In this hybrid seminar, researchers and creatives engaged in a panel-style dialogue about counter-disinformation strategies in Southeast Asia. The researchers shed light on how collective stories and emotions were weaponised in disinformation operations. Meanwhile, the creatives presented their pioneering works that used the same imaginative elements in counter-disinformation efforts.
The seminar featured researchers Dr Madhavi Reddi, Assistant Professor at York College of Pennsylvania; Dr Rachel Kuo, Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Lan Li, PhD student in Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Dr Fernando A. Santiago, Jr., Associate Professor of History at De La Salle University; and Dr Amelia Johns, Senior Digital and Social Media Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney. The seminar also featured creatives Kiki Febriyanti, artist/filmmaker based in Indonesia and representative for the Artists for Digital Rights Network, and Francis Kristoffer L. Pasion, Senior History Researcher at the National Historical Commission of the Philippines.
MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY PROGRAMME SEMINAR
Thursday, 1 December 2022 – This hybrid seminar examined the different counter-disinformation strategies taken up by panellists from different backgrounds. It featured both an online and in-person audience. The hybrid seminar was followed by a further discussion segment for the in-person attendees, where the live audience posted further questions to the panellists.
Dr Rachel Kuo started off the session with a paper titled “Methods for Studying Mis/Disinformation in Asian Diaspora Communities”. She co-presented with Dr Madhavi Reddi and Lan Li via Zoom. Dr Kuo began by establishing that their project attended to questions of politics and power vis-a-vis the historical and cultural contexts of the narratives spread amongst Asian diaspora communities in the US. Dr Kuo went on to share the three key goals of their project. First, they sought to understand how specific differences and geo-political tensions across Asia on one hand and between the US and Asia on the other hand play a role in information uptake. Second, they sought to develop a holistic and relationship-driven method and framework, which included identifying best practices. Third, they sought to support power-building in Asian American social movements by engaging in transnational political analysis and linking research to public advocacy work.
Dr Madhavi Reddi continued the presentation by explaining their methodology. She said that the project involved volunteer interviewers who engaged the participants in discussions on how mis- and disinformation impacted their communities. This primarily involved conducting 90-minute interviews with individuals who identified as Asian-Americans either born in the USA or migrated to the USA before the age of 12. There was also a “jam board activity” that required the volunteers to enact active listening without judgement, in order to generate more input from the participants.
Dr Reddi pointed out that one interesting thing about their data gathering was that some of the volunteer interviewers conducted interviews with their own family members. She said that some of the volunteers found it difficult to gather data due to such personal relations. Nevertheless, these volunteers managed to probe their interviewees’ histories of migration and relation networks. They also asked about their practices surrounding sharing and receiving online messages.
The last presenter of the paper, Lan Li, found that one of the main lessons from this study was that the relational dynamics between the interviewer and interviewee can shape the direction of the interviews. For example, she shared that when the interviewee is a parent, the interviewer might find some topics difficult to talk about, such as their family’s migration histories and their country of origin’s dark histories. At the same time, Lan Li highlighted that parent-child relationships allowed them to delve into certain topics that would have been more challenging for strangers.
Other challenges that they found in their methodology included: the interviewee’s and interviewer’s politically and culturally embedded gendered dynamics, divergent understanding of the definition of politics, and their linguistic, inter-generational and cross-cultural differences.
The second speaker, Dr Fernando A. Santiago Jr. presented his paper titled, Counter-narratives and misinformation on the Marcos Sr Era during the 2022 Philippines elections”. Dr Santiago began by sharing some nuances from the discipline of history such as those related to the interpretations of the past based on historical records. He argued that there can be different versions of historical interpretations, and it is dependent on the records to which one refers. He consequently stressed the need to be aware of biases and distortions in history
Dr Santiago shared insights into his research based on two projects. One is an oral history project that started in 2017, which involved over 400 students and 60 oral histories with eyewitnesses to the Philippines’ Martial Law period as respondents. The other is the “Digital Hijacking of Deep Stories” project that started in 2020, wherein interviewees were asked about the sources of their knowledge about the Martial Law period. This was important to probe, since the participants were not yet born or were still too young during the time and, so, only received second-hand information about it.
Dr Santiago went on to discuss his findings from the oral history project. He shared that people’s negative memories of the Martial Law era included restricted freedoms like the imposition of curfews and the sudden disappearance of loved ones. Alongside these, however, he observed that people still had common perceptions about what was good about the era. This centred on the idea of progress and particularly the development of public infrastructure. They cited the existence of superhighways, medical facilities, cultural centres, and convention centres that remain standing today as legacies of Marcos. The people also felt that Marcos was the most intelligent president they ever had.
Meanwhile, the respondents in the “Digital Hijacking” project were aware of the good and bad of Martial Law. Dr Santiago elaborated that their understanding stemmed from a wide range of sources, including textbooks, their schoolteachers and oral narratives from families. In light of conspiracy theories and alternative realities, Dr Santiago asserted that the youth are easily influenced by hidden truths. He observed that this was how fake news and imaginative interpretations of historical facts come in.
Dr Santiago went on to discuss his thoughts about the Filipino schema or view of history. In his opinion, locals have a tripartite view of their history based on the biblical structure of paradise, paradise lost, and paradise regained. Dr Santiago explained that in 1986 when Marcos was deposed, people believed that the period before Martial Law was seen as paradise lost. Due to people’s power, Filipinos have regained paradise. As a lot of promises of the People’s Power Revolution were not fulfilled, many were disappointed. As such, Dr Santiago said that the narrative has changed where the People’s Power Revolution has been recast as paradise lost and martial law as paradise regained.
Next, Dr Amelia Johns discussed her presentation titled, “WhatsApp, affect and conspiratorial publics”. Her research was conducted during the pre-Covid-19 period in Malaysia. She conducted a digital ethnography that included interviewing young Chinese Malaysians aged 18-24 of mixed genders who identified as political and/or LGBTQ activists. She explored the functions of features of Whatsapp, including those related to media sharing such as the forward button, which can steer people towards certain behaviours.
Dr Johns shared that her research methods involved video tours, the scroll-back method and semi-structured interviews. She highlighted that in working with the collated data, she integrated several concepts, such as media logic, media affordances, and, most importantly, affective environments. She argued that the latter took account of embodied reactions brought about by people’s interactions with the digital environment.
Dr Johns went on to establish the political context of the study. She observed that the environment in the lead-up to Malaysia’s GE14 in 2019 was coloured by feelings of betrayal, fear and lack of trust as figures were arrested for speaking about corruption i.e. the 1MDB scandal. She elaborated that the Sedition Act 2015 was extended to target young people and activists that speak up through political statements made online. Dr Johns also brought up the more recent anti-fake news law that was criticised by opposition parties and human rights organisations as it was seen as a ploy to suppress political conversations on social media.
Dr Johns argued that Whatsapp’s lack of moderation and its forward button resonates with Lupton’s work on affective atmospheres. This pertains to the interaction between the multi-sensory properties of digital technologies and one’s physical encounters with space. The atmosphere created by Whatsapp can prompt users to share quickly in the moment, before rational judgements are made. During the GE14 elections, for instance, there were many instances of disinformation circulation that turned the app into paranoid spaces of auto-forwarding of content. She concluded that this could lead to the further spread of false information and conspiracy theories.
Artist and filmmaker Kiki Febriyanti talked about her involvement in “The Artists for Digital Rights Network” (A4DRN). This collective aims to tackle disinformation through the arts. It recently launched a free digital publication, “Counter-Narratives”. This zine consisted of 10 artists from the Philippines and three from Indonesia.
In her contribution, “Click bites”, Febriyanti explored media disinformation that causes harm to others; especially when users easily click and share hate speech. She highlighted that bullying of transgender communities is commonplace as they appear to be the cause of all societal problems from politics to natural disasters, diseases and accidents. For example, she shared that in West Jakarta, there was a fire, and a transwoman was kicked out as they believed she brought bad luck to the area. Some transpeople have been similarly disowned by their families due to such beliefs.
Febriyanti shared that her art involves two transwomen and she attempted to draw similarities between newspapers, conspiracy theories and hoaxes. She concluded by stating that she chose fashion as a medium as it is a part of life and is popular.
Francis Kristoffer L. Pasion then presented “Public history on social media in the Philippines: Engaging disinformation through historical education in informal spaces of discourse” via Zoom. Pasion claimed that in the Philippines, there is a growing impatience towards social issues because of the lack of formal platforms and avenues to discuss them. He argued that this was increasing polarisation and hate, thereby shrinking spaces of free discourse and distorting understanding of civic and social problems. He mentioned that history provides a perspective that everything experienced in the present has a dimension in the past. In his view, to push transitional justice forward, people need to look back to the past. Social media has given people the skills to countercheck information. Yet, many remain prey to propaganda.
Pasion argued that fact-checking is not enough as propagandists and Internet trolls use emotive techniques to push their agendas. He stressed that truth is secondary and relatability of content is more important. In the realm of social media, there is equal access to voices. For instance, during Covid-19, doctors were pictured as elitists, and people were offered alternative medications. Meanwhile, Sangkay Janjan TV, a popular Youtube channel in the Philippines, has been painting historians as biased. This has contributed to the splintering of Filipino society.
Pasion suggested that creating a social media persona that is impartial and able to take on controversial historical information. For example, he has constructed a persona who expresses empathy, especially when talking about past injustices, and maintains openness by engaging the online public and being humble to gain the public’s trust. He shared that he has used Tumblr and Twitter as platforms to re-establish advocacy. He has received troll attacks and criticisms when talking about the opposition.
Recently, Pasion launched Twitter Spaces which are held at 8 pm on Saturdays to discuss various topics about the Philippines society. In his discussion on Martial Law, he mentioned that almost 800 listeners were live. Pasion concluded that there is room for common ground and it is important to be equipped with skills to counter propaganda so that society can appreciate the complexity of historical research and understanding.
The Q&A session saw a variety of questions about the researchers’ methodologies. Some also sought the panellists’ opinions on various issues including internet content moderation and how users have also weaponised the strategies shared by the panellists for their own evil intentions. The online webinar attracted 60 remote viewers and 15 physical attendees.
