Description
With armed conflict escalating along the border, this paper presents new empirical findings on how online antagonism between Cambodian and Thai netizens served as a backdrop to the 2025 violence. Drawing on community-generated testimonies from 2024, it shows that digital nationalism is fuelled by longstanding historical grievances, perceived inequalities and recurrent flashpoints around cultural ownership and heritage. These tensions are reanimated online through claims over temples, martial arts and national symbols that evoke unresolved memories of hierarchy and humiliation. Digital platforms amplify these disputes, transforming them into everyday encounters that normalise antagonism and rehearse asymmetrical power relations. The effects of this online conflict extend beyond the screen, shaping the offline lives of those engaged. Thai users frequently exhibit digital apathy, marked by detachment, mockery and dismissal, while Cambodian users display digital hyper-engagement, marked by defensive participation, humiliation and emotional fatigue. These affective asymmetries spill into communal dynamics, including fears of escalation and long-term intergroup harm. Across testimonies, users describe social media as a virtual battlefield where the legacies of past conflict are continually revived rather than resolved. The findings reveal both the causes and human costs of digital conflict, showing that cross-border peacebuilding requires confronting historical hierarchies as much as repairing the emotional injuries they reproduce.
