Synergies We Don’t See

I’m sure all of you by now have succumbed to Tiktok, one of the biggest social media apps to date. Have you ever wondered how your Tiktok FYP manages to curate seemingly hundreds of videos specifically for you? The answer’s simple: filter bubbles. Whenever you log onto Tiktok, it’ll show you 8 viral videos from different genres. Based on what video you engage more with, the algorithm will now share another 8 videos from that genre and the cycle continues. In addition to that, the app collects data from your device, language settings, hashtags, location and etc. With all this information and how you engage with videos, Tiktok categorizes people into “clusters” and keeps them in their “filter bubbles”. This is the secret to Tiktok’s engaging and addictive experience, however, these bubbles make you more susceptible to fake news and bias.

Due to confirmation bias, people are more likely to believe information when it reinforces a preexisting belief and reject any information that contradicts said belief— after all, who doesn’t love being told they’re right? Many online algorithms expose users with personalized information that feeds into their beliefs, thus amplifying confirmation bias and further trapping people in their consistent homogenous filter bubble, making it difficult for different views and maybe even correct information to come through. 

Sadly, this dystopian reality exists on a much larger scale. Political figures have the power to withhold information from their citizens or the international public in order to distort their perception of the world. Due to this manipulation and/or withholding of information, public distrust in Southeast Asia is at an all-time high. According to the 2022 Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, public trust in the news has been reported to be below 50% in Malaysia (36%), Indonesia (39%), and Singapore (34%). 

There are two major factors that contribute to these low levels of trust: apathy to news and its value and the extensive perception of bias in media. When these factors are considered, the lack of public trust seems justifiable. In the aforementioned Southeast Asian countries, media outlets seem to be puppeteered by political and corporate bias. Apart from Malasiyakini (an independent outlet), five of the major Malaysian news outlets are closely associated with long-standing political parties. The eight dominant Indonesian media companies are actually run by capitalists who use them as a platform for their own financial gains. 

In order to counteract this, Southeast Asian tech-savvy youth have turned to social media for news. Unfortunately, other sources of information seem to be something other than the cure to government and corporate control of mainstream media. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. Research has shown that Southeast Asian governments actually seek to weaponize and exploit social media as an agent for direct authoritarian control. Mario Resssa, a Filipino Nobel laureate, cautioned that political figures and global technology companies have manipulated certain democratic events, such as elections, by intentionally allowing misinformation to spread. For example, a 2018 study showed that in the Philippines, social media influencers would work closely with political figures’ PR teams to deliberately disseminate false information and divisive messages online in favor of President Duterte.

This portends a vicious cycle where the more one engages in fake news, the more one begins to lose trust in mainstream media thus eroding attempts at building democracy. 

What about the other Southeast Asian countries that aren’t being secretly run with an ulterior motive (if they even exist)? As for them, the persistent media crackdowns and authoritarian censorship regulations have developed fear in journalists and generated a suspicious sameness in news outlets. This may manifest itself in journalists avoiding a controversial topic altogether, or using more conservative headlines to prevent controversy. 

Are there any real solutions to this issue? 

It’ll take decades to rectify this issue on a larger scale, however, something that’s more achievable on a smaller scale is to use international news outlets instead of domestic ones. This may seem counterintuitive because logically speaking, a domestic outlet should know more about their own country instead of an international one. International news outlets tend to provide an independent perspective on sociopolitical issues occurring in certain countries as they are untethered by political bias from said countries; this allows them to cover the issues these countries try to keep under wraps, for example, the Myanmar coup, thus bringing them forward to more international scrutiny.