The Political Use of Encrypted Messaging Applications: Evidence from
Southeast Asia and its Implications for the Global Public Sphere
Abstract
This study relies on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with both
makers and trackers of political content on EMAs in order to facilitate
free-flowing conversations in which the insight of these interviewees
can be uncovered. The interviewees consisted of activists, experts,
fact-checkers, journalists, politicians, and producers of disinformation
to glean insight from members of civil society (fact-checkers, organized
activists), the state (politicians and propagandists), and the public
(experts who spoke on the general public). We began by contacting
experts, fact-checkers, and politicians in each region and then utilized
snowball sampling to contact hard to reach populations, such as
activists and disinformation producers. We conducted 16 qualitative
interviews from June 2021 to October 2021 virtually of interviewees in,
from, or knowledgeable about the spaces of Myanmar, the Philippines, and
Indonesia. Our interviewees in the Philippines consisted of two
presidential communications employees (one of which was a social media
specialist), a political manipulation researcher, a former Facebook
public policy director for global elections, and a
politician/cybersecurity expert. Our five interviewees in Indonesia
consisted of an OSINT journalist, an academic, the founder of a
fact-checking organization, an employee of a fact-checking organization,
and an employee of a “public relations” firm, who we identified as a
producer of political propaganda. In Myanmar, our interviewees consisted
of a Burmese journalist forced to flee the country, a journalist
knowledgeable about current events in Myanmar, an academic, and three
activists fighting against disinformation produced by the Tatmadaw: one
founder of an organized activist network, and two individual activists.
The University of Texas at Austin Institutional Review Board granted
approval for this study [20190900940]. We obtained and recorded
verbal informed consent in each interview and maintained strict
anonymity by using pseudonyms and encrypted storage for personal
identifiable information.
Interviews were analyzed using open coding, whereby to the best of our
ability we allowed theory to emerge from a close reading of the data.
Although we sought to further understand the nature of the global public
sphere through these case studies, we allowed trends and themes to
emerge from the data itself. Referencing interview recordings, interview
memos were written following each interview to summarize the key
takeaway observations from each interview. After three interviews in a
region were conducted, thematic memos were written to connect themes
across interviews. The process of memo writing allows for the
consolidation of findings to identify trends or dissimilarities across
regions of interest.