Building Resistive Resilience to Digital Propaganda and Disinformation
MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY PROGRAMME
About the Webinar
Digital propaganda and disinformation are likely to expand and evolve into sophisticated weapons in information warfare, exposing Southeast Asian publics—with its high-intensity social media usage yet highly uneven levels of digital literacy—to systematic political manipulation. Efforts to counter cyber-propaganda remain ineffective, due to a lack of multi-stakeholder strategies to not only fight incidents of disinformation but also strengthen policy and media ecologies that enable structural and cultural resilience to toxic information wars. This webinar explores such strategic responses. In his talk on “Strengthening the role of journalism as a bulwark against organised social media propaganda” in Indonesia, Dr Wijayanto will show how the media too are vulnerable to cyber-propaganda while being complicit in amplifying its messages, and discuss how journalism can regain its purpose of accurate, in-depth information provision for empowering citizens. Comparing the Philippines with Singapore and Malaysia, Ms Emy Ruth Gianan will discuss “Building resilience to disinformation in Southeast Asia: a comparative information policy analysis”, arguing for a combination of rights-based cures and context-specific approaches to disinformation, rather than sweeping “reforms” that might do more harm. Dr Yatun Sastramidjaja will talk on “Beating the buzzers: Recognising and utilising citizen capacities for resistive resilience to cyber-propaganda”, discussing the counterweight offered by civil society, and how this might be utilised to build a citizen-oriented information ecology.
About the Speakers
Dr Wijayanto, Senior Lecturer Politics and Government, Diponegoro University; Director, Center for Media and Democracy, LP3ES.
Ms Emy Ruth Gianan, Lecturer Economics, Polytechnic University of the Philippines; MSc Public Policy and Management candidate, Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr Yatun Sastramidjaja, Associate Fellow, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute; Assistant Professor Anthropology, University of Amsterdam.
Registration
This webinar will be delivered online entirely. You can join the webinar at the specified date and time using devices (computer, phone, or tablet) with internet connection.
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