Why Myanmar is losing the current information war
Those foreigners who studied Burmese language in Myanmar, inevitable met with a curious phenomenon. Almost no Burmese-English dictionaries published in Myanmar have the table of Burmese alphabet, although it is really necessary for foreigners - because at the beginning they do not know the exact order of the letters, and cannot quickly find a word without the table. They usually draw the alphabet table by hand, on the flyleaf of the book, but Myanmar authors and publishers of these dictionaries cannot even imagine that this alphabet is necessary for anyone - all Myanmar people know their “kagyi-kaghwe” by heart from their school time.
Another example. A few years ago, my friends invited me to the official contest named “Myanmar Miss Tourism”. The competition was organized as a regular fashion show, and its winner became a model girl with whitened skin. After this, for a year, she was to embody the tourism of Myanmar, the country that is attractive to the travelers from European countries with its bright Sun and opportunity to get a brown sunburn. At that time, their homeland is cold and covered with snow, rivers are iced over, people are wrapped in warm clothes with long sleeves, and the duration of daylight in December in the north of Europe does not exceed 3-4 hours. Most of the tourists from Europe are coming to Myanmar for swimming in the warm sea and getting chocolate tan here. But the person, whose responsibility was to personalize the attractiveness of Myanmar, looked as a bleached Snow Queen.
There are many other examples of this kind. I don’t want to be ironical about this, because, as a person who grew up in the USSR, I understand well that the main reason of such cases was the long-term closed nature of the country. That is why sometime even educated Myanmar people are unable to look at themselves with other people's eyes. Or, unable to look beyond the Myanmar horizon.
Peaceful immigrants or aggressive refugees
When the current crisis in Rakhine State began, the Myanmar media (including the English-language ones) began to replicate the idea that many of those people who call themselves "Rohingya" are actually illegal immigrants. The Myanmar media explained this statement with the fact that their ancestors had been once (most often, in colonial times) brought to the territory of the state. They were absolutely sure that this point of view would be acceptable by public and politicians in the Western countries. However, for example, according to the American laws, a person born in the United States has the right to obtain American citizenship. Most of Europeans have the same way of thinking. Therefore, the cliché about "illegal migrants" invented by the Myanmar media was rejected by the West. Moreover, the Westerners started to ignore this thesis, and then (even worse) deride it. This means that finally they lost their faith to other Myanmar convictions, and even became skeptical about ARSA's existence.
At the same time, today the ordinary people in Europe look out of their windows and see those who just came to their countries as refugees, but do not want to integrate into their society, do not accept their customs and traditions, and even sometime behave aggressively and defiantly. Actually, Myanmar had the similar situation, and its media were to describe the crisis in the Rakhine state from this point of view, by pointing out that many Rohingya leaders refused to integrate into the Myanmar society and bullying towards their neighbors of other ethnic groups. Sure, if Myanmar media had stressed on this comparison from the very beginning of the crisis, it would have been largely accepted by the Europeans.
This is one of the reasons, why Myanmar has lost the first round of the information war launched against this country in the world after the crisis in Rakhine State. Myanmar tried to justify itself - but the apologetic person is always in a weaker position. And, started to lose, losing more and more.
Philistine’s standpoint
According to a recent poll, 40% of Russians have never heard about the crisis in Rakhine State and do not know who are living there. Just want to repeat that this poll took place in Russia, the country with a relatively big share of the Muslim population. The respondents told, there were "too many conflicts" in the world to follow all of them, and they were aware only of the conflict in Syria, because it is relatively close, and Russia is involved in it. Moreover, if they read the news about ethnic conflicts, they felt a sense of alarm. Many of them, seeing the headline, simply did not read such kind of news.
This attitude to such news of ordinary inhabitants of other European countries is quite similar. Most of the Western tourists are asking about the crisis in Rakhine State, and many Myanmar people have an idea that the whole world is talking about it. But the tourists traveling to Myanmar are the special case. They prepared for their trip, red articles on the Internet, and therefore they know something about the realities of Myanmar. But the main point for most of them is not the crisis itself; they are asking about it just to be sure that it is safe for them to be in Myanmar. As practice shows, the main points of interest of the foreign tourists in Myanmar are the realities of everyday life of the local people, their customs, culture and religion. The crisis in Rakhine state is not the main topic for their conversation with locals.
Like all normal people, Europeans sympathize with those who are in trouble. But even if they see news about the events in Rakhine State, they feel a relief that it happens somewhere in Myanmar, outside their country. That is, first they think about their own families, their homes and their residential quarters.
Taste of Japanese watermelons
Today, more than 90 percent of the news from Myanmar, broadcasting by the Western media are about the crisis in Rakhine state, plus a little more about two Reuters’ journalists. Therefore, the Western consumers of information, after reading these squalls about the “most oppressed people in the world" and "attack on the freedom of speech", have the solid impression of Myanmar as a country where bloodthirsty Buddhists are patrolling the streets in search of their innocent victims, and all dissenters are sent into prison. They do not see the country with good and benevolent people, who try to survive in spite of their complicated life circumstances, and who never even have an idea to kill someone.
It is very difficult for the Myanmar media to oppose this flow of propaganda, but they could give an asymmetric answer. For example, they could create an "allaying narrative" by increasing the stream of positive news about Myanmar. Not tourist news, because most of them are already on the Internet, and they are interesting only to those who love culture and religion, or who want to visit Myanmar. It should be the news about the daily life of the Myanmar’s ordinary people, their worries and troubles. They should describe how they manage to feed their families, or how easy for them to do business in Myanmar. For some reason, Myanmar people think that foreigners are not interested in this news, and they could be allured only with the stories about Bagan, or Shwedagon Pagoda. This is not true. Just have a look at how Western media provide information - through the exciting stories of ordinary people (for example, the refugees from Rakhine State or the young football players in the waterlogged cave in Thailand), they create generalized emotional sagas and, after this, lead their consumers of information to the conclusions that they want to drive into their heads.
Unfortunately, the Myanmar state media could not compete with them on this field. One day I told my European friends that Myanmar started growing Japanese watermelons - the news was published in the state Myanmar English-language newspaper. This news caused many questions from my friends: how different was the taste of the Myanmar watermelons in comparison with those sold in Europe? Did Myanmar people try to grow square-shaped watermelons, as in Japan? There were no answers to these questions in the article - it was written in gobbledygook, as a report to ministry, and the only fuzzy picture was attached to it.
That is, the main problem lies in the proper submitting of information. The authors of the English-language publications should clearly understand who are their readers - and make articles interesting for this audience. In the case of the Japanese watermelons, just a five-minute search for information on the Internet was enough. It means, the author was to look beyond the Myanmar horizon and explain to the European (or even Japanese) readers what was the difference between watermelons on their kitchen tables and watermelons grown in Myanmar. Instead, he wrote a dull news that certain tasteless watermelons were grown somewhere in Myanmar. This article does not give rise to any emotions of the foreign reader. Would it be interesting for him? Of course, not. But this article about Japanese watermelons is very typical for the English language Myanmar government newspaper.
Go to the Internet
The main English-speaking mouthpiece of the Myanmar Government is “The Global New Light of Myanmar”. All friends of Myanmar around the world were happy, when, in 2014, the official English-language daily of the country has changed its name and appearance. GNLM got color, and the style of its articles became more in line with the realities of the new century. Now it also has its own Facebook page and Android application.
Nevertheless, even at the starting point of the new project, the fatal flaw of its concept was clear. The emphasis have been made on the printed version of the newspaper, while the main 21st century consumer of the English-language information about Myanmar is located beyond its borders and browses it on the Internet (apparently, the reformers somehow understood this, because they added the word "global" to the newspaper’s old name). As a result, the newspaper probably performs itself well as a teacher of English for Myanmar people, but very poorly copes with the task of delivering information about today's Myanmar to a foreign reader.
If you look at the websites of the world's leading media, you could see clearly that they started the policy of moving away from their paper versions long time ago (much before 2014, the year of GNLM rebranding). It happened even despite the fact that their consumer of information lives in the same country with their editorial boards – so they have more reasons to support the paper version. That is why the task of "going to the Internet" for GNLM was to be on the front burner from the very beginning.
Today, the web sites of the world's media are completely different from their paper versions. Their articles are accompanied with photo galleries, videos, infographics, and lists of related publications on the same topic. If you want to find more detailed information, you could just click the link in the text. The real life goes on the web site, and the paper version of the newspaper is just a brief digest of the information posted there. On the contrary, the GNLM website is just a miserable copy of the paper version with minimum of photos (of poor quality) and short boring texts written in bureaucratic or didactic language. By definition, this web site does not look attractive for its prospective readers. More than that, it could make an impression of Myanmar as a backward country, frozen in the previous century.
Launching a high-quality web site and filling it with interesting and relevant news is just a half of the battle. You need to make sure that the prospective audience learns about this news. The most convenient and free way to aggregate information is the option called “Google Alert” at Google web portal. If you specify the keyword "Myanmar" there, the search engine of Google will deliver to your email address daily summaries of news from the English-language media around the world containing this keyword.
I have been using this option for more than two years. But never (never!) met links to GNLM there. Although there you could find, for example, the links to US newspapers from the deep province that a refugee from Myanmar is looking for a job.
How comes it? I think the Ministry of Information of Myanmar was to ask this question to Google even long time ago.
Lost in translation
Internet users could obtain more complete information about Myanmar by another method - the online translation from Burmese into English. Recently, this function even appeared on Facebook, but so far, the translated posts of users there could cause only laugh.
The online translation is a popular service for many English-speaking users who try to read web sites in Burmese for better understanding of what is happening in the country. Users, having met on the Internet a photo, want to read its Burmese language caption to understand what is depicted on it. Others are using online translators for communicating with their Burmese interlocutors. In the end, the main language of publications of the Myanmar MOI and MoFA is not English – it is Burmese. So, the online translation is in demand more than ever.
I know many Europeans, who with the help of the online translation tried to understand what was happening in Myanmar during the crisis in Rakhine state. At that time, most of the English language Myanmar web sites just reprinted the reports of the world's leading media and did not particularly bother to translate the articles from Burmese language. Foreigners identified the articles they were interested in by their pictures and then put these articles on Google Translate – currently, the best option for online translation.
As Google itself declares, they make translation with the help of the artificial intelligence (AI), which searches the Internet and analyzes the "mirror" texts in two languages, enriching its vocabulary and developing translation patterns. But the problem is that there are very few "mirror" Burmese-English texts on the Internet. And even if they are, then, apparently (as in the case of GNLM), they are simply not indexed by robots. Today, only the Myanmar Times, and maybe the Irrawaddy systematically create such texts – but in their case, the Burmese and English versions of the same text could differ significantly from each other. At the same time, most of English-language sections of Myanmar web sites just reprint the news of the foreign news agencies, without its Burmese language versions.
That is why, no surprise that the online translation on Google Translate is disgusting. In the same time, Google in every way declares its willingness to cooperate in improving the quality of translation, and at the bottom side of the Google Translate window, we could see the phrase “Suggest an edit”.
Such cooperation between Google and the Myanmar authorities should be able to improve the situation drastically. In Myanmar, there are state universities of computer studies, and Myanmar companies have their own start-ups and mobile applications for translation from one language to another. Today there is a huge mass of "mirror" texts in Burmese and English, which could be used to improve the translation. For example, now so many bilingual books are published in Myanmar for local students of English. Those texts would be very helpful for Google's artificial intelligence. It is clear that, in addition to printed copies, there are soft copies of these publications - but they are not on the Internet. That is, the prospects for such cooperation to improve the quality of online translation could not be overemphasized.
Moreover, there is one more reason, why the Myanmar authorities should be interested in such cooperation. Up to now, Google Translate still converts the name of the Vice President of Myanmar as “Henry Wan Umbrella”. Is it correct?
Store of unwanted goods
Just imagine: a certain man opened a shop, piled a heap of goods on a showcase and began to sit in anticipation of the buyers. At the same time, he has no idea that his goods (probably, of high quality) should be attractively packaged, and he never leaves the store to advertise and to promote it in neighboring quarters. How many buyers will come to him? I think not so many.
But this story is exactly about today’s information policy of Myanmar. Once the Myanmar officials complain about "misunderstanding" of their country in the world, first of all they should look for the reasons of this misunderstanding inside their own country. It is clear that the Western media do not set for themselves the task of giving any "balanced" information about Myanmar. Moreover, they are interested in drawing emotional pictures, based on personalized stories of individuals. This is the secret of the popularity of horror movies and thrillers in cinematography, and this is the main guarantee that “horror news” and “thriller news” from Myanmar should find many readers and bring money to the media. This is just business, a bit more accompanied with the Western liberal values and geopolitical reasons.
But it also means that Myanmar should play by the same rules as its opponents - carefully analyze its prospective target audiences in the world and compose the texts in a way that makes these texts interesting and acceptable for them. However, until now, most of the Myanmar shots in this information war have turned out to be either blank or missing the target. It appeared that the whole world played chess with Myanmar all this time, but Myanmar vigorously tried to play sittuyin.
At the same time, Myanmar should not hesitate to accept the rules of this game – even sometime they could be cynical and immoral. It was not Myanmar, but the foreign media, who started this hybrid war. They know the consumer of their information products well, and with their inherent cynicism, they understand which “button” they need to press in his mind to evoke the emotions they need. At this moment they do not think about Myanmar – they think how to sell their information products. The search for such a "button" of the English-speaking reader and the elaborating of the offensive strategy by Myanmar in this information war - that should be the main priority for those in Myanmar who are responsible for the cooperation with the media.
I know well that Myanmar people usually do not like if someone is giving advices or reading lectures for them how they should live. I also know that there are so many talented and highly professional people among the staff of the Ministry of Information and among the Myanmar journalists, who sincerely and creatively work in the interests of their country.
If I had written about their positive work for Myanmar benefit - this text would have turned out to be much longer. I heard about many projects that the Ministry of Information wants to implement. However, I am afraid that, as in the case of The Global New Light of Myanmar, they again would be the projects of yesterday. I love Myanmar, I live here for long time, and I want to see her as a strong and smart country.
So I decided to write only about the problems, as I see them from the outside. Maybe it turned out to be “unbalanced” – the same as the reports in the Western media. But I hope that this my opinion would be not useless for my readers.
Petr Kozma
This article was published in “Myanmar Bulletin” of the Centre for Myanmar Affairs Studies of the Ministry of Information of Myanmar (No. 57, July 2018).