Internet Blackout in Myanmar: A Critical Analysis of Discourses and Practices Relating to New Technologies in Armed Conflict

In June 2019, the Myanmar government imposed a shutdown of all mobile internet communications in parts of its Rakhine and Chin states. This internet 'blackout' has since turned into one of the world’s longest, and has drawn strong criticism from various actors. While Myanmar has received considerable attention over the last years for its political transition, for its peace process, or more recently, for the international criminal court's investigations into accusations of genocide in Rakhine state, the technological aspects of these change processes had been largely overlooked. Despite its rapid increase in access to mobile internet communications (going from almost zero to widespread use within only a few years), the role of new technologies in Myanmar's complex societal transformation has only recently taken centre stage with the debates about hatespeech on social media and the 'blackout'. This paper takes the 'blackout' as an entry point to analyse how actors like the government, civil society actors, or tech companies are mobilising new technologies in their discourse and specific practices, and how new technologies in turn (re)shape the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion that are central to Myanmar's longstanding armed conflicts. By combining Foucauldian discourse analysis with ethnographically collected data and elements of science and technology studies, this paper also aims to show that giving more emphasis to the role of technology in political processes can provide fertile ground for novel insights when researching policies and the operation of power in settings of armed conflict.