Anthony Ware, Costas Laoutides and Monique Skidmore from SHSS/ADI have secured $185,487 from the Gerda Henkel Foundation for a project titled “Techno-Totalitarianism vs. Disruptive New Technologies: Technologically mediated cultural forms of resistance to Myanmar’s evolving physical, psychological and cyber warfare”.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Widespread access to cyberspace by populations and the deployment of online encryption and surveillance technologies by states is fundamentally changing the nature of civil war. This project explores the ways in which social media, new encryption technologies, and cyber-surveillance are deployed as a new battlefront, as coercive authoritarian structures, as enablers of resistance, and as ambiguous contributors to both security and insecurity of individuals. Myanmar is the first East Asian conflict in which social media and encrypted technology may be deciding factors. This project takes Myanmar’s civil conflicts as a case study, seeking to document, understand and analyse the deployment and implications of new technologies in the context of (i) a military state with techno-totalitarian ambition, and (ii) resistance movements adopting new technologies to disrupt the status quo. Propaganda, self-censorship, national and transnational organization and communications have ruptured Myanmar’s political sphere. This project tracks the evolution of civil war strategies in real time over 24 months as the actors seek to master new technologies in the political and information spheres.