京都大学東南アジア地域研究研究所の伊賀司と申します。国際ワークショップのお知らせです。
2019年7月22日(月曜日)の午前11時から午後18時の予定で京都大学東南アジア地域研究研究所・稲盛記念会館3階の中会議室において、東南アジアのフェイクニュースと国家の情報管理をテーマとした国際ワークショップが開催されます。東南アジアと日本から第一線で活動しているジャーナリスト、メディア研究や情報学関連の研究者を招聘し、アジアにおけるフェイクニュースと国家の情報統制の現状、さらに、それらの課題に関する議論が展開される予定です。当日のプログラム、各報告者のアブストラクトと略歴は以下の英文をご覧ください。オープンなワークショップですので、ご関心のある皆様のご参加をお待ちしております。
伊賀司
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*International Workshop on “Fake News and State Control in the Post-Truth
Era in Southeast Asia” at CSEAS, Kyoto University*
Date: Monday, July 22nd, 2019
Time: 11:00 -18:00
Venue: Kyoto University Inamori Memorial Hall, 3rd floor Mid-size Meeting
Room
*PROGRAM*
Chair : Tsukasa Iga (CSEAS Kyoto University)
11:00 Welcome and introductory words by Yoko Hayami (Director, CSEAS Kyoto
University)
11:10-11:50
*Cherian George* (Hong Kong Baptist University)
Singapore’s new online falsehoods law: banking on tradition at a time of
transition
11:50-12:30
*Steven Gan* (Journalist, Malaysiakini)
How the battle against Anti-Fake News law was won in Malaysia
Break 12:30-14:00
Chair: Yoshihiro Nakanishi (CSEAS Kyoto University)
14:00-14:40
*Ben Dunant* (Frontier Myanmar)
From partners to adversaries: the downward spiral of state-media relations
in Myanmar?
14:40-15:20
*Prangtip Daorueng *(Freelance Journalist)
Fake News and Political Polarization in Thailand
Break 15:20-15:40
Chair: Masaaki Okamoto (CSEAS Kyoto University)
15:40-16:20
*Ismail Fahmi *(Drone Emprit & PT. Media Kernels Indonesia)
The Phenomenon of Fake News and The Implementation of UU ITE and Civil
Society Initiatives to combat Fake News in Indonesia
16:20-17:00
*Yoichiro Tateiwa* (Executive Editor/ Seeds for News Japan, Executive
Director/ Japan Center for Money and Politics, Vice President/ Fact Check
Initiative Japan)
Combating Fake News in Japan –What Fact Checkers Can Do in This Age of
Information Chaos
17:00-18:00
Discussion
*ABSTRACTS*
*Cherian George **(Hong Kong Baptist University)*
*Singapore’s new online falsehoods law: banking on tradition at a time of
transition*
In May 2019, Singapore’s Parliament passed the Protection from Online
Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), probably the most elaborate
legislation of its kind anywhere in the world. The law empowers ministers
to trigger take-down or correction orders against online material
containing false statements of fact, as well as criminal prosecutions
against offenders. The law is remarkable for the degree of discretion it
places in the hands of ministers, including the power to suppress and
punish misinformation that ministers deem would hurt confidence in their
work.
Although at one level a response to the specific problem of so-called
“fake news”, the move also showcases key features of Singapore’s governance
model. POFMA follows the People’s Action Party (PAP) regime’s tradition of
enacting laws that give cabinet maximum room for manoeuvre, enabling swift
and decisive action unhindered by liberal democratic checks and balances.
The new law is the strongest indication yet that the incumbents expect the
incoming generation of PAP leaders to continue with the party’s
authoritarian model.
The debate preceding the passage of the POFMA bill, too, was symptomatic
of PAP hegemony. The government marshalled the mainstream media to amplify
its voice while muting criticisms of the bill. It also took a leaf from
contemporary authoritarian populists’ methods—using majoritarian logic,
nationalist rhetoric, online trolls and social media influencers to manage
public opinion and marginalise critics. Nevertheless, POFMA was striking
for the unprecedented degree of opposition it generated. Despite the broad
consensus that disinformation campaigns need to combatted, several groups
expressed strong objections that the government could use the new law to
shield itself from scrutiny. These criticisms hint at a growing desire for
political accountability, in lieu of the blank-cheque social contract that
the PAP has traditionally banked on.
*Steven Gan (Journalist, Malaysiakini)*
*How the battle against Anti-Fake News law was won in Malaysia*
Malaysia passed the Anti-Fake News law on April 2, 2018 – about a month
before the 14th general election which saw an unprecedented change of
government for the first time since the country achieved independence from
Britain 61 years ago.
The hastily-written law was rushed through parliament. The intention was
clear – to sow fear among Malaysians and terrorise them into unquestioned
submission ahead of a crucial election. It was bolstered with hefty
penalties – up to RM500,000 fine and/or up to 10 years’ jail. The jail
sentence was subsequently reduced to six years following a public outcry.
Fake news under the law is vaguely defined as “any news, information, data
and reports which is or partly false, whether in the form of features,
visuals, or audio recordings or in any form of capable of suggesting words
or ideas.” Three weeks after the law was passed, Malaysiakini mounted a
legal challenge against the law. Former Federal Court judge Gopal Sri Ram,
who represented Malaysiakini, argued that the law was unconstitutional.
However, the challenge was thrown out of court as the judge said it was
premature as Malaysiakini had not been charged with any criminal offence
under the law.
Nevertheless, by then a new government took power and one of its first
acts was to repeal the law. This not to say Malaysians are not concerned
about fake news. They are. But there are better ways of stopping it. In the
second part of my presentation, I shall talk about some of the ways fake
news can be combated.
*Ismail Fahmi *
*The Phenomenon of Fake News and The Implementation of UU ITE and Civil
Society Initiatives to combat Fake News in Indonesia*
My presentation in this workshop will address these questions: how fake
news developed in Indonesia, how the Indonesian government and civil
society combat the fake news, and whether limiting internet access will
reduce the fake news. For that purpose, I will explain: the short history
of fake news and social media polarization since 2014 in Indonesia
political context; data on law enforcements using the Law concerning
Electronic Information and Transaction (UU ITE, 2008 and its revision 2016)
and the initiatives of Indonesian civil society on combating fake news; how
the social media platform companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google
responded the requests from Indonesian government to limit the
dissemination of fake news; and the evaluation on the effectiveness of the
last social media access limitation by Indonesian government during and
after the 21st of May 2019 riots. At the end of this presentation I will
provide conclusions and lesson learned.
*Prangtip Daorueng*
*Fake News and Political Polarization in Thailand*
There are four important factors that make fake news an important
sociopolitical issue in Thailand, especially after the latest general
elections in March 2019. These factors are: the decline of the media
industry; the role of social media in replacing media organization as a
platform of information and opinion; the political atmosphere that limits
freedom of expression; and the prolonged and deeply rooted public political
polarization that splits majority of the citizens into two political camps.
These factors have created a context in which fake news systematically acts
as a political tool for political and interest groups to propagate their
political stands and to undermine their opponents. Like hate speech, fake
news also responds to people’s political frustration by channeling and
encouraging extreme emotional expression. It leads to the echo chamber
effects in which supporters of political camps gather to receive specific
information that coincides with their ideas, and then pass on to each other
without checking, causing fake news to spread even more rapidly. My
presentation will discuss the role of fake news in the current Thai
political context. I will also explore the attempts of professional media
organizations, civil society groups, and the government in finding
solutions to the problem.
*Ben Dunant (Frontier Myanmar)*
*From partners to adversaries: the downward spiral of state-media relations
in Myanmar?*
Ten years ago in Myanmar, most citizens desiring news about their country
had to sift through teashop rumours, state propaganda, the contents of
heavily censored newspapers and clandestine broadcasts transmitted from
abroad. That which the military junta did not tightly control, it banned
and suppressed. One of the most immediate and consequential changes that
accompanied the reforms launched in 2011 was the explosion in lawfully
published information about politics and society. This had two primary
causes: the government’s decision to end pre-publication censorship for
print media in 2012, and the dramatic expansion of public access to the
Internet that resulted from the liberalisation of the telecommunications
sector in 2014. Today, the benefits of this information boom are uncertain.
Relations between the government and private media have deteriorated, with
recent attempts to discipline journalists through arrests and prosecutions,
and social media – which accounts for most internet use — is used less to
expose wrongdoing by the powerful than to sow hatred against vulnerable
minorities.
I will focus on the former problem and explore why a popularly elected
government led by veteran pro-democracy dissidents considers independent
journalists as adversaries, whereas a preceding government led by members
of the old military establishment pragmatically viewed them as partners in
broadcasting their reformist credentials to the world. Moreover, I will
examine how distrust has informed attempts by the current government to
undermine and bypass private media through the use of a large,
reinvigorated state-owned media apparatus as well as social media, and to
scapegoat journalists for crises affecting the country, leveraging public
opinion in a manner associated with so-called populist governments. I will
argue that the current relationship is caught in a vicious cycle, and that
the way out is to engage the government and persuade its members that
investment in communications and building relations with the media is in
the government’s own, as well as society’s, interests.
*PROFILES*
*Cherian George *is Professor of Media Studies at Hong Kong Baptist
University’s School of Communication. He researches media freedom,
censorship and hate propaganda. His recent books include *Hate Spin: The
Manufacture of Religious Offense and its Threat to Democracy *(MIT Press,
2016), and *Singapore, Incomplete: Reflections on a First World Nation’s
Arrested Political Development *(Woodsville News, 2017)*.* He is also the
co-author, with Gayathry Venkiteswaran, of *Media and Power in Southeast
Asia *(Cambridge University Press, 2019). He received his PhD in
communication from Stanford University in 2003. Before moving to academia,
he was a journalist with *The Straits Times*, Singapore. (
www.cheriangeorge.net)
*Steven Gan *is co-founder of Malaysiakini (Malaysia Now). Since it went
live in 1999, Malaysiakini has become one of the most influential news
websites in the country. Malaysiakini received the Free Media Pioneer 2001
award from Vienna based International Press Institute, and Gan is recipient
of New York based Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press
Freedom Award 2000. Malaysiakini was raided by the police in 2003 and 19 of
its computers confiscated. Nevertheless, the harassment from the government
failed to stop the subscription-based website from continuing to provide
its readers with ‘news and views that matter’. Gan was arrested and charged
in 2016 over a video on the 1MDB scandal posted by Malaysiakini subsidiary,
KiniTV. The charge was eventually dropped after a new government took power
in 2018.
Gan is co-editor of the 2004 book, ‘Asian Cyberactivism: Freedom of
Expression and Media Censorship’. In 2007, Gan was selected as a member of
the World Economic Forum’s International Media Council.
Malaysiakini won the bronze prize (for top media brand) at Malaysia’s Putra
Brand Awards twice – in 2010 and 2014 – and the silver in 2015. In 2015,
Malaysiakini won the editorial excellence in investigative reporting award
from Hong Kong-based Society of Publishers in Asia (Sopa) for its four-part
investigative report titled ‘The rise of the Johor royal family’s business
empire’. Malaysiakini also won the Sopa award for Excellent in Breaking
News this year.
*Ismail Fahmi, Ph.D* is an information scientist and the founder of PT
Media Kernels Indonesia with experiences in developing a big data system
called Media Kernels a.k.a Drone Emprit supported by a set of natural
language processing techniques. The purpose of the system is to analyze
online media and social media contents. He also developed Indonesia
OneSearch, a knowledge portal for accessing all database and digital
repositories from universities and public libraries in Indonesia. His
bachelor is in Electrical Engineering from the Institute of Technology
Bandung, and his master and doctoral is in Information Science from the
University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His main interests are in natural
language processing, information extraction, automatic term extraction,
relationship extraction, social network analysis, ontology development and
population, digital library, plagiarism detection, and big data.
*Prangtip Daoreung* is a Thai freelance journalist/writer and member of the
Washington-based Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). She covers
stories in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia for national and international
publications such as ICIJ Online, Inter Press Service, former regional
weekly news magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, former regional daily
newspaper Asia Times, and a number of Thai-language print and online
publications. In 2016, she was a part of 400 international journalists who
covered “The Panama Papers” project under the Consortium of Investigative
Journalists, which later won the Investigation of the Year prize by the
Global Editors Network at the Data Journalism Awards in Vienna, Austria and
the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. In 2000, Prangtip was the first Thailand country
director for Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA). She was awarded an
Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship under the Nippon Foundation, Japan in
2001 and spent almost a year in Indonesia to research on conflict
resolution in Aceh. Her area of interest includes politics, media
development, political economy, corporate transparency, and conflict
resolution.
*Ben Dunant * has been working as a journalist and researcher in Myanmar
since 2014. He is Chief-of-Staff at Frontier and has also contributed to
Voice of America, Nikkei Asian Review, The Diplomat and New
Mandala.chief-of-staff at Frontier Myanmar, a news magazine based in Yangon.
*Yoichiro Tateiwa* is a journalist, formerly NHK. Currently he is
Executive Editor at Seeds for News Japan, Executive Director of Japan
Center for Money and Politics, and Vice President at Fact Check Initiative
Japan.