From Digital Repression to Resistance: Fighting Digital Authoritarianism in Asia | Ep.4

In this episode of the GIGA podcast series on digital authoritarianism, Yatun Sastramidjaja examines how digital activism and digital repression evolve in tandem across South and Southeast Asia, and why these two sides are too often studied as separate research agendas. Drawing on research into youth movements from Indonesia's 1998 student uprising onwards, she explores how activists adapt their repertoires and movement infrastructures in response to increasingly insidious forms of repression, from surveillance and cyber troops to information laws that criminalise dissent. The conversation turns to the question of how movements can respond when states hold vastly greater resources. Sastramidjaja argues that activists are starting to realise they cannot win on the state's terms, and asks what happens when they decenter the digital, mobilising in spaces and with causes less easily colonised by the tools of the regime. Concrete examples include workshops at the Digital Rights Asia-Pacific Assembly where card games teach communities how to respond to internet shutdowns and digital violence. The episode closes with a reflection on radical hope and connective spaces: how networked nodes of resistance, virtual and material, sustain the prospect of struggle even under severe repression. Host: Dr. Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, Research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, and an Assistant Professor at Chulalongkorn University Guest: Dr. Y.M. Yatun Sastramidjaja, Associate Professor at Amsterdam University and recipient of the European Research Council Consolidator grant “Activist Techtopias: Crafting Alternate Infrastructures of Resistance in Asia, or AlterTech The digital authoritarianism podcast series, hosted by Dr. Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, Dr. Sangeeta Mahapatra, and PD Dr. Andreas Ufen, explores insights from the research project Digital Authoritarianism through Lawfare: Mapping and Strengthening Civil Society Responses in Asia. More information about the project here: https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/research-and-transfer/projects/digital-authoritarianism-lawfare-mapping-strengthening-civil-society-responses-asia ******************************************** Follow the GIGA on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/german-institute-for-global-and-area-studies-giga Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@giga_institute Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/@giga.institute Buesky: https://bsky.app/profile/giga-hamburg.de