南海问题成为中国虚假信息宣传的特别目标。2020年,Facebook 宣布删除源自中国的网络,这些网络主要针对菲律宾,使用虚假账户冒充当地人,放大彼此的内容,尤其是在南海的军事活动方面。Grafika 称中国的网络行动积极干预菲律宾政治,通过推广亲华政客来产生数百万次的互动。在美国重申对菲律宾的防务承诺后,中国立即发起了针对菲律宾的“新奇观望”行动。自2023年8月以来,中国共产党创建了一个宣传机构,声称菲律宾在南海问题上是侵略者。一位菲律宾政客以小马科斯在西菲律宾海的亲美政策为由,呼吁棉兰老岛从菲律宾分离。 Ibrahim Suffian (Ben): 我们发现有相当数量的外国势力参与到国内的信息传播中,一些外国势力利用马来西亚作为跳板,向该地区其他地方进行虚假信息传播。虚假信息影响了马来西亚人对地区、地缘政治以及他们生活决策的看法。在新冠疫情期间,人们根据接收到的信息来源来选择特定类型的疫苗。在马来西亚,能够动员公众舆论的人在选举中往往能获得优势,人们越来越少依赖传统媒体,而更多依赖有影响力的人、付费帖子和背景模糊的商业来源。这种情况在推特上的年轻用户中尤为普遍,因为他们不再像过去那样消费媒体。国内受众对世界各地发生的事情非常感兴趣,他们消费的信息来源会影响他们的观点和看法,进而影响他们与国内的关系。目前,马来西亚对中关系普遍赞扬,没有太多虚假信息。在媒体中,我们看到了一些关于新疆局势的不同解读,以及对现实的不同呈现。马来西亚的媒体格局根据人们使用的语言而划分,其中华语媒体中存在较多的虚假信息。一些在马来西亚运营的媒体公司由在中国有商业利益的商人或家族经营,因此不断放大中国的积极信息。马来语和英语受众对中国持谨慎态度,很难在这些媒体中看到来自中国的虚假信息,如果有的话,也只是放大积极信息。在华语媒体中,中国政府的官方媒体声明直接进入马来西亚的华语媒体,没有经过解读,有时甚至没有改写。几年前,中国空军战机入侵马来西亚专属经济区,引发了马来西亚公众的担忧。当我们查看华语媒体的报道时,发现大部分都是中国大使馆和中国政府的官方声明。近年来,没有发生非常公然的虚假信息,部分原因是与中国在海上边界上的紧张或冲突程度目前是可控的。马来西亚华语媒体对国际新闻的报道倾向于采取中国共产党宣传的观点。马来语媒体更关注中东地区,对中国在以色列-加沙冲突中扮演的角色表示赞赏。中国在以巴冲突中扮演的角色影响了马来西亚人对中国的看法,认为中国是和平缔造者,而不是支持种族灭绝。

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From Carnegie, China, this is China in the World. Engaging leading scholars and former policymakers on China's foreign policy, evolving global role, and relations with Southeast Asia in particular. Brought to you by the East Asia-based Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Hi, welcome to this special five-episode series of the China and the World podcast from Carnegie China. We're looking at Southeast Asian perspectives on the People's Republic of China with Southeast Asian voices from Southeast Asia. My name is Ian Chong. I'm a non-resident scholar with Carnegie China and an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this installment of the China and the World podcast, looking at China through a Southeast Asian lens.

I'm very pleased to have with me Sutawan Champrasut, who also goes by Ploy, and Ibrahim Sufian, who goes by Ben. Ploy is head of Digital Reach, an organization dedicated to looking at digital rights in Southeast Asia. She's based in Bangkok. Ben is director of the Medeka Center, an opinion poll and media research organization based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Both have done a lot of work looking at myths and disinformation in Southeast Asia and beyond.

So I'm really, really pleased to have them. Would you like to say hi? Hi Ian, how are you? And pleased to meet Lloyd. Hi, thank you so much for the introductions. Nice to meet you too, Ben. Great. So let's get started. To begin, let's be clear about terms. There's disinformation, which is the intentional spread of false information. And then there is misinformation, which is unintentional spread of the same.

There's certainly a lot of both in Southeast Asia, but today we're going to focus on those relating to the PRC. We'll begin by giving a lay of the land. Hoi, why don't you go first? Okay, so, um...

Let's talk about my work overall first. So disinformation is part of the work that I do. It's because it's part of the issues related to digital rights that I've been working on. So my work mostly is about information disorder in relation to democracy and human rights in Southeast Asia.

what I usually observe is disinformation that happened within the country. And usually this kind of disinformation has an objective that favored authoritarian regime or government in Southeast Asia. But in case of the PRC-related disinformation, it's something that I have spot recently.

is disinformation that is from outside of the country. Of course, it has a different objective, but it's also a political one. Right. So, Ben, what are you seeing? Yeah, I mean, we've been doing opinion research work for a number of years, nearly more than 15 years. And in the last five, six years, we've expanded to look into

this information, particularly in the domestic setting, because we've seen a lot of that happening in our domestic politics. And as we explore this particular topic, we find that there's quite a significant amount of involvement from foreign sources, both directed towards the domestic audience

but also from foreign sources using Malaysia as a springboard to rebroadcast to other parts of the region. So I think we find that that's something very interesting. And one of the net effect is it has, you know, colored perceptions that ordinary Malaysians feel towards the region, the geopolitics that are unfolding, but also specific decisions that they make about their own lives, their

For example, during the COVID pandemic, people made decisions based on the sources that they received to choose particular types of vaccines, so on and so forth. What kinds of sources are there and what do they generally try to target? Are there

Well, I mean, in the Malaysian context, you know, we have a very competitive, very volatile domestic political scene. And this has been pretty much the case over the last decade because elections are very competitive. We've had changes of government through the democratic process and the media is now relatively free or rather free for all. And therefore, the segment of elections

Well, the people who can mobilize public opinion on their favor tends to get some traction and may have advantage in elections. And I think what we are also noticing is that the quote-unquote, you know, official source of information, that has diminished. People are relying less and less

on traditional institutional media, but they are instead relying more on influencers, on pre-APS, and also maybe commercial sources that have very vague or dubious backgrounds and things that are fake but are passed off as facts. So I think we see a lot of that happening now, and this is particularly the case with Twitter.

younger sets of the younger audiences because they no longer consume media in the same manner as it was 10, 20 years ago. And as a result, it is a very much, much more fluid and volatile situation. That happens in the domestic audience, but we also see that

The domestic audience also have a very large degree of interest in what's happening around them in different parts of the world. And that what sources of information they consume influences their views and opinions. And that affects their relationships with

in the country itself. Right. So, Ploy, from your vantage point, what does the landscape of mis- and disinformation look like? What does that look like for you? So, based on my work, since we have been observing how social media accountability can be more accountable in elections across Southeast Asia, so we have seen that disinformation is actually

play along with the political context. So it's play with the narrative of political, cultural environment in that particular country. For example, when we did a research on the 2022 presidential election in the Philippines, for example, so disinformation really play along with

how the Makos family could return to power by weaponizing social media platform. And also when we did the report for Malaysia, so it played with the polarization, ethnic polarization in the country really deeply. And in Thailand,

It continued from the previous election that the political opposition was framed to have a hidden agenda to topple the monarchy in Thailand, which is sensitive issues. So this is what we have observed so far. But if you're talking about

the situation that is related to China, it's something really different. From what I have spotted lately, it's about like, we know that China wants to dominate the global politics. That's what we see. And then

In Southeast Asia, in particular, the particular country that have been affected by the disinformation campaign by China, that based on our work is the Philippines. This is given the issues because they have...

attentions over the maritime territory in the South China Sea. And that's why the Philippines is particularly targeted for this. It's been going on for a long time though. So for example, the highlight example. So back in 2020, Facebook announced that it removed networks.

found to be originated in China. And this narrative focused primarily on the Philippines. And according to Facebook, they were able to identify several clusters of connected activity that relied on fake accounts, which posed as locals of the country they targeted.

And this account was reported to amplify each other's content, like and comment on other people's posts, particularly about the naval activity in the South China Sea. And Grafika

I'm sure that you're familiar with them, social media analytical firms. So they publish a report about this too. And they call this operation as the operational novel gazing. And they claim that the network actively

interfere in the Philippine politics and generate millions of digital interactions by promoting politicians that are favorable to China, including the former Philippine president at that time, Rodrigo Duterte. What is interesting about this is that the launch of the novel Gaysing Philippine Campaign

that occurred in March 2018, was initiated immediately after the U.S. Secretary of State at that time, Mike Pompeo, reaffirmed American defense commitment to the Philippines in the South China Sea. So after Marcos Jr. became the president, because of the history, so it's like because of the

history of his family too and also the policy so his policy uh considered to be more pro-us so a recent research by a local media outlet field star and the taiwan-based organization reporting lab so based on the report um they found that since august 2023 the chinese communist party

They create a propaganda apparatus that they publish news articles or editorials that claim...

that the Philippines was actually like an aggressor in the issues related to the South China Sea. One of the politicians, he's been vocal on the secession of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, to separate from the country. And he cited the reason that

It was because junior policy in the West Philippine Sea that favoured the US. How about you, Ben? What are you seeing? The sort of PRC within the broader context of disinformation? Well, I think the context of Malaysia, you know, the relationship between Malaysia and the PRC is a long-standing one. And this year...

We are celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations. And so this year, there isn't much disinformation. You know, everybody is singing praises about the relationship and the benefits that it has brought to the country. I think looking at the landscape of the media and the slants or disinformation that we're seeing,

I think there are a number of topics that we see signs of disinformation or at least some kind of differing interpretations of realities. You know, Malaysia has a very large Muslim majority population and over the years, there has been reports about the situation in Xinjiang and there has been a strong representation by Malaysian Muslim NGOs that raise concerns about the treatments of the population there.

from time to time. And this has generally gained a lot of traction, partly within the Muslim audience here in Malaysia. In terms of, let me backtrack a bit and speak about the

nature of the media landscape here. Media landscape is split along the different languages that people speak. So about 50-60% of the audience here in Malaysia is Malay speaking and therefore consume most of their news in that language. We have maybe about 25% consuming it in Chinese and

And then some consuming in Tamil, maybe about 7%. And I think the overall people who consume news in English is perhaps around 25% that cuts across all ethnic groups in the country. And I think where this information plays a strong role is within the Chinese media, in part because of the close affinity between the Malaysian-Chinese community and PRC due to cultural, family, as well as economic ties.

We see that as a broad measure, but we also notice that some of the media firms that operate out of Malaysia are run by business people or business families that also have commercial interests in China and therefore continue to amplify the positives that are coming out from China. So I think in the context of Malaysia,

the general view of the population is split along those ethnic lines. The Malay-speaking audiences, the English-speaking audiences tend to have a much more cautious view on China, and it's much, much harder to see disinformation

from China happening in that particular media. If any, it's only about amplifying positive messages. So if there's something about Xinjiang that appears in the Malay press, it's about tourism, it's about industry, it's about positives.

Of course, there are no reports about negatives there. But within the Chinese language media, there is substantive, I would say, disinformation that takes place and also a close relationship between, say, official Chinese government media statements that get into the Chinese media in Malaysia directly without interpretation and without even paraphrasing sometimes.

I think one interesting incident that took place about a couple of years ago was when there was a widespread incursion in the Malaysian Economic Exclusive Zone in South China Sea by Chinese Air Force warplanes.

There, it raised a lot of concerns within the Malaysian public because it was widely reported in the media. But when we checked on and monitored the media reports in our Chinese language press, most of it was carrying official statements from the Chinese embassy and also the Chinese government. So you can see different perspectives being put across.

We do not see any kind of very large, blatant disinformation take place in the last couple of years, in part because...

the level of, uh, I will say tension or conflict with China with respect to the maritime borders are manageable at present. If there are any issues there, things do not actually get into the press. People know or learn about it much, much later. And therefore the degree of disinformation is much, much muted. If there is any kind of disinformation is perhaps about interpretation of what's happening elsewhere, uh, in the world. So we, we noticed that, uh,

international news such as events that take place in the United States, the way it is portrayed in the Malaysian Chinese media tends to take a more view that's promoted by the CCP, for example. In the Malay language media, you know, not much happening there. Malay language media has a pro-Muslim, has a greater focus on what's happening on the Middle East. So I think if there's any...

that China has gained in the recent months or perhaps in the last year has been how it's played its role in the Israeli conflict in Gaza.

particularly recently when they gathered the representatives of the various Palestinian organizations, that got widely reported. So I don't count that as disinformation, but it does affect the view of ordinary Malaysians towards China, its role as a peacemaker as opposed to

supporting the genocide that's happening there. Why is it important for people to then look at or understand PRC-related disinformation in Southeast Asian and North Pacific countries? Because there's a lot of disinformation, different kinds of actors. Some of the issues seem to really...

focus on smaller minority groups. What's at stake here, if anything? I think let me just take a step at the question. I think what's at stake is actually number one is, you know, how people process the news and trust in the media. Because I think, you know, now it's a very fragmented media situation and what people see and hear may not necessarily be the truth, you know, with the invention of new technologies like AI and so on.

I think it's become more important to understand what's disinformation as opposed to actual news so that they know the real agendas and the motives and how it affects the decisions that they make. I think in the context of Malaysia and perhaps even countries in the region, it's also to understand that I think disinformation is not just

played by one party, but it's not actor-specific. Other countries deploy disinformation tactics as well in order to further their interest. So I think the broader issue at hand is how does one inoculate the audiences to understand

you know, how to discern disinformation, how to find alternative sources of information that are more credible and how to develop that sort of common sense approach towards processing news, you know, because I think it's very difficult now. And so the filtering approach

mechanism has to be in oneself. A lot of what you're seeing in Malaysia crosses the border into Singapore, I suppose, in Indonesia and vice versa as well. So on that point, what are your thoughts? What's at stake for trying to understand disinformation relating to the PRC in Southeast Asia? Well, I think that when we look at it, we realize that this is

part of the approach for political domination. And in the digital age, info war has become part of the spectrum in how political actors domestically and internationally has adopted for political advantages. Understanding will benefit

for us to understand that how the approach will evolve over time and this is also important for us to learn about it to understand more about the agenda behind the operation. Are there patterns in the narrative or particular kinds of

panels or styles. What should people be looking out for if they're unfamiliar with trying to discern or identify PRC-related disinformation? I think that it depends on what I have observed. So like in the case of the Philippines,

So we are aware that the issue is usually related to the maritime territory. And so based on the report, so for example, the one report that was published by the Philippine Star and the Boating Lab, so they spot the narrative as a pattern. So

In that report, they discovered that disinformation started to spread shortly after the Chinese vassal attacked the Philippine vassal. The Chinese disinformation campaign tried to paint the Philippines as an aggressor. So part of it is for, part of it is believed to be them to justify their action. Every time the resupply happened, the narrative is there to actually justify their action. Yeah.

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How about you, Ben? What sort of patterns do you see in terms of narratives or methods? Yeah, I think in the Malaysian context, the contestation with PRC is at a much lower level. There are, I think, issues with respect to South China Sea, some of the BRI-related projects, and also the investments that are occurring at the subnational level.

But I think in terms of overall patterns, it has been following about maybe three different themes. Number one, amplifying the strength and also the technological prowess of China, showing that China can solve the world's problems and therefore Malaysia ought to come close to it.

Number two, it also amplifies the negativity of its rival, the United States and the West in general. And I think here they have ready audience with respect to the Malay Muslim community that already harbors a significant level of distrust there. So that gets amplified, I think, quite significantly. So no need to disinform. It's just already pre-existing, you know, and so it's happening there. And the conversation

I think the third element is, you know, this diverting attention from the problems that are within China, particularly its treatment of Muslims and people of other faiths in the country, downplaying that significantly. And what we're noticing is that if there's any kind of controversy or issue, like I mentioned earlier, the incursion incidents,

some of the outlets that they are able to influence their proxies in the Malaysian

landscape, they tend to, they still report those issues, but they also add the number of other stories in order to kind of like drown out the negativity that's occurring within that particular news period. So you can see a pattern there that it hasn't turned into very contentious or adversarial positioning yet, but it has increased

definitely there is that, you know, the cut and thrust of the international politics. That definitely is happening. And we also know that

Both sides, on the Malaysian side as well as perhaps on the China side, are really trying to understand each other better. I think, you know, the situation has become a bit more fluid and I think both are trying to understand things better because, you know, we have had changes in government in Malaysia over the last five, six years. We've had maybe, you know, four different prime ministers in the last six years.

And so on the Chinese side as well, they are also trying to work with or understand who the local power brokers are and trying to get that. And so at the same time, they're trying to give something and they're trying to extract something in return. I think one of the interesting things that we're seeing is how they're trying to play up the advantages of the de-risking and de-coupling that we're seeing and also the

competition between the US and China. So we see that both sides are actively courting Malaysia and the Malaysians are really playing up to that in trying to get investments, particularly in the technology industry over the last two years. Two follow-up questions for you on that. The first is, we are seeing again a report of PRC Coast Guard vessels in the waters near Batu Petani Ali.

So in previous years, there was a lot of effort to shift the narrative around that. Are you seeing that? And the other thing that's sort of related is...

You know, in Singapore, and also when I observe other parts of South Asia, there's a sort of strong push talking about how the Philippines has been manipulated by the U.S. to take a confrontational stand, that the United States is trouble, that any involvement of the United States in anything would just lead to conflict and chaos.

And destabilization, are you getting any of that in Malaysia? I think the second point about the role of the US in trying to maneuver Philippines into contesting with China, that hasn't really appeared, I think, in the domestic scene. And even with people who are knowledgeable about the issue, didn't raise it that way.

I think, but on the first part, when in fact, with respect to Philippines, I think, you know, Malaysians have a different sort of view in the sense that the government system in Philippines is very, very different than Malaysia in the sense that you have a presidential system. So the president's

precedent has a very strong imprint in terms of the country's stance for its foreign policy and relationship with neighbours. Whereas in the context of Malaysia, the bureaucrats who are running our foreign ministry, they pretty much set the agenda and leaders change, but policies pretty much remain the same.

I think the only difference that we're seeing in the Malaysian context over the last two years is the emergence of the Anwar administration is the more heightened attention on trying to gain investments, trying to boost

economic activity. So he's continuously trying to visit overseas and trying to bring investors in. But on the first issue with respect to the presence of the Chinese Coast Guard vessel of Sarawak, that vessel has been there for years. They've been rotating and people sort of know about it. And I think there is a

There is, I would say, a long-standing concern about the topic because within segments of the population that are knowledgeable about the issue, you know, the defence security types,

that are knowledgeable about the issue, they do express some concerns there. But at the same time, they feel confident that they have adequate diplomatic channels to manage the relationship so that no accidents take place, that it doesn't become too hot, quote-unquote. Where there is some level of concern is how...

When politicians wade in into such issues, you know, basically, they are always concerned that politicians take on a position that, you know,

oversteps the national interest, you know, the national framing of such an issue. So I think we talked about the patterns and narratives and all that. So the other thing that both of you had alluded to earlier is the fact that, you know, we have varied sort of vectors or channels through which disinformation is spread, including disinformation from the PRC. You know, what sorts of

channels and vectors tend to be used in relation to PRC disinformation. And why do you think these vectors are chosen as opposed to others? I think that one channel that was used is, of course, social media platform. Even though the narrative disinformation campaign was actually on the Chinese outlet as well, but social media platform

also play along with the narrative as well. And I think that it works well when the narrative spread on social media platform. This is due to the fact that the Philippines is actually one of the

among the top countries that have the highest social media users in the world. The disinformation by China towards the Philippines, it's actually quite complicated and it's actually quite strategic as well because they play well with the situation. For example,

There's a rift between the Duterte clan and Malkoth Jr. clan at the moment. And

they were able to actually lead to Duterte to voice out that Mindanao needs independence. Yeah. Just because Marcos Jr. policy is actually pro-US, something like that. And at the end of it, experts said that the narrative is

It's really favored China in this case. I'm curious then, do you see generative AI being used? Because that's supposed to be the sort of next element in disinformation. Yeah. Well, I think that a few months ago, back in April, so McCross Jr. was actually...

attacked by Adi Fake Audio. So the narrative was that he was he's

voice was made uh-huh into a deep fake voice uh-huh and then he was um heard saying that he was commanding the arm ford of the philippine to take action against um a nation that was a name in the in the audio and people can guess that it means china mccall is actually here seen as um

An instigator? And this makes it like a justification for China to respond? So in recent months, we've also seen reports of the U.S. engaging in disinformation in the Philippines during the height of the pandemic, specifically surrounding vaccines. So have you seen that being played up?

There was actually a secret operation that happened during the Trump administration that tried to paint the Chinese vaccine at that time during the peak of the pandemic.

This causing like a lack of confidence for the Philippine citizens at that time. When you actually think about it, the Philippines is actually at the center. It's like they became a victim of the info war between these two nations. A couple of years ago, right after the pandemic sort of officially ended here, and in fact, even during the pandemic, we actually carried out polls among Malaysians about their vaccine preference. And we found that

quite a large, well, we found correlation between, you know, language preference and preference of vaccines that we found that Chinese, Chinese language audiences in Malaysia preferred to be vaccinated by the Chinese originated vaccines. And then the non-Chinese readers preferred the Western vaccines because at that time we had, you know, vaccines from China being offered to citizens here as well as those from,

US and Europe. We found that. And at the same time, there is also, I would say, again, correlation between the belief of the efficacy of the different vaccines that was differentiated between the language. The Chinese, Malaysians tend to believe that the Chinese vaccines were more effective and the non-Chinese ones were reading news from

as well as local newspapers that carried out statements coming from the West, essentially. So they believe that the Western vaccines are more effective. I suppose this will bring up the question of content farms, which you've actually worked on before as well. Yeah, I think in the Malaysian context, main avenues of production

this information tends to be the press itself because they are the ones that have the capacity to actually generate the content and generally still hold a high degree of trust amongst the population. For the most part, the public also do not know about the structure of ownership within the different media houses that exist in the country. And so typically they tend to consume it.

That's one. And number two is the people who amplify, the people who continue to rebroadcast these sorts of information. And this is what's happening in the social media space. So there are sort of individuals that work within their own circle of influence. Some are very large and they continue to amplify these things.

And so it's essentially based on trust. But if the source that is trusted is relying on

erroneous or, you know, purely pure disinformation, then a large group of people are definitely going to be conned along the way. With respect to content farms, we saw that take place here. We have content farms here that are routinely hired by commercial companies in order to flood the market with information about their products and services. Some are being used to rebroadcast back to China because they have projects that are

taking place there. So they actually rebroadcast commercial information back into China in order to do marketing or advertising. And the same farms are also used to carry out political news or political disinformation in the domestic setting and also hired to do disinformation on behalf of foreign powers with respect to their own

news items of interest, whether domestic audience or audiences in other Chinese-speaking countries like Hong Kong or Taiwan or Macau or whatever. So we have that happening here a lot. And there are all these little setups that are run pretty much for profit that are used to propagate news like that. For the moment, a lot of it is basically in Chinese language here, but

Within the Malay language, we are seeing nascent attempts on the part of China to try and reach out to this audience. It's very hard. So they have, you know, China Radio International journalists that are able to speak Malay and they are given slots on television and so on. They speak, but the...

the level of reach, audience reach is still very limited at present. Given what you've seen, what do you think could be done, if anything, with the sort of disinformation space in general, but the PRC-related ones in particular? I think, number one, you know, like I said earlier, is inoculating the audience. I think, you know,

without belaboring the point about digital literacy, I think some element of literacy and being able to sift through news and understand the so-called hidden agenda behind news articles need to be inculcated in ordinary audiences. That's one. Number two, officials and

you know, people with large following in the media need to be approached as well in order for them to play a more positive role in trying to highlight truth and also to address misinformation and disinformation coming out in the public. And then I think number three is also within the domestic context to actually

you know, have a kind of public education process about making people understand what is the national interest as opposed to the interest of the neighboring countries and the big powers that are competing for influence here in the region so that people can contextualize things and then they can see things through because it's nearly impossible to fact check everything

because the capacity is very limited. And even if we fact check or conduct digital literacy education with kids and also adults, you're just playing catch up. Because I think the level of disinformation and just things that are coming out is a fire hose. You know, the only way to address it, you know, to have some measure of success is to actually begin to make the wider public at large, you know, understand the building blocks of how to discern information

uh, the news that they, uh, consume. So who should be doing these, uh, doing this, uh, some engagement. You've talked about politicians and influencers, uh, but you know, should it be social media firms, media firms have a role in this for the civil society? Could it be the state, uh,

What are your thoughts? Well, I think social media firms is very hard to expect them to do this because they exist for profit and they are the ones that are benefiting, you know, regardless of whether what's coming out is true or false. I think civil society has to play a role. States have to play a role as well. But, you know, there is a double-edged sword here with respect to state. You know, at what point are they infringing on freedom of speech and also curtailing business activities? Yeah.

So I think civil society has to play a strong role. And then working directly with educational institutions and maybe the media itself in the country, because the media does still have space. The media is still a fountain of information that the domestic audiences rely on. So if they can be brought to see the other side of the coin and not just be a tool of communication,

I think people will appreciate them more and they will gain more trust from the audience. So, Ploy, how about you? What do you think can or should be done? I actually agree with what Ben said. And I think that what he said can be applied to what other countries need as well. I want to ask about, you know, thinking about the legislative to regulate COVID.

to regulate the information. Many countries in Southeast Asia are actually not going into the right direction because they tend to criminalize disinformation instead of using a more positive approach in that case. And that can also be just like in Singapore that they have POPPA.

In this case, they turn out to actually suppress freedom of expression instead if they want to use the approach to criminalize disinformation. Because if the state is the only actor that can police and consider what is disinformation and what is not. So in this case, they can actually end up suppress disinformation

any content that is critical of them instead of just get rid of disinformation itself. Yeah. So in this case, so I think that there's a follow-up question I have. If we want to regulate social media platform based on a human rights framework in order to play a part in tackle information disorder. So what element that it should be include? Yeah.

So just to be clear for audiences, POFMA is Singapore's Protection Against Online Falsehood and Manipulation Act. Mouthful. I mean, it's been the application has been, I think, arguably spotty even in terms of dealing with what looks like potential threats. There's a strong push about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine was successful.

spurred on by NATO, it was NATO's fault, and questioning Singapore's stance. But yeah, so I guess this does bring us towards the end of our time. Do you both have any sort of last thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners? I'll just, you know, just have one minute on that. I think, you know, this is an evolving and dynamic field that new topics emerge and new techniques also put in place in order to conduct disinformation.

So I think, you know, speaking as someone that's monitoring this and working with those that are also doing the same sort of work, there is a constant need to learn from each other and finding out the tools and also the abilities to address the problems at a wider scale. There is a need for scalability towards combating this problem. Great. Ploy? Yeah, I agree. I think that, you know, if you look at

a number of, um, countries in Southeast Asia that actually has like a, an established fact-checking organization, um,

um there's a very few yeah um but in those country it doesn't mean that they are doing very well either due to the suppression from the government something like that as well and uh i think that those that um fact-checking initiative or organization that are still in a developing state they um

They really need know-how, funding, in order to actually keep up with the situation. Yeah, so this is sort of...

unfolding issue that many of us are still grappling with in Southeast Asia disinformation in general but specifically some of that coming from apparently the PRC or at least aligned with the PRC so I hope this episode has helped shed some light on these issues for listeners and do tune in to our next episode thank you all very much thank you very much Khoi and Ben thank you so much for having me thanks

Thank you for listening to the China and the World podcast, a production of Carnegie China, the East Asia-based center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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