Navigating Digital Borderscapes: A Case Study from Rohingya Refugee Settlements in Bangladesh

Based on a case study of the lived experiences of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh between 2017 and 2019, this article focuses on displaced people’s digital needs and innovative efforts to navigate the challenges in their situation. The article first discusses the major barriers faced by Rohingya refugees in using various digital devices and platforms and how these obstacles adversely affect them in obtaining necessary information and humanitarian services. Our findings from the field highlight the uniquely important role that mobile repair shops in the camps play in providing online-offline hybrid solutions to circumvent restrictions imposed on the refugee community by the host government. The findings also show that different types of community leaders have emerged and that Rohingya women use digital means to push back against double discrimination. The article concludes with policy considerations related to the geopolitically transcendent issues of displacement, democracy, and digital rights.

Cultural Influences on Opinion Expression in an Online and Offline Context

This study compares the expression of opinion in incongruent offline and online settings regarding the issue of gender desegregation in Kuwait’s public schools. Spiral of silence theory provides the theoretical foundation for examining the impact of certain cultural factors and religious influences on the expression of opinion, their relationship to the fundamental tenets of the theory, such as fear of social isolation, and Twitter use variables among respondents to a survey. The results to a questionnaire administered to 534 public and private university students indicate greater overall expression of opinion in the offline than online context. Offline and online, the nonconformist personality variable was a positive predictor of expression of opinion, and fear of social isolation was a negative predictor. The perceived position of Islam on the issue was a predictor of expression of opinion only in the offline context. Finally, daily average use of Twitter was an additional predictor of expression of opinion in the online environment.

Exploring Experience at the Intersection of Migration and Digital Democracy in South Korea

This article examines how digital spaces for political participation by migrants are experienced and governed in South Korea. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted in Seoul, South Korea, between April and July 2018, this article argues that migrant participation in digital democratic processes in South Korea is hindered by a fragmented and centralized digital management, which can be linked back to the specific historical-political context in which this digital space was developed.

Recycling European Narratives in South Korea’s ‘Refugee Crisis’: Islamophobia, #MeToo, and Yemeni Refugees on Jeju Island

2018 was a politically tempestuous time for South Korea as a little over 500, mostly male, Yemeni asylum-seekers landed on Korea’s Jeju Island. Their unexpected arrival caught Korean society, already in the midst of its own #MeToo wave off guard, resulting in a wave of pro- and anti-refugee demonstrations across the country. Fueled by real and fake news about refugee illegal activities in Europe, anti-refugee backlash in Korea took an Islamophobic and feminist tone. Based on digital ethnography, this article presents observations from online voices – refugees, feminists, and media actors – expressed through Naver News and Naver Cafes to assess the ways in which Korea’s refugee crisis was represented in local and global anti-refugee and Islamophobic narratives, aimed in particular at Muslim men. This research highlights the impact of European narratives on Korean society and raises questions over how Korean society can create a wider, inclusive digital democracy.

Towards a More Inclusive Digital Democracy in Asia: Introduction to the Digital Democracy Special Issue of Asiascape: Digital Asia

This article provides an introduction to the Asiascape: Digtial Asia special issue on digital democracy. It provides readers with a brief overview of literature that deals with digital democracy and marginalized groups online, followed by an overview of the contributions that make up this issue. It argues that democracy is only as strong as the voices on its margins, and it calls for deeper reflection about how we can create more inclusive models of digital democracy in Asia and beyond.

Whose Country Is Digital India? Unpacking Dominant Power Relations Mediated by the Digital India Campaign

This article unpacks the material and cultural implications of the Digital India programme’s rhetoric of social transformation and digital empowerment by asking the question ‘How and whom does digital empowerment seek to empower?’ Through an analysis of the discourse on the Digital India website, this article concludes that the recurring depoliticization and dehistoricization of social differences deliberately make the programme’s intended beneficiaries vague. By flattening structural differences among caste, class, gender, and ethnicity, Digital India’s technopolitics recasts empowerment as an individual issue and naturalizes the myths of meritocracy, castelessness, and genderlessness. Furthermore, in a Hindutva regime, Digital India’s depoliticized technopolitics becomes a tool for managing citizenship that reinforces the status quo. This article argues that, by declining to define a process of empowerment that considers cultural complexities and structural hegemonies, Digital India’s call for digital empowerment remains an empty signifier.