Cyber Troops and Computational Propaganda in Southeast Asia: A Comparative Study of Public Opinion Manipulation

This research project studies comparatively how social media-based public opinion manipulation is organized in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. While online behavior of cyber troops has been relatively well-documented by computational scientists, their offline organization remains largely unknown. Due to methodological challenges and disciplinary divides, we know very little about the funding sources, functioning and structure of the networks spreading propaganda through social media. Addressing this urgent challenge, this project will set up a unique collaboration: Dutch and Southeast Asian researchers from computational science, social sciences and humanities will collaborate to further develop a multi-method approach we recently tested in a small Indonesia-based pilot. Whereas computational social media analysis (called SNA) serves to study the scope, effectiveness and distribution of propaganda on Twitter, digital ethnography will zoom in on the narrative and discursive strategies employed by cyber troops, while interviews with ‘buzzers’ will serve to trace the organization, strategies, and political interests behind cybertroops. Focusing on three countries with comparable economies and social media usage which are either backsliding democracies (Philippines and Indonesia) or recently turned authoritarian (Thailand), this project employs this comparison to study the interaction between political regimes and computational propaganda. The main research questions of this project are: (1) How is the dissemination of computational propaganda organized in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand and (2) what are the causes and consequences of variation between these countries? Our key comparative hypothesis is that the nature of political regimes shapes the nature of computational propaganda: in a closed autocracy where power is largely centralized in the hands of a ruling elite (such as Thailand), we expect computational propaganda to be highly asymmetrical (i.e. involving mainly pro-elite campaigns) and centrally-organized. In more open democracies with more political competitiveness (such as the Philippines and Indonesia), we expect more symmetrical propaganda (i.e. adopted by pro- and contra-government), implemented and funded by a wider range of actors. We will also explore the reverse relationship between computational propaganda and political regime: by documenting how progovernment campaigns harass and silence alternative voices, we study whether and to what extent computational propaganda has contributed to the recent democratic backsliding in all three countries.