Can Pandora’s Box Be Closed? How People in Myanmar Access and Identify Trustworthy Information After the Coup

Abstract

In 2012, Myanmar’s government abolished its censorship board, opening a Pandora’s box of unregulated free speech in the country’s previously cloistered information environment and raising hopes for a forthcoming transition to democracy. The military coup of 2021 would dash these hopes. To learn more about the media environment in countries that oscillate between democratization and authoritarianism, we use the case of military-ruled Myanmar, assessing how citizens’ trust in various news and information sources is affected by government efforts to reimpose information control. We conducted in-depth interviews with people from Myanmar and found that despite violent repression and media restrictions—or perhaps because of them—many in the country risk accessing news and information. Furthermore, the military’s brutality and its efforts to constrain communication have led to decreased trust in government media sources. Myanmar’s experiences offer a cautionary tale about the limitations of authoritarian governments, particularly those that have weak capacity, to restrict access to information once they have allowed some media freedom and Internet access.