The information war in Myanmar
Probably our biggest growing demographic of listeners at Insight Myanmar Podcast since the coup has been the Burmese diaspora. I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received from Burmese listeners overseas who tell me that our podcasts are about the only media they can listen to these days. So with that in mind, we spoke to one of these Burmese exiles, Thiri Nandar, who lives in France. Part of the experience of being outside your homeland as it goes through a coup, is simply not knowing what is real and what is not. This is one of the things that Thiri spoke about in our talk.
“I am really worried, because when I open my Facebook, I saw three or four different news items and I don’t know which one I can trust at all!”
“The fake news problem in Myanmar is not very new. Because we opened up the internet suddenly in 2000. Then in 2015, everybody had a phone.
Now, for example, there's one post on Facebook saying that the UN will come in two weeks and they will help us in Myanmar to fight the military government. And it's really a lot of hope, but it’s fake hope to the people. My mom and my grandmother and grandfather, they are not young generation anymore, and they trust this kind of fake hope.
In Myanmar, Facebook is the main platform for everything. For teaching, communication, news, Facebook is the main one, even when you do business.
If I say another example, recently today, this morning, one singer passed away. And there's a lot of fake news about that. Some people say he passed away with malaria. Some people say he passed away because he used drugs. And then, some people say ‘No, he is killed by the military!’ And I am really worried, especially as I'm outside of Myanmar now, because when I open my Facebook, I saw three or four different news items and I don't know which one I can trust at all! It's a it's really hard to do a fact check.”