Regulating Online Pandemic Falsehoods: Practices and Interventions in Southeast Asia

Online falsehoods proliferated with the outbreak of COVID-19, leading to conspiracy theories and vaccine hesitancy in Southeast Asia. In this chapter, we investigate the effects and enforcement of falsehood regulations on the democratic freedoms in nine countries. Broadly, we compare (1) the laws governing online falsehoods on mobile instant messaging services (MIMS) platforms and other social media; (2) the forms of enforcement across the region based on V-Dem’s Pandemic Backsliding Index, Digital Society Index (DSI), human rights reports and news media agencies. Specifically, we also compare how the respective governments in (3) Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand enforced online pandemic falsehood regulations. Our findings show that while laws governing online falsehoods are necessary interventions to minimise distrust of public health information, abuses occur when vaguely defined laws obfuscate and authorities interpret and enforce laws in discriminatory ways. If left unchecked, the arbitrary expansion of the state’s policing power is likely to lead to democratic backsliding in the post-pandemic era.