Mobile Communication and Online Falsehoods in Asia

The propagation of online falsehoods on COVID-19 has been of great concern in Indonesia, particularly those disseminated on WhatsApp, the second most popular social networking site in the country with more than two million monthly active users. This chapter explores how Indonesians engaged with the information ecosystem. This exploratory study found that WhatsApp was among the top three sources Indonesians used to obtain information relating to the pandemic and that corrections from physicians, academics and public officials were more likely to be believed by Indonesians.

Singapore hosts at least 17 groups using Mobile Instant Messaging Services (MIMS) to self-organise around vaccine hesitancy despite a highly regulated information environment. Although the country has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, the rates among middle-aged and older adults remained lower than younger adults till the end of 2021, delaying the opening of Singapore’s borders and economy. The country has also enacted an anti-fake news law called Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act in 2019 that covers MIMS but it has yet to be invoked against them even once in the 96 times that it has been applied to other media (as of the time of writing). This begs the question: how effective are anti-fake news laws in regulating MIMS platforms like Telegram that have been described as “ideal platforms” for the spread of falsehoods by the Singapore government (Wong, 2019). We surveyed two prominent vaccine-hesitant groups on Telegram to discover the socioeconomic demographic profile of the groups, their sources of pandemic-related information and what their reasons for joining the groups. Although our survey had a low response rate, our study sheds light on what is often a shadowy world rife with misinformation. We found that Telegram’s technological characteristics such as affording anonymity and freedom from censorship played a significant role as did the in-group nature of such group chats in a context where punitive measures were implemented to nudge the vaccination rates higher.

This study investigated the symbolic meanings and cultural implications of rumour management practices on WeChat through the lens of rumour management as the exertion of power in maintaining and challenging the order of discourse. Through a digital ethnographic approach, the study identified the actors that debunk rumours on WeChat. Debunking rumours does not remove all the visibility of a rumour text; instead, some parts of the rumour content have to be exposed and then recontextualised to a new discourse in which it is refuted. Rumours on WeChat also cover event-based false information, debatable institutionalised knowledge and perceived false political claims from China’s ideological opponents in international politics. To control the spread of rumours is therefore more than distinguishing truth from false, but involves meta-discursive practices to assert the truth by different professional groups and the dominant political power in China. The study contributes to a critical understanding of the rumour ecology on WeChat.

Our study of the patterns of activity in the consumption and dissemination of information on the platforms and closed messaging apps used by the Chinese diaspora of Australia has revealed how these communities are vulnerable to mis- and disinformation. In outlining the complexities, this chapter explains the challenges of monitoring mis- and disinformation in these multilingual spaces as well as the interplay with mainstream platforms such as Facebook and Twitter; and how China’s “image problem” (He, 2020) in the media affects diaspora communities. Overt and covert influence efforts in Australia by Chinese state agents and others such as the anti-Chinese Communist Party Himalaya movement (Bogle & Zhao, 2020) are outlined. Findings aim to inform solutions to support and seek support from Chinese diaspora communities globally. This chapter updates and expands on data collected for the 2021 report Disinformation, stigma and Chinese diaspora: policy guidance for Australia (Chan et al., 2021) by First Draft’s APAC bureau, which was written to inform policymakers ahead of Australia’s May 2022 federal election.

The spread of the COVID-19 virus as well as false information on the pandemic not only harmed citizens’ health but also undermined the credibility of many governments during their crisis management. In Thailand, false information on COVID-19 vaccines created anti-government sentiments and had a negative impact on public health. The Thai government tried to suppress false information by launching a centralised COVID-19 information centre. It also announced an Emergency Decree on 26 March 2020 that placed the country in lockdown. Its other measures included appointing official spokespersons and setting up a Facebook page for the Centre for the COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) to control communication of the emerging situation. The Anti-Fake News Centre, a fact checking unit under the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (MDES), legitimised the government’s claims as truths during the crisis. As a result, tensions among government agencies, journalists and netizens arose. This chapter adopts an ecology approach to examine how the Thai government combatted online falsehoods during the pandemic. It explores online falsehoods through three waves of the pandemic crisis and provides an analysis of how the Thai government attempted to control communication through laws and regulations, actions by government agencies and through social media campaigns. This chapter also discusses the gap between government information and citizens’ trust regarding the efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine using data collected from social listening tool Zocial Eye. This chapter illustrates the confrontation between the state and civil society in anti-falsehood policy during the pandemic.

This chapter identifies three understudied but crucial macro factors that affect the problem of false information on mobile instant messaging services (MIMS) in Asia. First, Asia has a predominant and rising “mobile-first, mobile-centric” user demographic that may be particularly vulnerable to false information. This is largely due to poor digital literacy skills, and an unconscious and continued entrenchment of digital illiteracies afforded by mobile devices, such as the routinising narrow information-seeking and information verification practices. Second, the rise of super-apps (especially those with instant messaging functions) in Asia may worsen the microtargeting of false information, especially under the region’s weak data and privacy protection regimes. Furthermore, as super-apps become more deeply embedded in people’s lives, people’s increased reliance on and trust in these platforms may make them less critical of the information that they receive. Third, relying on legislation to combat false information poses both legitimacy and practical challenges to governments in Asia, leading to unintended and paradoxical outcomes that compromise the effectiveness of such solutions.

Interpersonal and group chats, such as WhatsApp, have become channels for information exchange. Unfortunately, they have also become channels for fake news. But if fake news spreads through chat groups, it begets the question if corrections also be effectively disseminated in the same way. Guided by the frameworks of social identity theory and social presence theory, this study examined the impact of source familiarity (familiar versus unfamiliar) and mode of delivery (interpersonal chat versus group chat) on the perceived credibility of a correction message to debunk misinformation sent on WhatsApp. Through a five-day-long experiment involving 114 student participants in Singapore, this study found no main effect of either source familiarity or mode of delivery on the perceived credibility of the correction message. However, the study found a significant interaction effect—when the correction was sent to a chat group, members rated it as more credible when it was sent by a familiar source than when it was sent by a source they had never met.

The study of misinformation can be parsed into its sources and recipients, contents and means of transmission, among others. Accordingly, researchers can examine who is producing and receiving misinformation, what is being produced and how it spreads. This study focuses on the latter two components of content and means of transmission. We analysed text messages from a Singapore-based COVID-19 Telegram group with the aim of understanding the textual features of vaccine misinformation in publicly accessible chatgroups (what misinformation was produced and how textual features relate to subsequent propagation). Findings are based on 133,747 messages transmitted among 3,983 unique users of a COVID-19 Telegram chatgroup over a four-month period. Data collection coincided with the emergence and proliferation of a particular piece of misinformation in Singapore—that ivermectin is an effective drug against COVID-19—and this topic of interest served as a convenient subject of inquiry for the subsequent analyses. Topic modelling and sentiment analyses were conducted to identify the textual characteristics of misinformation. Topic modelling pointed to three characteristics: the use of scientific and medical experts as persons of authority to increase the believability of the misinformation; the comingling of official and unofficial sources which increases the difficulty of discerning truths from half-truths and outright falsehoods; and the capitalisation of existing fears and insecurities. Sentiment analysis indicated that positive sentiments were dominant among ivermectin-related messages and embedded in extollations of the drug’s efficacy. The chatgroup also exhibited echo chamber-like communication structures with users rarely questioning the veracity of ivermectin misinformation. The findings jointly point out the key features of textual framing that facilitate the subsequent dissemination of vaccine misinformation and inform public education efforts on identifying such misinformation.

A growing body of research has sought to uncover how specific characteristics of digital platforms influence partisan affect. Yet few of these studies have focused on closed communication platforms such as mobile instant messaging services (MIMS). As these platforms provide a more intimate environment for users to interact with one another, they may facilitate the spread of political rumours with ease which in turn exacerbates affective polarisation between partisans. Therefore, a comparative analysis of mobile instant messengers (i.e., WhatsApp) and social media (i.e., Facebook) use was conducted through an online survey in Hong Kong (N = 1,584) to gauge how rumour communication on these platforms impacts affective polarisation. This study found that engaging in political rumour communication on closed and private networks, such as WhatsApp, exacerbated affective polarisation across partisan lines, albeit not equally among users. For example, unlike Facebook, the sharing of rumours on WhatsApp uniquely contributes to the heightening of negative feelings towards political opponents; however, this effect was significantly stronger for supporters of the political establishment in Hong Kong.

In Singapore, there has been a rise in misinformation on mobile instant messaging services (MIMS). MIMS support both small peer-to-peer networks and large groups. Misinformation in the former may spread due to recipients’ trust in the sender while in the latter, misinformation can directly reach a wide audience. The encryption of MIMS makes it difficult to address misinformation directly. As such, chatbots have become an alternative solution where users can disclose their chat content directly to fact checking services. To understand how effective fact checking chatbots are as an intervention and how trust in three different fact checkers (i.e., Government, News Outlets, and Artificial Intelligence) may affect this trust, we conducted a within-subjects experiment with 527 Singapore residents. We found mixed results for the fact checkers but support for the chatbot intervention overall. We also found a striking contradiction between participants’ trust in the fact checkers and their behaviour towards them. Specifically, those who reported a high level of trust in the government performed worse and tended to follow the fact checking tool less when it was endorsed by the government.

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.

As a multicultural and multireligious country, Malaysia faces many delicate issues relating to race, religion and the royalty. Online falsehoods have been amplified on social media and Mobile Instant Messaging Services (MIMS). Unlike an open communication network, a closed and private network like WhatsApp is often regarded as a safer and trusted place for discussion, making it the most popular platform for false information sharing in Malaysia. Focusing on online falsehoods on WhatsApp, this chapter discusses Malaysia initiatives in dealing with the problem and offers some insights on the future undertakings and challenges. Using existing laws such as the Communication and Multimedia Act, Sedition Act Panel Code, the Malaysian government places legal liability on the individuals who create and disseminate false information. In addition, Malaysia introduced a fact checking portal called Sebenarnya.my to encourage Malaysians to verify news before sharing. Central to the fight against online falsehoods is educating the public through multiple fake news awareness programmes and strategic communication approaches. Yet, more efforts are needed. Future initiatives include the revival of Anti-Fake News Act, improvement of Sebenarnya.my and developing a digitally literate nation at both technical and content levels. Malaysia must be ready to face new challenges of regulating online content, while continue on improving the standard of Malaysian media and building people’s resilience towards false information. All of these require collective efforts.

Against the backdrop of a global and national public outcry on unchecked harms on social media, legislators and regulators in India have proposed and enacted legislations to address the problems. These laws apply to social media platforms as well as mobile instant messaging apps (MIMS) such as WhatsApp that are popular in the country. In this paper we place MIMS at the intersection of two distinct technical developments—mobile telephony-based text messaging and instant messaging services. We distinguish MIMS from social media platforms that are designed for content discovery. While recognising the difficulty in detecting and understanding harms on MIMS, we argue that accounting for the unique technical and social affordances of MIMS can result in a more productive agenda for protecting citizens on these platforms.

Misinformation can negatively influence people’s reasoning, decision-making and behaviour even following the provision of a clear correction; this is known as the continued influence effect. Numerous cognitive and socio-cognitive factors underlie misinformation reliance and the continued influence effect. Cognitive factors include limitations in memory capacity as well as memory updating and knowledge revision capabilities; socio-cognitive factors include biassed reasoning and perceived source credibility. Although misinformation is not a new problem, social media and instant messaging platforms have dramatically changed the information transmission environment, with their unregulated and user-controlled nature increasing the ease with which misinformation can be created and propagated. Drawing insights from cognitive, social and political psychology, the current chapter provides a general overview of the cognitive and social factors underlying (1) misinformation belief, and (2) the continued influence effect of corrected misinformation. The discussion focuses on how the unique nature of online information acquisition, specifically characteristics of both open and closed online communication networks, not only creates an environment ideal for the spread of misinformation, but functions to inhibit accurate knowledge revision. The chapter concludes by providing specific recommendations for how to effectively mitigate the spread of misinformation within the online information ecosystem. The concepts and recommendations discussed in this chapter are broadly applicable regardless of social or cultural context.

While concerns over “fake news” or false information have prompted extensive research and public debate around the world, there have been few public policy and practical approaches. To counter false information disseminated online, Taiwan experimented with the formation of a tripartite partnership for tackling false information. The tripartite partnership brings together cross-sector actors from government, technology companies and civil society to combat online mis- and false information. Apart from efforts taken by digital platforms such as Facebook and Google, technology companies which offer mobile instant messaging services (MIMS) also play an important role in the tripartite partnership for tackling false information in Taiwan. Based on primary and secondary research conducted from 2020 to 2021, focusing on LINE, the most popular MIMS in Taiwan, as an example, this chapter provides an overview of Taiwan’s approach to the issue of false information—how the key players within the local information ecosystem organised themselves to respond to the challenge. The chapters sheds light on the lessons such a tripartite partnership might hold for other countries.