Disruptive powers of social media in Myanmar

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An Idea (by Ingenious Piece)

2 min readOct 10, 2020

The weaponization of social media in Myanmar has been succinctly discussed in global media as world-powers seem to have turned a blind eye to all that has transpired.

Connecting to old school buddies, long lost friends and past acquaintances via virtual communities could be listed as one of the ideas behind the creation of social media, but over time this concept has become defunct. The harsh reality is that, various individuals and even some governments have been able to exploit the usage of several social media tools (for example, bots and trolls) to undermine the truth, spread fake news and propaganda in order to sway the opinion of the public on a number of issues.

Myanmar’s ‘silent’ genocide

The Rohingya in Myanmar have been an exemplary reference of how social media can be disruptive and used as a medium of ethnic cleansing by a government. The Rohingya people have been largely marginalized and it has been reported that the Myanmar Military has systematically been using Facebook as a tool to achieve this dreadful objective.

Photo of Displaced Rohingya Muslims by **Tasnim News Agency** on **Creative Commons** **Attribution 4.0 International**

According to a report by the New York Times, it was stated that ‘members of the Myanmar military were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group. The military exploited Facebook’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the internet.’

This has led to a genocide that has had very little coverage in the World media with crimes against humanity such as rape, enslavement and mass displacement to name a few. An independent Fact Finding Mission commissioned by the United Nations has stated that the exact figures of killings may never be known but it is well over 10,000. It has also been reported that between 600,000 to 750,000 Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh for protection from the apartheid taking place in their country.

The introduction of social media has done a world of good but, it is of utmost importance to shed more light on the negative impact as well as malpractices in the utilization of social media on the lives of the Rohingya as they deserve to be heard too.

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Disruptive powers of social media in Myanmar

Written by Folajomi Agoro