Civic Engagement in Myanmar: The Promise and Threat of Mobile Communication
7.5 Discussion and Conclusion
137
Majority religion’s subtle ways of discrimination and exclusion was deep-rooted to the extent that even commercial transactions were viewed with a religious lens.
Both Ooredoo and Telenor are business entities that have provided services in countries with a range of cultural and religious roots. However, this multinational business ethos found an obstacle from the majority community in Myanmar – as a company headquartered in a Muslim country, 19 Ooredoo became an anathema for some in the Buddhist community. Those who led the whisper campaign against Ooredoo waited without buying a SIM card until Telenor, its competitor, launched its services in their town. Phyu Ohnmar, a seamstress in the Madaya market, said,
Ooreedoo is a company from a Muslim country, so people don’t want to buy their SIM card.
There is a Facebook and other media campaign against the O. card… That’s why I don’t buy a SIM card now (Phyu Ohnmar, Madaya, 22-August-2014).
While ICTs help in better organization of community activities, the broader dis- courses on nationalism appropriated by the majority community has excluded minorities from the mainstream. This is evident in the way hate speech against minority religions, especially Muslims, are spread unchecked on websites and the way extremist groups use ICTs to advance their agenda. More entrenched religious bias became evident when people from the majority religion delayed their purchase of a SIM card, to avoid a deal with a Muslim-owned company.
138
From a macro perspective, the promise of ICTs in strengthening the civic engage- ment of the citizenry needs to be approached with caution. While scholars acknowl- edge that the constitutional reforms in 2011 have resulted in greater freedom to engage in politics, problems involving inter-ethnic and interreligious groups have the potential to curtail the effectiveness of the reforms. Politics in the public sphere has stopped being considered a threat to the Union, and is no longer suppressed by the government citing national security (Callahan 2012 ). That said, the Burmese- Buddhist majority controls a central position (Holliday 2014 ). As noted by Willis ( 2014 ) there are fundamental issues of inclusion and citizenship that are yet to be addressed in Myanmar. Our fi ndings show that some individuals such as Htut Khaing and those who are aligned with political parties such as Cho Htway are starting to use ICTs in the political sphere. At the same time, others, such as Nyein Sanda, have not made this transition. In the latter case, our material indicates that the cost of the subscription and perhaps the weight of political control as well as a pride in paper-based communication conspire to keep him outside of the digital sphere.
The second research question asked if and how ICTs have helped mitigate or strengthen the divides between religious and ethnic communities . Here the fi ndings are mixed. At the local level mobile social media were used to organize local com- munity activity. In addition, the material shows that minority groups strove to strike a balance between their unique cultural identity and that of the dominant Buddhist culture . The activities had humanistic appeal, benefi ted all residents and did not reinforce divisions between communities. That said there are other currents in the political mix.
Social media has facilitated the spread of rumors that infl ame racial divides. The issue of racism also arises in the consumption decisions of people who were wary of Muslim based companies such as Ooredoo. This plays out in various types of boycotts (Kyaw 2014 ; Mann 2014 ), and as deferral of subscribing until a non- Muslim operator was available. Hence, the fi ndings of the study pertaining to civic engagement can be seen from the local socio-political context, wherein the religious communities have been living in relative peace and harmony. In addition, there is a broader picture that is more complex.
From a critical discourse perspective the broader socio-political context that is dominated by the majority community shows the structural defi cits of a societal system. The opening up of markets, including telecommunications, has brought in modern means of information and communication to Burmese society . However, the social system in the country still struggles to negotiate the traditional within the changing techno-scape. As suggested by CDA, discourse hardly has an origin where one could identify any one or a collection of entities as responsible for the inequal- ity in the system. Instead, appropriation of discourse’s powers goes beyond the nar- row realm of human agency and is contingent on political and historical events (Fairclough 2003 ). We, therefore, caution against faulting the majority group for the inequalities of the system. Our critical focus has been to expose the discourses that motivate a subject to think, speak and act in specifi c ways at a given historical juncture.
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Acknowledgements The study was supported by a grant from Telenor and Nanyang Technological University. Contributions of Dr. Elisa Oreglia and Ms. Chitra Panchapakesan, who shared their data collected from Madaya and Bago, respectively, are acknowledged. The authors are also grate- ful to Dr. May Lwin, who provided valuable insights on the culture and topography of Myanmar as we prepared ourselves for the fi eldwork. An earlier version of the paper was presented at International Communication Association pre-conference New Media and Citizenship in Asia , San Juan, Puerto Rico on 21 May 2015.
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