'This will be the WhatsApp election': Crypto-publics and digital citizenship in Malaysia's GE14 election

This paper draws on data collected with Malaysian–Chinese activists and everyday citizens (aged 18–24) who used WhatsApp groups to discuss politically contentious views and actions between 2016 and 2018, prior to the GE14 election. The paper will reveal the extent to which WhatsApp enabled a ‘safe space’ for citizens to engage in political chat and activism in a context of government censorship and surveillance of more open social media platforms. A key finding is that the state’s use of the Sedition Act and the Communications and Multimedia Act to take legal action against citizens engaging in political dissent on social media produced ‘chilling effects’, leading to changes in the styles and repertoires of civic and political action adopted by participants. This was registered in a shift away from public-facing social media (Twitter, Facebook) toward use of encrypted group chat on WhatsApp and, to a lesser extent, Telegram to shape new publics, which I examine in the paper using the concept of ‘crypto-publics’.

Sedition

This chapter examines the concept of “sedition” and efforts to suppress dissent and disloyalty. President Adams used the Sedition Act of 1798 to prosecute and jail his critics and political opponents. That episode ultimately revealed the “central meaning of the First Amendment”—that Americans must be free to criticize their public officials, even if that criticism is often caustic and unpleasant. Federal and state officials have not proposed reviving the crime of seditious libel. However, several critics of the Trump administration have come under fire and suffered tangible consequences for openly criticizing the president and the Trump administration. As in prior eras, recent efforts to punish sedition and disloyalty pose serious threats to democratic self-government and political discourse.

The Contours of Repression

This chapter examines the World War One period in which the federal, state, and local governments in the United States, in addition to non-state actors, created one of the most severe eras of political repression in United States history. The Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, changes to immigration law at the federal level, and state criminal syndicalism laws served as the legal basis for repression. The Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and other anarchists took different paths in this era. Some faced lengthy prison sentences, some went underground, while others crossed international borders to flee repression and continue organizing. This chapter examines the repression of radical movements and organizing continuities that sustained the movement into the 1920s.