Gerard McDermott
From the editor: The spectre of digital authoritarianism for Southeast Asia
A new form of authoritarianism has emerged in Southeast Asia since the mid-2010s. Although varying in scope and intensity across the region’s defective democracies and military or one-party dominated regimes, significant and worrying developments related to surveillance, data collection, censorship, misinformation, and harassment can be observed across nearly all of Southeast Asia’s digital realms. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early-2020, authoritarian leaders have been provided with an opportunity to greatly enhance their ability to monitor, censor, and misinform their populations. The pandemic has provided justification for [...]
