Religion and Social Communication 17, No. 1 (2019): 1-29
Abstract
Southeast Asia is a region of tremendous diversity in its religious, social, cultural, economic and political makeup. With a total population of over 657 million, it is the third most populous geographical region in the world, only behind South and East Asia. Technological development in the region is also as varied as all the other dimensions of Southeast Asian life. Despite the fact that urbanization across the region still falls short of the half-way mark by less than a percentage point, Internet penetration has already reached nearly 60 percent with double-digit growth in most segments and most countries of the region. With over half of Southeast Asians being monthly active users, the region presents itself as the third-largest market globally, and the Internet economy is expected to reach $200 billion by 2025.
Other statistics on Southeast Asian digital state are equally interesting. Southeast Asians top the world in terms of time spent on the Internet per day, overwhelmingly by way of the smartphone. According to GlobalWebIndex, users in Thailand spend more time on the Internet each day than any other country in the world, 9h38min. Philippines, another SEA country is only slightly behind with 9h29m. Indonesia and Malaysia rank 4th and 6th, respectively. Though slightly lower, Singapore and Vietnam, another one of SEA’s most populous countries, also make the top 15. As we can see, the majority of the SEA countries are listed in the top 15 list of time spent per day online.
No doubt a significant amount of online time is spent on social media, in which SEA has a 55 percent penetration. Brunei not only leads the region in Internet penetration, but also leads in social media penetration at 81 percent. Meanwhile, more than three quarters of Singaporeans are active monthly social media users. SE Asians use a variety of social media platforms depending on the country. While Facebook still maintains the lead in all 11 countries at the platform level, SE Asians also like to use mobile messengers. LINE is particularly popular in Thailand and Indonesia. Home-grown Zalo is widely used in Vietnam; and Viber was once so popular in the Philippines that Manila’s transport authorities used it for their contact hotlines. Although Facebook Messenger has taken the lead in countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, other platforms with considerable use in the region include BBM (mostly in Indonesia), Whatsapp and WeChat. In Malaysia and Singapore, WhatsApp is still the most popular mobile messenger on the market.
Digital development is not even throughout the region. Although Brunei and Singapore enjoy high digital connectivity, less than one-third of the people in the three countries of Myanmar, Laos and Timor-Leste have Internet access. Likewise, only about a quarter of the people in Myanmar and Laos are social media users. The whole story, however, is that digital growth is rapid in all these countries. Laos, for example, saw an impressive 83 percent growth in users from January 2016 to January 2017. When the ban on Facebook was lifted in Myanmar, Internet users flocked to sign up for the platform. By 2016, there were nearly 10 million Facebook users in the country. Today, the number has grown to over 14 million.
The highly complex picture of the digital landscape of Southeast Asia makes the study on the effect of the Internet on life in Southeast Asia not a simple task. Although certain broad strokes can be drawn about the region, closer examination reveals that the impact of Internet development on each country is unique to its particular context. This survey attempts to provide an overall picture of the effect of the Internet on Southeast Asian society with the caveat that observations made cannot be applied to each of the 11 countries in the region wholesale.
Keywords: Southeast Asia, Digital Development, Church, Society, Internet
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