Internet Popular Culture and (Everyday) Politics : Methodological & Ethical Critiques from Southeast Asia

Abstract

This edited collection considers how scholars conduct research on (everyday) politics in Southeast Asia via networks of internet popular culture. This includes artefacts, networks, groups, and cultures that are specific to Southeast Asian online practices, and that seek to represent, advocate for, provoke, or question how citizens "do" politics online. In the Southeast Asia region in particular, these behind-the-scenes minutiae of everyday decisions are all the more under-valued when researchers have been taught, conditioned, or cautioned to tiptoe around taboo or political topics implicitly policed by states and governments. The combination of media regimes with limited press freedoms, the employment of sedition acts against citizens, and the need to be strategic to secure state and industry funding for research have pressured or motivated scholars to strategically obscure certain research anecdotes in favour of a smoother publishing journey and/or posterity. As such, this collection serves as a sounding board and collection of reflections on what it really looks like to conduct research on everyday politics online in the Southeast Asian region, while navigating innovative media methods, negotiating inter-disciplinary gatekeeping, demands of publishing in tiered journals, and the tensions around legitimising one's methodological choices. This collection features four accounts of scholars contemplating the methodological and ethical conundrums when conducting research on Southeast Asian internet popular culture and everyday politics. This book will be useful for the readers in the disciplines of anthropology, Asian studies, communications, cultural studies, media studies, and science and technology studies.