This chapter argues that digital authoritarianism in Southeast Asia is on the rise. The proliferation of AI-generated tools, disinformation, surveillance technology, and lack of coherent regulations governing technology and online content contribute to the cyberchaos. Based on cross-country data and case studies, we find both democracies and autocracies to have interfered with the three layers of the Internet at the infrastructural, network, and application levels. Digital interferences include Internet shutdowns, filtering, surveillance, misinformation, and jailing of political dissidents based on vague media laws. Myanmar, Cambodia, and Vietnam epitomize the three most extreme cases of digital autocracies in the region.
Authors
Tan N; Denyer RL
Book title
Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in Southeast Asia