Introduction

Dominant religious discourse on Islam promoted and propagated by asatizah in Singapore reflects competing modes of religious thought or perspectives which reveal the extent to which they are able to contextualize religious thought and traditions to the needs of the community and its adaptation to the changing condition of society and its institutions. Though certainly not conclusive, the nature of religious studies education received by graduates in various institutions of learning abroad cannot be overlooked or negated in conditioning their religious outlook and orientations, though these are also by no means static.

Operating in groups that continually compete, align and conflict with one another on issues relating to Islam, the asatizah’s perspectives and outlook on Islam are also impacted by other factors including the state’s approach to managing Islam, policies and laws regulating religion in the public sphere, the orientation of dominant groups within the asatizah fraternity, ideological interests for standing and support vis-a-vis the state and the community, the continuing influence of Islamic studies programmes and their intellectual affiliation as well as the influence of religious teachings through new media platforms, among others. These interact with the impact of the dominant nature of Islamic studies education in the formal institutions of learning they have attended throughout the course of their religious education. What they prioritize as significant and give strong attention to at the expense of others that are marginalized, overlooked or negated are functions of their mode of religious thought. The level of abstraction and conceptualization of issues selected, the presence or absence of counter concepts, the nature of their response to and extent of engagement with competing views also manifest in the salient traits of their religious orientations. Given that the asatizah fraternity, especially the dominant groups within it, exerts wide influence on the community and generally command its respect, how and what they think about Islam bear direct implications on its attitudes and responses to the challenges of socio-economic change which has impacted basic social institutions and inevitably the well-being of the larger society.

These dimensions have not, however, been given adequate or critical attention in dominant discourse on asatizah where the overriding focus since 2000 or so has been on the need to adjust religious teachings to challenges affecting the security of the nation.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Many current counter-disinformation initiatives focus on addressing the production or “supply side” of digital disinformation. Less attention tends to be paid to the consumption or the intended audiences of disinformation campaigns.

• A central concept in understanding people's consumption of and vulnerability to digital disinformation is its imaginative dimension as a communication act. Key to the power of disinformation campaigns is their ability to connect to people's shared imaginaries. Consequently, counter-disinformation initiatives also need to attend to these imaginaries.

• This report examines why the precarious middle class in the Philippines has been particularly susceptible to digital disinformation. It focuses on two key imaginaries that disinformation producers weaponized in the year leading up to the 2022 national elections. The first was a long-simmering anti-Chinese resentment, which racist social media campaigns about Philippines-China relations targeted. The other was a yearning for a “strong leader”, which history-distorting campaigns about the country's Martial Law era amplified.

• Ironically, some practices adopted by members of the public to protect themselves from the toxicity and vitriol of online spaces increased their vulnerability to digital disinformation. The cumulative impact of these was for people to dig deeper into their

existing imaginaries, something that disinformation producers targeted and exploited.

• We offer two suggestions for future counter-disinformation initiatives. The first has to do with addressing people's vulnerability to the weaponization of their shared imaginaries. Counter-disinformation initiatives can move past divisive imaginaries by infusing creativity in imparting information. Collaborating with well-intentioned professionals in the media and creative industries would be key to these kinds of initiatives.

• The second has to do with addressing people's media consumption practices. These practices tend to open them up to sustained and long-term digital disinformation campaigns, which provide them with problematic imaginaries to dig into. To establish a similarly robust common ground of reality, counter-disinformation initiatives should themselves be programmatic, not ad hoc.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Choi Shing Kwok

Series Editor:

Ooi Kee Beng

Editorial Committee:

Daljit Singh

Francis E. Hutchinson

Norshahril Saat

INTRODUCTION

In this report, we argue for the importance of paying attention to individuals and their actual engagement with digital disinformation content. This endeavour is a crucial component for crafting more effective counter-disinformation efforts, especially at a time when online information disorder is exponentially growing and constantly evolving.

Much of the recent research on the rise of digital disinformation has focused on characterizing its production. There is a burgeoning set of journalistic and academic works cataloguing different social media manipulation tactics in Western liberal democracies, like coordinated bots swarming UK Twitter and apps feeding into psychographic targeting on US Facebook (Bastos and Mercea 2017; Hutton 2021; Marwick and Lewis 2017; Wylie 2019). Other works similarly taxonomize fake news and political trolling production in non-Western contexts, as in the strategic distraction initiatives of China's “Fifty-Cent Army” and the

anti-Western Twitter operations of Russia's troll army (Martineau 2019; Wardle and Derakhshan 2017; Jing 2016; King, Pan, and Roberts 2017). There is also a growing number of studies looking at the Southeast Asian context particularly, from cyber troops in Thailand to online buzzers in Indonesia (Hui 2020; Sastramidjaja and Wijayanto 2022; Sombatpoonsiri 2018).

The works mentioned above are valuable. Collectively, they reveal how the rapid spread of digital disinformation the world over has been fuelled not only by the toxic convergence of socio-structural and technological developments in the digital and creative industries, but also by the interlinked labour conditions of creative and digital workers across the world. The insights of these works about both the patterns and the granularities of fake news and political trolling operations have been crucial in informing counter-disinformation initiatives of governments, big tech companies, and the third sector (Wasserman 2022).

That said, too much focus on the production of digital disinformation can inadvertently cement a techno-deterministic view of this phenomenon. Techno-determinism is a long-debunked but still persistent view that overinflates the power of technologies to determine the course of society (Livingston 2018).

In relation to digital communication, it assumes that media technologies are more powerful than media users who are thought to have little agency.

As a scholar who has conducted over four decades of research in Indonesian politics, I can attest that the preman organizations are still part of the country's political and security fabric. In the run up to the next Indonesian presidential elections in 2024, blaring sirens and convoys of preman organization members in camouflage attire, out in support of certain candidates, will continue to be a constant reminder of the presence of these organizations in Indonesian politics.

The need for this book is obvious: to provide much needed insight on the use of non-state security providers by a developing non-Western democracy such as Indonesia. It sheds new light on the uncivil components of civil society that have been overlooked by most scholars of politics and international relations, activists, and diplomats who are not trained in the specificity of Indonesian political dynamics.

In the midst of the complexity of civilian-military relations in Indonesia, Dr Senia Febrica has written a book that explores the niche area of the involvement of preman organizations in Indonesian security. The book has mapped comprehensively the participation of preman organizations in securing ports, particularly small ports, which are important points of societal interaction and nodes of transportation that are often forgotten. It covers areas that border the three key sea lanes of communications in Southeast Asia that overlap with Indonesia's waters, including the Sunda Strait, the Strait of Malacca and the Sulawesi Sea. By doing so, it provides a new and novel way to understand the complexity of the involvement of preman organizations in port and border security in Indonesia. This book effectively combines observation, document and newspaper analysis, and interviews with various stakeholders, including those who are leaders and active members of preman organizations.

Fundamentally, what I really like about this book is its ability to tell the stories that address the implications of the involvement of preman organizations in Indonesia's political and security sectors, which are certainly not trouble free. The book describes how “incidental” conflicts between preman organizations with government authorities such as the police or societal groups such as fishermen represent just a fraction of the price the Indonesian government and society pay for the involvement of preman organizations in the country's politics and security.

This book has examined the involvement of preman organizations in securing ports and coastlines across three provinces in Indonesia, including Jakarta, North Sulawesi and the Riau Islands. The involvement of preman organizations in port security shows a continuation of Indonesia's old security practices from the times of Suharto's authoritarian regime. The main finding is that the involvement of preman organizations in port security is problematic and hinders Indonesia's transition to be a fully functioning democracy. The use of preman organizations for security by government authorities plays an instrumental role in strengthening the position of power these organizations have in society. An analysis of interviews, media reports and government documents shows that this position of power has not always been used by preman organizations for the betterment of society. This is the case even in areas where there is a great degree of acceptance by officials and societal actors of the role of preman organizations in security. The evidence in all empirical chapters in this book confirms that preman organizations have been involved in various unlawful activities, ranging from providing protection to businesses that violate laws to conducting violent attacks against the government security apparatus. These unlawful activities are the key source of tensions between preman organizations and the government.

Findings

There are six key findings of this book. First, the decision to use preman organizations for port security in Indonesia cannot be traced to a single decision made by the country's political leader or senior defence officials in response to terrorist threats in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and 2002 Bali bombings. The evidence shows that participation of preman organizations in monitoring and, on some occasions, physically guarding ports and coastal areas in the three case study regions—Jakarta, North Sulawesi and the Riau Islands—is a product of continued action by government bureaucracies at the national and local levels, and the history of these actions date back to Suharto's New Order era (Indonesian Ministry of Defense 2008, p. 86; Jakarta Post, 29 June 2006; Kemenkopolhukam 2006b, pp. 40, 57; Dewan Maritim Indonesia 2007b, p. 59; 2007a, p. 52; Kemenkopolhukam 2006a, pp. 29, 34–35; Marin 2005, p. 35; Suristiyono 2005, p. 49; Dewan Maritim Indonesia 2007c, pp. 4-8–4-9).

Indonesia is the largest archipelagic state in the world, comprising 17,480 islands and with a maritime territory measuring close to six million square kilometres (Indonesian Ministry of Defence 2008, p. 145). Cross-border maritime activities have long shaped Indonesia's economic, social and political development. As an archipelagic country with 95,181 kilometres of coastline, Indonesia's national borders are primarily located at sea (Sekretariat Jenderal Departemen Kelautan dan Perikanan 2006, p. 58; Ford and Lyons 2013, p. 215). This book focuses on the importance of the notion of ports as borders (Sciascia 2013, pp. 164, 171). Ports signify a state's boundary where people and goods can exit or enter a country legally (Sciascia 2013, pp. 163–87).

Over ninety per cent of Indonesia's national and international trade is conducted across the country's vast maritime borders. It has a total of 141 international ports across the archipelago, which connect the country to the world economy. Despite the importance of port security for Indonesia, for a long time ports have been characterized as permeable and undefended areas. This situation changed after 9/11. Following the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, and the Bali bombings in 2002, which claimed the lives of 202 people, including 88 Australians, the Indonesian authorities began to reassess the security of its seaports and coastal areas (Jakarta Post, 7 August 2003).

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Indonesia also faced mounting international pressure to improve the security of its ports. The security of Indonesian waters and ports is crucial for the international community because of their strategic geographical positions. Indonesia is located at the crossroads of busy maritime traffic between Europe and the Far East, between Australia and Asia, and between the Persian Gulf and Japan (Coutrier 1988, p 186). Three major sea lanes in Southeast Asia—the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, the Lombok Strait and the Sunda Strait—overlap with Indonesia's maritime jurisdiction (Djalal 2009, p. 63). In February 2008, the US Coast Guard issued port security advisories (PSAs) to Indonesian ports in view of unsatisfactory and inconsistent procedures for security checks prior to entering port facilities; an easily manipulated identity card system; low compliance in providing International Ship and Port Facility Security Code (ISPS) training, drills and exercises at port facilities;