Three years after the Myanmar military seized power in a violent coup, the junta is still carrying out brutal attacks against those resisting its authority. It also uses Internet shutdowns, surveillance, and disappearances to hide its atrocities and to maintain its grip on power.

In June 2022, the United Nations (UN) published a statement on Myanmar recognizing how “online access to information is a matter of life and death for many people”, who require access to forestall “indiscriminate attacks by the military” and to tackle an “economic and humanitarian crisis.”

The statement noted how Internet shutdowns “impede efforts by journalists, human rights monitors and humanitarian organizations” to monitor violations, as well as obstructing the UN human rights rapporteurs’ mandates which “depend on the collection of contemporaneous evidence of human rights abuses.”

A year and a half later, Access Now and local and international civil society actors issued a joint statement (31 January 2024) urging the international community to stand in solidarity with the people of Myanmar and to provide concrete resources to resist digital oppression. The statement said:

“The military’s complete control of Myanmar’s telecommunications network allows it to use Internet shutdowns and communications blackouts to facilitate vicious attacks and block humanitarian aid from reaching those who need it. In 2023, the military weaponised shutdowns and blackouts, especially in conflict zones where resistance is strong… This means that people seeking safe paths to flee the conflict are unable to communicate with each other, wounded people cannot seek medical assistance, and families are cut off from critical humanitarian support.”

In Gaza, in the wake of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s order for Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, NGOs continue to document instances where Israeli soldiers openly mock Palestinians or brag about actions that may constitute war crimes.

In early February 2024, the Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition sent letters to Meta, X, Telegram, and TikTok condemning the proliferation of hate speech, dehumanizing words and images, and incitements to violence and genocide against the Palestinian people on their platforms.

Among other issues, the letter specifically called attention to the ICJ’s reference to UN concern over “discernibly genocidal and dehumanizing rhetoric coming from senior Israeli government officials, as well as some professional groups and public figures.” Many such statements by senior Israeli officials have been posted on social media platforms.

The situation in Gaza has become emblematic of how, in a conflict situation, reliable communication and trustworthy information constitute a form of humanitarian aid that is as vital as water, food, and medicine. Dictators know this and take steps to shut down communication infrastructures.

The free press is doing a magnificent job of telling the world about what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Myanmar, and elsewhere. Yet social media platforms are still failing to counter the weaponization of digital communications and thereby uphold people’s right to communicate. Such intransigeance plays into the hands of governments whose sole aim is tyranny and oppression.

Photo: February 7, 2021, Bangkok, Thailand, NLD supporters protest against the military in Myanmar. Credit: Kan Sangton/Shutterstock

In a letter to subscribers, the Guardian shared how it has joined other news agencies in Europe in publishing articles by Novaya Gazeta, the Russian independent daily, whose editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year along with Maria Ressa in the Philippines. Novaya Gazeta has suspended publication in Russia because of the censorship.

As the Guardian reported, Novaya Gazeta Europe’s editor-in-chief Kirill Martynov said, “We can’t publish a newspaper in Russia anymore, so we called for solidarity with our European colleagues to print a ‘decentralised newspaper’ across Europe. The idea of the Russian free press has to be alive.”

So, “along with the likes of Liberation and Le Monde in France and die Tageszeitung in Germany, the Guardian published two articles – a subtle piece about Russian public disquiet by pollster Alexei Levinson and an Op-Ed by Martynov himself on how Vladimir Putin seized on the idea of a war for a ‘Greater Russia’ to inject some sense of heroic glory into his cynical leadership.”

Martynov’s long-term hope is to “recreate Novaya Gazeta Europe as the voice of pro-European Russians on both sides of the border of the newly divided Europe, and to deliver information about the war to the Russian public inside the country,”. But as the Guardian points out, freedom of the press is not only a casualty in Russia or in situations of war:

“Independent media is in retreat. Autocrats are using a mix of force and financial pressure to silence dissenting voices. In democracies, independent titles face existential threats in the form of libel laws, cost-cutting owners, and competition from social media. Six in seven people globally live in countries where press freedoms are in decline. A record 28 countries  are now ranked ‘very bad’ for press freedom. From Hong Kong to Hungary, Myanmar to Mexico, the job of the journalist is becoming ever harder.”

Financial support for independent media is critical – but even more vital now is activism to support freedom of the press. If independent media disappear, so do the democratic systems that hold power to account and allow informed citizens to participate effectively in the decisions that – as we have seen in Ukraine – are a matter of life and death.

Photo: Warsaw, Poland. 24 February 2022. Anti-war protest outside Russian embassy in Warsaw. Demonstrators call for peace and condemn Putin. Credit: Grand Warszawski/Shutterstock

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week has declared war not just on the country, but on what now seems to be a different reality. News media images from Ukraine depict the desperation of fleeing women and children, babies born in bunkers, men turned away from evacuation trains and racist treatment of foreign students.

How to make sense of the contradictions in our world, the co-existence of celebration with human suffering, of hope with despair, or peace with war?

Hoskins & O’Loughlin argue that in the current phase of mediatization of war (1), news institutions have adapted to the present [digital] media environment more effectively than western governments and policy elites. Following this, the scholars ask us to consider whether power – of agenda-setting and framing, for instance – rests with the news media.

It is a dangerous path when some news media are bent on disinformation. “Never was there a better illustration of the alternative reality presented by Russian state media (of the current war in Ukraine) than at 17:00 GMT on Tuesday (March 1, 2022)”(2). For example, the news reports blame Ukraine for bombing its own cities and citizens.

With power comes responsibility. Just as sectors such as the global finance system and sports are pulling out the stops to strongly encourage an end to the invasion, it is imperative for responsible news organisations to use their power to “stop war from escaping unintelligibly” (3) by fighting disinformation.

The toolbox of strategies is clearer than it ever was. Social media giants including Facebook (Meta), Twitter, Reddit, Google and YouTube are restricting Russian state media’s use of their platforms, barring access or ending advertising. Media bodies outside Russia have announced the end of Russian propaganda channels on their platforms. Outside Russia, however, other voices are still spouting misinformation and confusion.

Peace is not a given. Lived realities can and do change in the blink of an eye. Planned events may be re-configured to respond to the unpredicted. And more than ever, the news media’s responsibility in ensuring truth-telling, particularly in a war-threatened world, is paramount.

Notes

(1)“The process by which warfare is increasingly embedded in and penetrated by media, such that to plan, wage, legitimize, assuage, historicize, remember, and to imagine war requires attention to that media and its uses. It is a means of understanding shifting media power on and its use by a range of actors”. Hoskins, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2015). Arrested war: the third phase of mediatization. Information, Communication & Society, 18(11), 1320–1338. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1068350. Or, citing Hjarvard (2008), “a process where social and cultural institutions and modes of interaction are changed as a consequence of the growth of the media’s influence”.

(2) Kralova, Simona & Sandro Vetsko. BBC Monitoring. Ukraine: Watching the war on Russian TV – a whole different story. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60571737. Accessed March 2, 2022.

(3)Hoskins & O’Loughlin, 2015

Image: Great Pics – Ben Heine