Brainstorming Workshop on ‘Anti-Fake News Laws in South and Southeast Asia’

The GIGA researchers, Dr. Andreas Ufen, Dr. Sangeeta Mahapatra, and Dr. Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, along with their local partner in Indonesia, SAFEnet, conducted an international knowledge-sharing and capacity-building workshop in Bali, Indonesia, on ‘Strengthening Civil Society Against Disinformation and the Weaponized Use of Anti-Fake News Laws’ from 25-26 September 2023.

The intensive workshop brought together 18 participants including researchers, journalists, fact-checkers, lawyers, and rights activists from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. During this workshop, research participants shared their first-hand experience in dealing with the twin challenges of disinformation and the weaponised use of anti-fake news laws. The workshop deepened the participants’ understanding of existing anti-fake news laws in the six countries and cross-country trends on their autocratic use against civil society actors like journalists, academics, and activists. The workshop also aimed at facilitating collaborative networks among civic actors involved in countering disinformation and cross-country policies against the use of anti-fake news laws as a tool of legal and digital repression and ensuring information integrity, especially in poll-bound countries that face disinformation-at-scale.