When Digital Repression Backfires
Surachanee Sriyai
In seeking to shape the public information space, some governments have resorted to digital repression. But these instruments come with the danger of overreach.

Surachanee Sriyai
In seeking to shape the public information space, some governments have resorted to digital repression. But these instruments come with the danger of overreach.
Nguyen Khac Giang|Dien Nguyen An Luong
As George Orwell noted in his seminal 1972 essay, "Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban". As our authors argue, Vietnam’s state plan to reform its media could create more problems than it solves.
Sofie Syarief
A free press in a democracy embodies the concept of freedom of speech and checks those in power while ensuring that citizens are well-informed. Both freedoms were at threat under Indonesia’s former president. Things do not look brighter now.
Nguyen Khac Giang
Hanoi’s silence over a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by a Vietnamese-American author speaks volumes about the country’s treatment of its wartime history.
Taufiq Hanafi
Mr Hanafi is responding to Max Lane’s Fulcrum, published on 18 March 2024, on the success of “Eksil”, the documentary about ten exiled Indonesians discussing Suharto’s purge of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the ensuing violence in the mid-1960s.
Max Lane
A popular documentary about ten exiles has had an extraordinary run in Indonesia, not least because it sings a different tune from the official historical narrative about the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and its supporters, perpetuated since the Suharto era.
Dien Nguyen An Luong
Vietnam’s media celebrated Ke Huy Quan’s Oscar, but online nationalists panned him for taking pride in his odyssey to America and the Oscars stage. Dredging up war memories remains anathema, but the state’s reactions may undermine national reconciliation efforts, especially with the Vietnamese diaspora.
Dien Nguyen An Luong
Vietnam’s Decree 53 appears to be focused less on making Big Tech firms set up offices and data centres in Vietnam. Instead, it appears to be more focused on instilling fear in such companies and Internet users.
Dien Nguyen An Luong
Public trust in mainstream news media is at an all-time low in several Southeast Asian countries. The fundamental challenge facing governments, journalists and consumers is how to reshape the media environment so that the trend can be reversed.
Janjira Sombatpoonsiri
This Long Read examines the complex intersection of regime-organised cyber troops, pro-regime media outlets, and royalist activists in Thailand. Unlike the first group, the pro-regime press and royalist civic groups are not necessarily sponsored by the regime, but are instead ideologically driven to defend the crown.