The military, known as the Tatmadaw, is pushing its campaign online even as it puts down protests on the streets, nine months after it ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, saying her National League for Democracy had fraudulently won the November 2020 vote. International election watchdogs said in a May report that the vote was fair.
A Reuters review of thousands of social media posts in 2021 found that about 200 military personnel, using their personal accounts on platforms including Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Telegram, regularly posted messages or videos alleging fraud at the election and denouncing anti-coup protesters as traitors.
In more than 100 cases, the messages or videos were duplicated across dozens of copycat accounts within minutes, as well as on online groups, purported fan channels for Myanmar celebrities and sports teams and purported news outlets, data from Facebook-owned online tracking tool Crowdtangle showed.
Posts often referred to people who opposed the junta as "enemies of the state" and "terrorists", and variously said they wanted to destroy the army, the country and the Buddhist religion.
Many opposition activists are using some similar methods, creating duplicate accounts to fill "Twitter teams" with hundreds of thousands of members and making anti-junta hashtags trend, according to the review and four activist sources.
While such tactics are common worldwide, they can be particularly influential in Myanmar, according to four researchers interviewed by Reuters who said the population receives most of its information via social media rather than directly from established news outlets, and Facebook is regularly used by more than half the population.
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