The links between freedom and the internet in Southeast Asia: a democratic coup or status quo time?

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a striking increase in the number of Internet users as well as new mechanisms of Internet controls have been introduced in many regimes. The objective of this analysis is to appraise how the growth of online population and Internet controls impact on the state of freedoms and democracy in Southeast Asia. The authors argue that the Internet has maintained its ambiguous role within democracy in the examined region. Four groups of countries were identified in the cluster analysis in accordance with the state of variables in the examined years of 2017 and 2020. The results then stressed that the rising figures of online population had been accompanied by additional restrictions of Internet freedoms. At the same time, the percentage of online population has not proved to be a sufficiently significant variable.