A cudgel of repression: Analysing state instrumentalisation of the ‘fake news’ label in Southeast Asia

Sample and coding

This study is based on a critical discourse analysis of key state-advanced discourses that discuss the issue of fake news; the empirical focus of the sampling is on texts articulated by state actors. While this excludes to an extent texts advanced by other societal entities, this study focused on discourses advanced solely by state actors because we are interested in studying how states instrumentalise the use of the ‘fake news’ label for political ends; further, their hegemonic political positions bolster the capacity for these discourses to become dominant (Hague and Loader, 1999). Texts analysed for this study are limited to discourses advanced in four Southeast Asian (SEA) countries – Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. These four countries were chosen for several reasons: first, this study aims to evaluate how the fake news label has been instrumentalised by political actors outside of a Western-centric context and specifically in Southeast Asia. Following Chang et al. (2013), the political system of these countries lay in the spectrum of authoritarianism, between competitive authoritarian to autocratic regimes; thus, this study aims to unpack how authoritarian states have politically instrumentalised the fake news label. Additionally, these countries have passed broad anti-fake news laws in recent years that have attracted much outcry from civil rights and media groups. ¹ Indeed over the past 2 years, the region has witnessed the enactment of a slew of harsh anti-fake news criminal legislation even though fake news as an issue is not one that has been typically understood to be a security problem in SEA. Instead, state actors in SEA have been criticised as being the primary producers and political beneficiaries of censorship and propaganda. Finally, this study restricts selected texts to those produced on or after 2014, corresponding to the period where discussions of fake news have achieved salience in wider society.

Using the search string ‘fake news + country y’, English articles discussing fake news that were published by leading state-owned national media outlets were retrieved from the ProQuest digital international news-stream archives, representing an initial sample of n = 1047 texts (90 from Cambodia, 175 from Malaysia, 669 from Singapore and 113 from Vietnam. The search was limited to news articles published by Asia News Network, a news coalition of state-owned news organisations from South, Southeast and Northeast Asia. With respect to the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore, they are all represented in the network by large state-owned national media, being Việt Nam News, Phnom Penh Post, The Star/New Straits Times and Straits Times respectively. The sample was then treated as follows: the number of articles from Singapore used for analysis was first reduced by half through random removal to bring it in line with the article count from the other case countries. Next, the reports were individually reviewed to remove duplicates as well as articles that discuss issues peripheral to fake news in the country, or do not contain discourses articulated by state actors. The remaining reports (n = 450; 81 from Cambodia, 93 from Malaysia, 210 from Singapore and 66 from Vietnam) would thus form the basis of this study’s analysis. Given that the key objective of CDA is to identify how discourses construct a particular ‘social wrong’ and justify a set of solutions to it, the analysis thus aims to examine and code each text with regards to how it conceives the issue of fake news and the issues it threatens in society, as well as what are the solutions proposed. The NVivo 12 software was used to identify relevant themes and organise the discourse. The articles were coded for the identified themes deductively determined from the theoretical framework and literature review as well as obtained from the body of data itself.

This study draws on a vast range of voices to highlight the extent to which states have instrumentalised the fake news label across different socio-political contexts, as well as to analyse the implications of these discourses. Hansen (2013: 73) suggests that the body of text examined in a discourse analysis should be composed of ‘key texts that are commonly quoted and provide linkages within the intertextual web of debate, as well as a larger body of material that allows for a more quantitative analysis of leading discourses.’ The aim of this article is thus to provide a broad examination of how state actors exploit the fake news label to foster social understandings about fake news and achieve certain political outcomes. A key limitation of this study is its restriction to the study of only texts written in English; however, because the search specifically includes content from the largest English-medium news outlets run by the countries that this study focuses on as well as relevant articles published by regional outlets affiliated with the network, they can nonetheless be considered fairly indicative of the stances adopted by these states. Further studies could be undertaken with the use of native language reports, as well as from a quantitative angle to further study competing discourses advanced by non-state actors, and to investigate the popular acceptance of these discourses.

Fake news as a national security issue

The most significant aspect of the discursive instrumentalisation of the fake news label by states is the deliberate construction and framing of fake news as an exigent threat that has direct implications for the country’s national security. This is evident in discourses articulated by state actors across Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam as illustrated in the following texts:

A ministerial order signed on 28 May 2018 by three Cambodian ministries reads: ‘Each specialized unit of organisation shall perform its duty . . . to take action against the dissemination of any content or information that would cause chaos and threaten national security and defense, harm relations with other countries, the national economy, public order, and discriminate against the cultural integrity of the country’ (Dara, 2018).

On 16 April 2018, former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak claimed that fake news amounted to a ‘security threat’ and that the government would not allow it to ‘compromise Malaysia’s sovereignty’ (Yunus, 2018).

On 20 September 2018, Singapore Minister of State Janil Puthucheary claimed that fake news is ‘a live and serious threat for Singapore that threatens our national security’. In a related statement, the Ministry of Law noted that the government has recognised the ‘serious challenges and real risks’ posed by fake news, including the harming of national security and inciting of public unrest and violence. (Sim, 2018).

On 31 October 2018, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security said that the ‘nation was threatened by tens of thousands of large-scale cyberattacks that directly cause serious economic losses and threaten security and social order. The enactment of the Cybersecurity Law is essential to meet the urgent requirement to combat fake news and protect national security’ (Nguyen, 2018).

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Table 1.

Summary of key themes.

Key themes coded	Count
National security threat	293
Threatens societal values	265
Urgent	211
New, unprecedented issue	195
Legislative solutions required	177
Dishonest media	148
Global policy responses	130
Others [2]

[2] Other less prominent themes identified in the corpus include, amongst others, fake news requiring a collaborative approach, the importance of media literacy education, the responsibility of tech companies, and cautions about the need to protect free speech. These alternative themes could be understood as competing, counter-hegemonic discourses to the main discourses identified.

Additionally, discourses advanced by state actors about fake news also often elevate the threat to the highest level of emergency and compare it on equal grounds to other national security issues such as terrorism, and biological warfare. For example in early 2018, the Singapore state media broadcast a series of documentaries on national-security issues which discussed fake news alongside threats including cyber-attacks and terrorism (Han, 2018). Similarly, ex-Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi claimed that the line that separated traditional and non-traditional security had blurred, and that ‘. . .issues such as extremism, terrorism, fake news and transnational organised crimes have become the interests of both the Defence and Home Ministries’ (Reduan, 2018).

The securitisation framework proposed by the Copenhagen school provides a useful analytical lens in the study of these texts (Buzan et al., 1998). According to the theory, political issues are framed as national emergencies to be prioritised when they are constructed as an existential threat. Because security is ultimately about survival, when a problem has been socially constructed as a national security issue, it allows the government to prioritise addressing the issue and claim exceptional powers that it would not otherwise have, curtailing existing social freedoms. This explains traits associated with securitised politics such as the dissipation of opposition on the problem while it is decisively contended with by the government (Wæver, 2011). Across the four countries, the framing of fake news as a national security issue using alarmist associations thus establishes the issue as a national security priority, justifying state counter-responses and the use of resources to address it. The conscious comparison and equivalence of fake news to other national security issues such as chemical attacks and terrorism similarly fosters a social understanding of fake news as an equally dangerous problem, consequently warranting austere measures as necessary to curb it.

A threat to fundamental societal norms

In addition to the discursive establishment of fake news as a security issue, discourses advanced by state actors also construe the issue as diametrically opposed to societal values considered foundational to society. The foremost value proposed as being threatened by fake news is that of the country’s sovereignty. In Vietnam, the Public Security Ministry reported that ‘hostile foreign state actors’ frequently conduct cyber-attacks on Vietnamese websites to incite acts of sabotage against society to ‘harm national sovereignty’ (Dharmaraj, 2020). The term ‘foreign state actors’ in particular has realist connotations and has the effect of constructing an out-group of malicious foreign entities intent on perpetuating harm, ultimately amplifying the threat presented by fake news. Similarly in Singapore, the Ministry of Communications has repeatedly emphasised the ability of fake news to interfere with elections and referendums (Jagdish, 2018), implying that it can also threaten the electoral integrity of Singapore and thus the state’s sovereignty – the most foundational referent object that can be construed in national security terms, justifying any means necessary to resolve the threat.

Social stability is another key issue framed as existentially threatened by fake news. Singapore, the Parliamentary Select Committee convened to examine fake news concluded that it can ‘damage the social fabric of the nation and exploit religious fault-lines’ (Kwang, 2018). Singapore also faces problems such as fake news magnifying ethnic and religious divides and entrenching distrust. ‘If the distrust becomes deep-rooted, people will have serious doubts about the institutions, about governance,’ the committee claimed (Seow, 2017). Such declarations clearly position fake news as a potential danger to ethno-religious harmony – a value enshrined in the national pledge and deemed as one of the most vital elements of the Singaporean national identity (Kuah, 1998). Similarly in Malaysia, given the country’s history of ethnic and religious conflict over the past decades, social stability and racial harmony are also considered sacrosanct in society (Collins, 1998). The emphasis on the potential implications of fake news for Malaysia’s multiethnic and multireligious communities by officials can be seen as a distinct attempt to exploit this sensitive issue in the country’s history.

Lastly, fake news has also been consciously positioned as a threat to economic development in texts advanced by state actors across the four countries. In justifying the passing of the Vietnamese Cyber Act in 2019, the Ministry of Public Security has highlighted that although Vietnam is a socially stable country on the development path, it has to be vigilant of potential instability. ‘Building a healthy and safe cyberspace will protect social security and order and lay a foundation for sustainable development’ (Dharmaraj, 2020). Singapore’s international connectivity and status as an international hub for trade, tourism and finance was also highlighted in speeches as attributes that make it particularly susceptible to malicious spread of disinformation (Chia, 2018). Economic development is prioritised socially in countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia, where remarkable economic growth rates have capped potential dissatisfaction amongst the citizens, and supplied performance legitimacy to the one-party governments (Thayer, 2009).

It is, however, in the discourses articulated by the Malaysian government where the economic consequences of fake news were the most asserted. In the Prime Minister’s 2017 New Year address, Razak (2017) proclaimed that the country’s economy had been the target of ‘fake news campaigns of those trying to commit economic sabotage against Malaysia for their own selfish political objectives’. On a separate occasion, he claimed that a US$7 billion investment made by Saudi Aramco in the state of Johor was ‘almost cancelled’ as a result of fake news spread by political opponents. This is especially salient in Malaysia, where numerous polls held in 2016 and 2017 had reported that Malaysian citizens were most concerned about economic issues (Balakrishnan, 2016). The discursive positioning of fake news as being ruinous to the economy, at a time where citizens have reported the lowest consumer confidence levels regionally, thus constructs fake news as being a threat to an issue that the population is most concerned about.

In order to understand the contextual success of a securitising campaign, Stritzel (2011) emphasises the importance of examining the pragmatics of discursive strategies used in which actors deploy the use of emotional appeals or cultural discourses to foster resonance with targeted audiences. Effective messages in this context are thus messages that are sufficiently embedded in localised narratives targeting ‘mass anxieties’ – which can be understood as a collective perceptions of identities, values and fears of the majority that underscore patterns of behaviour. In Southeast Asian political systems, stability is often prized more highly than liberty. By tapping into the mass anxieties of societies regarding values such as economic growth and social harmony, the discourses of fake news articulated by state actors present fake news as an existential threat to the foundational values of society, thus legitimising urgent emergency measures to resolve this threat.

Constructed as a new and unprecedented threat

Texts articulated by state actors tend to have a recurrent emphasis on the novelty of fake news, constructing the issue as an emergent and unprecedented threat in contemporary society. Indeed, in Singapore, the Parliamentary Select Committee that was convened to examine the issue of fake news concluded that it presents a ‘unique and very grave phenomenon of an unprecedented scale’ for the country. The below examination of excerpts of a speech given by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, during the Asia Media Summit in June 2019 (Savi, 2019), provides an illustrative example:

‘Digital technology comes with disadvantages – the dissemination of fake news, insults, hateful incitement, discrimination, conflicts between races and religions, news exaggerated from its real source, and cybercrimes such as online extortion and hacking to destroy public documents, all of which can harm security in the region and the world as a whole.’

In this first section, Hun Sen attributes issues such as cybercrime, fake news, and societal conflicts to a key source – the continued development and advances of digital technology. He also associates fake news with a slew of other ‘mass anxieties’ highlighted in the previous section such as ethno-religious harmony and national security.

‘Traditional media must adjust to the real situation and the development of modern technology in order to face the competition of the digital era and make a strategic framework policy for the legal provision of media and digital security standards. Changes are required for businesses’ data security management, the security of digital payments and to combat fake news and all cybercrime.’

In the context of these purportedly new and emergent cyber-security issues, this text argues that current state media regulations are lacking, and insufficient. There is also a need for private businesses to engage with and address the challenges posed by new media technologies. Thus, new regulations concerning fake news and cyber-crime are framed as necessary.

‘I believe this summit will meaningfully discuss the opportunities, challenges, cooperation and partnerships involved in combating fake news and cybercrime, including ways to resolve problems caused by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.’

Interestingly, Hun Sun had taken a step further and sought to associate fake news with the advent of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a concept postulating of a series of social, political, cultural, and economic disruptions that will unfold over the present century as a result of the convergence of digital, biological, and physical innovations (Schwab, 2017). It remains to be seen whether this discursive association of fake news with the Fourth Industrial Revolution will gain further traction regionally, although it is clear that the Cambodian Prime Minister had sought to supply strong justification for the new laws by drawing upon this technical concept.

The theme of technological advances leading to fake news as a novel contemporary problem is also prevalent in texts articulated by the Malaysian state. In justifying a new Anti-Fake News Bill in Malaysia, the Malaysian Communications Commission claimed that ‘. . .the situation was different during that time. We had the Internet, but the spread of information was not as robust as now. We didn’t have social media platforms, such as WhatsApp, Telegram or Instagram’ (Shah, 2018). Constructing fake news as a new issue provides social legitimation for the implementation of new broader measures as necessary to contend with this threat. This is especially crucial in light of challenges against new anti-fake news legislations brought on by civil rights groups, which often point to the adequacy of existing laws that already allow the government to address fake news. In Malaysia, Constitutional expert Professor Shad Saleem Faruqi noted that an array of existing laws can already be used against fake news, such as the Malaysian Penal Code which criminalises defamation and the dissemination of such content and the Communications and Multimedia Act and the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA), which outlaws false and malicious news, defamation, sedition, and blasphemy. The Malaysian Bar Council has also called for the bill to be withdrawn, calling it ‘legislative overkill’ (Lourdes, 2018). In Singapore, existing laws have been successfully deployed against fake news such as in the case of media website The Real Singapore, whose editors were convicted in 2016 using the Sedition Act for disseminating false information which can sow unrest (Chong, 2016). Ultimately, by discursively construing fake news as a novel phenomenon, these discourses not only amplify the severity of fake news, they also undermine competing societal understandings of it as nothing more than the contemporary emergence of propaganda – a ‘mere result of new digital technology for the old fashioned propaganda, which has always existed’ (Mackintosh, 2019).

Used to justify broad legislative measures

The texts construct the threat of fake news as a national security threat, discursively presenting the state as the primary actor facing the greatest threat, and responsible for swiftly developing broad and encompassing strategies to secure its national interests. In this way, the passing of extensive criminal laws targeting fake news and its perpetrators is legitimised. The Ministry of Security in Vietnam has justified the enactment of a new cyber-security law in early 2019 as mandatory to defend the state against ‘enemy and reactionary forces’ aiming to ‘incite riots and terrorism’ (Parameswaran, 2019). The law is far-reaching and in addition to outlawing fake news, also requires tech conglomerates to store within the Vietnamese border large amounts of personal data ranging from biometric information to details of political opinion, as well as be subject to national audits.

In Cambodia, several anti-fake news initiatives have been implemented, including a directive in 2018 which mandates all local websites to be registered with Cambodia’s information ministry and imposes a jail term of up to 2 years for fake news posted online. Also being presently reviewed is a new anti-cybercrime law aimed primarily at regulating the e-commerce and e-banking sectors, although it was reported to include chapters on fake news as well. The Cambodian leader has justified the new measures as necessary to ‘maintain security, political stability, sustainable development and to promote democracy and respect for human rights in Cambodia’ (Dara, 2019).

The situation is similar in Singapore where the state had proclaimed that existing legislations are inadequate in addressing fake news, suggesting that the threat of fake news is exceptional and cannot be resolved by present measures. The proposed legislations which would broaden the scope of the country’s already austere legislations governing expression can be understood as being ‘outside the normal bounds of political procedure’ (Buzan et al., 1998). This is reflected for example in the recommendation of laws that would allow the state to, within hours, order a take-down of digital content. This requirement of expediency is inadvertent tension with the principles of justice and due process, as take-down orders have traditionally been the ambit of the judiciary and parties affected may not have enough time to present their cases. Finally, in Malaysia, proposed legislations would grant the police increased powers of pre-emptive action, including possibly search and seizure without a warrant (Lim, 2018).

The severe punitive laws have given rise to concerns about their impact on civil liberties, particularly on the potential on the laws being deployed discriminately against political dissent. This has led to cautions raised about a dangerous legal precedent being set if such laws result in state authorities being the sole arbiter of truth (Seow, 2018). Yet, in light of how ASEAN regional governments do not have a common definition of what constitutes fake news – and given how none of the legislations have specifically delineated a clear definition of fake news – this outcome is exactly what these laws have de facto enacted. The purposeful framing of fake news as an existential threat has thus allowed political actors to justify the enactment of broad-reaching legislation, conferring upon states expansive powers that they do not hitherto possess, and bearing the very real potential of encroachment upon civil liberties in society.

Trump-style attacks on journalism

Another key trend prevalent across the four countries is the use of blanket and unsubstantiated accusations by state actors of media outlets as being the purveyors of fake news. This is the most prominent in the case of Cambodia, which has seen state officials repeatedly attacking independent media outlets and journalists in the country. In a Facebook post published in early 2017, a spokesman for Cambodia’s cabinet referenced moves by the White House to exclude certain media organisations from press briefings and threatened to ‘take similar action’ against the media outlets (Gallo, 2017). In a subsequent speech in 2018, PM Hun Sen said: ‘I think Donald Trump is right for creating an award for fake news. Even in the US, there are such kinds of journalists until the president created the fake news awards for such media – fakes, cheats, and liars.’ Referring to the shuttered Cambodia Daily, he continued: ‘In Cambodia, there are also such kinds of news outlets, operating without paying tax, cheating, and quietly violating Cambodian law. When they got caught, they pretended to be victims to earn sympathy from foreign governments’ (Vannarin, 2018). Notably, Hun Sen has, across different speeches, repeatedly beseeched media outlets to ‘be sincere to the professional code of ethics’, and ‘act ethically, dare to tell the truth with constructive criticism’. He added that journalists must avoid reporting on fake news that could lead to conflict, chaos, or insecurity. Such statements discursively portray journalists as having acted in breech the abovementioned values and are culpable of unethical conduct, spreading fake news and stoking domestic unrest.

The ex-Malaysian administration under Najib was similarly critical of media outlets. Within the context of proposed anti-fake news legislation and growing public dissatisfaction with the administration, Communications Minister Salleh Said Keruak (2018) accused Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) of being a culprit of fake news. He described several SCMP articles as ‘appalling lies’, including reports of the government’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica. ‘The SCMP used to be a widely respected regional newspaper, and some Malaysians reading its reports may naively think they can trust them. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case,’ he said. He went on to claim that facts, journalistic process, and ethics are ‘no longer sacred’ to some outlets. ‘Whether they are deliberate or careless, they are instances of misinformation. This is fake news. It is a danger to us all,’ he said. In Singapore, attacks against the media can still be discerned, although critiques have been overt and less outright. Over the past years, the government has repeatedly accused alternative news media outlets of being the key producers of false information, citing a case of how two individuals working for the now-defunct media entity The Real Singapore (TRS) were convicted for sowing discord after it alleged in February 2015 that complaints by a Filipino family over noise led to a confrontation between police and attendees of a religious gathering (Chong, 2016). In April 2017, the state media also published a collection of domestic fake news incidents of which the majority implicated alternative media outlets (Lam, 2017).

It is worth pointing out that although discursive attacks by state entities targeting the journalism industry are evidenced across all the four countries, they do vary in extent comparatively. Within the more heavily authoritarian political contexts of Cambodia and Vietnam, such attacks can be seen to be more flagrant and outright – with it even being used by state actors in Cambodia as justification to outright shutdown longstanding media outlets (Hoekstra, 2018) – while such discourses delegitimising the media are advanced more subtlety in the comparatively more liberal contexts of Malaysia and Singapore. Arguably, the difference may be attributable to the differences in the political contexts, whereby there is less necessity for the single-party states of Vietnam and Cambodia to be politically accountable to the public and (appear to) protect media freedom, unlike the cases of Singapore and Malaysia. The first direct repercussion of the incessant use of the fake news label against media outlets would be the legitimisation of punitive crackdowns against these targeted outlets. Furthermore, the positioning of these independent media outlets as ‘fake news’ simply because they are critical of the government can impact on their societal legitimacy, turning public opinion against them and stifling the independence of journalism.

Misrepresentation of policy actions by democratic countries

Finally, the analysis reveals how the texts advanced by state actors commonly cite examples of state intervention against fake news in other countries in order to justify the enactment of similar domestic legislations. Cambodian Ministry spokesman Phay Siphan said that the proposed cybersecurity law was inspired by similar laws enacted in other countries. ‘Cambodia didn’t just take the law out of the jungle. We studied similar laws in the US, Britain and other countries because we are open – we are not a dictatorship or a communist country!’ (Chheng, 2019). In Vietnam, Minister of Information Nguyễn Mạnh Hùng justified new regulations against fake news by stating that ‘other countries had already made laws to address misinformation, for example Singapore where fake news spreaders are subject to fines of millions of dollars and jail terms’ (Lan, 2019). Discourses articulated in proposals for the Anti-Fake News Bill in Malaysia had claimed how ‘Malaysia is not alone in its view,’ referring to countries such as Singapore, Philippines, Germany, France, and Britain.

The wide range of countries quoted as examples in these state-led discourses conveys an understanding of fake news as representing a pressing global problem that has compelled countries across the world to act. More crucially, by drawing intertextual reference to purportedly similar efforts in democratic countries such as the USA, political actors are able to borrow the international and political legitimacies of these countries to add credence to local efforts to criminalise fake news. Yet, given that none of the above countries referenced in the texts (with the exception of Singapore) have criminalised fake news or otherwise passed laws that are as broad and expansive as the laws proposed in the respective case countries, these discourses have a ring of both truth and liberality, and can be arguably understood as disingenuous attempts to obfuscate. Additionally, by implying that there is a risk for similar fake news incidents to take place in the country, this also allows state actors to link the relevance of overseas developments to the local context, raising both its salience and resonance with citizens.

The misrepresentation of policies and discourses in democratic countries by authoritarian political entities is particularly insidious because in addition to conferring upon them social legitimacy to advance broad anti-fake news measures, it also binarily positions civil society groups who might be opposed to these new legislations on grounds of human rights as, conversely, undemocratic and against the public interest. In further highlighting that ‘. . .the whole world is putting its attention to cybersecurity law,’ Siphan accused those who are opposed to the new Cambodian law of ‘[having] the intention to commit cybercrimes’ (Chheng, 2019). This is exemplified in a statement by ex-Malaysian Minister Salleh Keruak, who asserted that ‘. . .democracy and freedom of speech need to be protected from disinformation and fake news. So, we need to uphold that sanctity by clamping down on the abuse of freedom of speech by those who spread fake news’. Yet, when understood in the context of a series of ongoing crackdowns by the Malaysian government against media outlets that have drawn condemnations from the US Department of State (Tang, 2015), these statements are ironic indeed.