Papers (Part 1)

• Covert Propaganda on Social Media: A Case Study of Vietnam Quynh Hoang University of Amsterdam

  Social media, the very technology that once heralded as allegedly shifting power from governments to civil society during the Arab Spring and Occupy Movement in 2011, has been increasingly exploited by authoritarian regimes to crush dissidents and curb collective actions. However, literature on the autocratic regimes’ use of social media tends to give an overview of their strategies and the use of social media bots without an in-depth analysis of the regimes’ message framing. What is more problematic is that most research in this field pays attention to the covert social media operations of Russia and China. In attempting to fill the gap, this paper analyzes how authoritarian regimes are leveraging global communication platforms for social control, especially in the context where religious authorities play an important role in the countries’ social movements, through a case study of Vietnam.

  Vietnam is infamously known for the regime’s suppression of dissent and their historically strained relationship with the Catholic Church, despite having the second greatest number of Catholics in Southeast Asia after the Philippines. The authoritarian regime is also among those leveraging social media to shape public discourse, nudge public opinion, and consequently suppress online dissent and social movements. Because the Catholic Church plays an important role in the country’s dissent movements, especially during a series of mass protests demanding social justice for victims of a marine disaster from 2016 to 2017, and the demonstrations against the state’s controversial laws in June 2018, the Church has become one of the main targets of the regime’s cyber troops. Hostility against bishops and Catholic communities and framing the Church as the “ally of foreign enemies” are the main themes of their operations. The findings are mainly drawn from an analysis of six pro-regime Facebook pages and three local Catholic communities’ Facebook pages from 4 April 2016 to 31 December 2018, complemented by interviews with 15 Vietnamese Catholic activists. By analyzing the narratives and tactics of the cyber troops’ propaganda in this case study, I argue that authoritarian regimes have adopted a new mode of covert propaganda that is agile, flexible, and quickly adapting to potential threats to their power. Their information control tactics include discrediting dissidents, especially the protests’ leaders, counter-mobilizing the regime’s support by calling for sympathy for police forces and making misleading claims to defend their response to protesters. By gaming the algorithmic logics of social media, the propaganda campaigns were engineered to garner maximum attention and reach large audiences outside the regime’s support base.

• “Just Don’t Quote Me on Islam”: Politics, Religion, and Journalistic Values at Malaysiakini Janet Steele George Washington University

  At Malaysiakini, Malaysia’s premier online news portal, non-Muslim editors are skittish about being quoted about Islam out of fear that their words could be misconstrued, or worse. Although Article 11 of the Malaysian Constitution protects freedom of religion, in Article 3 it simultaneously proclaims Islam to be the religion of the country. Malays are required by law to be Muslim, and apostasy, or murtad is a serious crime. Even something as seemingly harmless as “interfaith-dialogue” is seen by some as a dangerous attempt to undermine Islam by suggesting that all religions are equal.

  If we define pluralism as according legitimacy to different ways of being in the world, than it is hard to say that Malaysia, a country in which one group is accorded special privileges by the constitution, is truly pluralist. Worse yet, the politicization of Islam and the maneuvering by political parties and groupings to outdo one another in displays of piety have had insidious effects on how people interact on a daily basis.

  The Malaysian state is involved in religious affairs to a degree that would be unimaginable in neighboring Indonesia. Although the results of the 14th General Election in May 2018 have brought new thinking in the areas of accountability, corruption, and good governance, there has been almost no public discussion of changing the fundamental relationship between Islam and the state in a system in which political and religious authority are fused.

  For the past twenty years, it has been Malaysian government authorities who ultimately decide what is sensitive, and there are limits even to what the otherwise fearless Malaysiakini considers valid for discussion. As one senior editor put it, “Religion must be handled with double kid gloves.” Two of the most sensitive issues are apostasy (conversion away from Islam) and “body snatching,” which sometimes occurs when someone dies and the family “realizes” that the deceased had entered a different faith. As the same editor noted, there is a fine line between what Malaysiakini will publish and what it will not, but that line is very well anchored.

  In this context, what are the challenges facing Malaysiakini, a news organization that is committed to democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression? Approximately one-third of Malaysiakini’s reporters are Muslim, and how do they view their work in such a highly-charged environment? This paper will focus on prominent cases involving religion and how Malaysiakini covered them. It will also examine the views of Malaysiakini’s Malay-Muslim journalists towards Islam and journalism, and the role of Malalysiakini in mediating them.

• Personal Touch, Professional Style: Women Candidates in Malaysian Islamist Politics David Kloos Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies

  In this paper I investigate the mediated performances of female Islamist politicians in Malaysia’s 2018 General Elections. I concentrate on the campaigns of women candidates in the main Islamist opposition party, PAS, and the more progressive Islamist party, Amanah, which split from PAS in 2015. One of the main challenges that confronts these women, I suggest, is the need to navigate a tension between, on the one hand, the perception – strongly connected to ideas about motherhood and domesticity – that a woman is more able than a man to ‘touch the hearts’ of voters, and, on the other hand, the supposed electoral advantages, emanating from an increasingly highly-educated and socially mobile electorate, of a professional persona. This tension is predicated on changing, and to some extent contradictory, trends regarding the role of Muslim women in the public sphere. As I will show, this tension determines to a large extent women Islamist politicians’ use of media as they seek to establish religious as well as political authority.

• The Importance of Keeping Up Appearances: Being Buddhist, Being Lao, Religious Hegemony and the Lao State Phill Wilcox Bielefeld University

  In stark contrast to the days of strict austerity following the socialist revolution in 1975, Buddhism is now celebrated as a central and inalienable part of Lao culture. This is officially so since around the early 1990s, when Buddhist practices began making a reappearance as part of the national landscape with the Lao authorities taking the place of the legitimate guardians of Buddhism. Today the relationship between state sanctioned Buddhism and the Lao state is a very close one, leading to questions about who patronises whom and to what end. However, the question as to whether this is a revival of previously discouraged religious practices or something else is a pertinent one, especially when not only respecting Buddhism but being seen to do so is central to ideas about being a good citizen of contemporary Laos. This paper traces the reappearance of Buddhist practices in Laos in the last three decades with the sponsorship of the Lao state. It argues that official and popular media is a significant driver of Buddhist religious hegemony in Laos, which perpetuates a sometimes complex relationship between Buddhism and state. It also argues for the prominent role of being Buddhist or being seen to engage with Buddhism as a fundamental aspect of individual and collective identity in contemporary Laos.

Papers (Part 2)

• Contested Da’wa: The Trajectories of Online Islamic Proselytization in Indonesia Ibnu Nadzir Indonesian Institute of Sciences

  Islamic proselytization in Indonesia has long been portrayed to be characterized by the contestation between traditional and modernist preachers. Despite criticism addressed to these classification with slightly different variant, this portrayal still hold its relevance throughout several decades (Bruinessen, 2013; Geertz, 1976; Hefner, 2000). These categorization thus has become salient feature in the discussion of research on Islamic proselytization in Indonesia as well.

  In the early period of Indonesia, the contestation of da’wa was dominated between two major Islamic organizations, NU and Muhammadiyah. Ahmad Dahlan who was fascinated by the ideas of Islamic modernization from thinkers such as Muhammad Abduh, developed Muhammadiyah as a da’wa organization who adheres to the mixture of purification and modern ethics. In response to that, seeing that traditional Islamic practices under the threat of purification several ulamas including Hasyim Asyari initiated NU. These two organizations are still the most influential Islamic organizations in Indonesia today. Nevertheless, within the last two decades their religious authorities are contested by the emergence of relatively newer Islamic streams, among which are Tarbiyah, HTI, and Salafi.

  One of the most important strength of da’wa among these newer Islamic streams are their capabilities to incorporate Internet into Islamic proselytization. It is exemplified from the rise of popular preacher such as Felix Siauw, Salim A. Fillah or Abdus Somad who build their religious authorities mainly by engaging his followers using social media. Another example could also be seen from the initiation of da’wa channels from several Salafi based organizations like Yufid or Rodja.

  In general NU or Muhammadiyah members tend to underestimate the impact of online da’wa developed by these organizations. However, the growing influence online da’wa among mainstream Moslem particularly urban area has triggerd similar initiatives from NU or Muhammadiyah members. Some NU member for example, uploaded public sermons of renowned traditional preacher such as Anwar Zahid on Youtube (Kiptiyah, 2017). On the other hand, other members of these organizations developed website as platform to voice their ideological standing, as exemplified by websites such as NU Online or Islam Berkemajuan. Online platforms thus has become an arena where the claim of religious authorities are contested between those organizations.

  Despite many research conducted on the practices of online da’wa (e.g. Hew, 2018; Nisa, 2018), the overview of this contestation is still relatively nascent. In that context, drawing from comparative analysis on online da’wa practices performed by NU, Muhammadiyah, and Salafi based organizations, we propose to classify online da’wa into two categories: personal and collective form of online da’wa. Personal online da’wa are the ones that developed their platform based from individual charisma of a preacher. On the other hand, collective online da’wa are initiatives that focuses more on the content. As in any other category proposed in social sciences, on empirical situation both of this classifications might overlapped with one another. Nevertheless, we argue that the categorization would help us to comprehend better the dynamics contestation of online da’wa between Islamic streams. Moreover, the category would also useful to understand the production of religious authorities on Internet and how it might implicate Islamic normativities in Indonesia.

• “Pop-Islamist” Preachers: Marketing Religious Conservatism and Shaping Political Discourses in Indonesia and Malaysia Hew Wai Weng National University of Malaysia

  This paper analyses the politics of contemporary religious movement in relation to changing practices of religious media consumption. It examines how and under what conditions, ‘pop-Islamist’ preachers use various offline and online strategies, as well as combine both marketing and multi-media skills, to shape religious and political discourses in Malaysia and Indonesia. It focuses on the preaching activities of media-savvy, business-minded and politically-active Felix Siauw, and his various preaching teams such as YukNgaji and HijabAlila. Highlighting the roles of visual aesthetics, it explores how they use various online and offline media (such as visual books, Facebook postings, Instagram stories, short films, animations and artworks) to subtly promoting Islamist ideology, as well as bringing Islam, politics, and business together as a whole package. Their preaching styles and contents are appealing to urban Muslim youth and middle-classes who have just rediscovered their religiosity, as it aspires them not only to be more religious but also to be more politically-engaged, socially-mobile and business-friendly. By doing so, these young preachers are challenging not only existing religious authorities but also ruling political leaders and established business elites, through their multimedia practices and aesthetic appropriations.

• Spiritual Resistance in Cambodia: Social Media and Religion Sokphea Young University College London

  Spiritual potency and religious practices are used by scholars elucidate the pre-colonial state formation, expansion and protection in Southeast Asia. In the era of economic and technological advancement, the rhetoric of protecting of a community, as a place of ritual and spiritual practice, is amalgamated with the Western notions, such as social movements and media practices. As a contribution to the intersection between social movements, social media and religion, this paper draws on a spiritual resistance of Areng Valley indigenous communities orchestrated against the extractive industry. The communities-cum-support of activists and organizations practiced their spiritual belief as a weapon of resistance. On the one hand, they organized the regular animistic practice, the ancestral ritual celebration appealing to maintain the community spiritual potency confronting external invaders; and they adopted Buddhist practices, ordaining tree and forest to purify and incarnate Buddhist merit to protect the former. Intertwining between these two approaches is mediatized by social media to leverage public opinion and to mobilize youth participation. Through these approaches, the indigenous communities and supporters believed that they have been protected from encroachment. Beyond mobilizing participation from the outsiders, the practices of ritual and spiritual resistance have suggested how the indigenous communities entangled in the different religious practices, and diversified their approaches, adopting social media as a form of modernization of their spiritual potency and belief to protect the communities.

Abstract

Keywords

• Media
• Politics
• Religion