ABSTRACT
Access to the Internet and social media mean people can now reach information that governments once could successfully deny them access to and share it to a much larger group. This chapter presents three mini-case studies from which it will provide comparative and illustrative examples. The three cases are drawn from three of the four nondemocratic regime types: single-party Communist rule (China), military government (Thailand), and quasi-democratic (Malaysia). It is clear from the cases presented that the impacts of the Internet and social media in Asia will be context dependent. For example, studies have shown that the effects of the introduction of the Internet tend to be weaker in societies that were already more open rather than in ones that experience the "the catalyst of going from a very controlled public sphere to an open, almost chaotic one in just a few years".
