Sinar Project iMAP (Internet Monitoring Action Project)¶

FreeInstitutional

Publisher: sinarproject.org | Type: Non-detector | Cost: Free

TL;DR

Free, open civil-society network-monitoring platform run by Sinar Project, built on the OONI infrastructure to detect censorship, blocking, and structural network interference across ten South and Southeast Asian countries. Documented detection of MCMC blocking against MalaysiaNow and Malaysia-Today; the SEA-specific civil-society alternative in 2C.1 where claim-monitoring intersects with state-imposed access restrictions.

What it does¶

iMAP runs OONI-based network probes from volunteer measurement points across ten South and Southeast Asian countries and produces structured censorship and blocking reports: which sites and services appear blocked, from which network vantage points, when, and through which mechanism (DNS injection, TCP reset, TLS interference, HTTP redirection). The outputs are network-level findings, not content-level; iMAP is not a tool for verifying whether a circulating claim is true, but for measuring whether a competing fact-check outlet has been blocked or whether a platform's accessibility has been degraded for users in a specific network.

The tool fits 2C.1 because in several focus countries (Malaysia most prominently) monitoring the disinformation environment is inseparable from monitoring the access environment. When competing news outlets are blocked at the network layer, the user's question "is this what's circulating" requires an answer to "what can the user actually reach" first. iMAP is purpose-built for that intersection, and unlike the other 2C.1 entries it is grounded in SEA civil society's own infrastructure rather than imported from broader academic or commercial monitoring stacks.

When to use it¶

A Malaysian fact-checker is preparing an analysis on what alternative-media coverage of a story is reaching the public and needs evidence of whether competing outlets have been blocked at the network layer (the documented MalaysiaNow / Malaysia-Today case).
A regional civil-society partner is producing a pre-election monitoring report and needs the network-access layer alongside the content-monitoring layer; what reaches users in each country, not only what is being said.
A researcher in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, or another iMAP measurement-coverage country needs a measurement record of whether a fact-check outlet's URL is currently reachable from local networks.
An institutional partner working with frontline civil-society organisations in surveillance-environment contexts needs the OONI- grounded measurement record to corroborate complaints of platform or outlet blocking.

Limitations¶

Limitations

Network-level monitoring, not content monitoring. iMAP reports on whether a site or service is reachable from a probe location, not on what is being said within reachable services. For content-monitoring, pair with Information Tracer (cross-platform spread) or Media Cloud (news-source corpus).
Coverage depends on volunteer-run measurement nodes. Dense coverage in countries with active civil-society network partners (Malaysia in particular) is not matched in countries with thinner volunteer infrastructure; readers of iMAP reports should check the measurement-density notes that accompany each finding.
English-language interface; reports are multilingual where country contributors translate them. The platform's operational language for analyst work is English.
Network monitoring intersects with surveillance-environment threat models. Running OONI probes from a personal device in a network where blocking is being measured can itself be a flagged action depending on local enforcement; institutional partners run probes through hardened infrastructure rather than personal devices.

Privacy and threat model¶

iMAP probes are network-side measurements run from configured measurement nodes; the volunteer-or-institutional-run probe is the party generating the measurement traffic, not a remote target. For the operator of a probe, the threat model is local: in some jurisdictions running censorship-measurement traffic from a personal device may itself draw enforcement attention, and institutional partners operate the probes through hardened infrastructure with appropriate operational security.

For a researcher reading iMAP data without running probes, the data path is open and public; the measurement record is published on the iMAP and OONI explorers for any user to query. The threat model that matters here is editorial: cited findings about state blocking activity in jurisdictions with active enforcement practices (Malaysia's MCMC, Thailand's MDES, Sri Lanka's Online Safety Act regime) carry implications for what cited findings can be republished locally without secondary legal risk.

Source-protection override (S4 — doxxing or vulnerable-community targeting)

iMAP findings that name independent media, activist sites, or minority-community resources as blocked can themselves identify the operators and audiences of those resources to adversaries. Mitigation steps:

Before publishing iMAP findings that name specific blocked sites, audit the operator-and-audience side of those sites for activists, journalists, ethnic or religious minorities, LGBTQ+ groups, or other vulnerable communities.
Use blocking-pattern aggregates rather than per-site call-outs where the per-site call-out would expose the operator's identity beyond what is already public.
Coordinate with Sinar Project or the OONI partner before publishing operator-identifying findings in surveillance- risk jurisdictions; the measurement coalition has documented disclosure protocols.

Country and platform applicability¶

Indonesia: iMAP measurement coverage exists in Indonesia through OONI volunteer infrastructure; relevant for monitoring blocking events on alternative-media outlets where they occur.
Laos: OONI measurement coverage in Laos is structurally thinner than in Malaysia or Indonesia; Lao civil-society measurement-volunteer infrastructure is the coverage gap. Where iMAP / OONI measurements are present, they remain useful; density-of-evidence is the operational caveat.
Malaysia: primary deployment country (Sinar Project is Malaysia-based). Documented detection of MCMC blocking against MalaysiaNow and Malaysia-Today. Most operationally useful for the toolkit's six-country audience in this country.
Philippines: OONI measurement coverage exists; relevant for monitoring access conditions on independent outlets where blocking events occur.
Sri Lanka: OONI measurement coverage exists; particularly relevant under the Online Safety Act regime where network-level blocking of fact-check or critical outlets is a live concern.
Thailand: OONI measurement coverage exists; relevant for monitoring lèse-majesté-related and political-content blocking events.

Platform applicability: not platform-specific in the social-media sense. iMAP operates at the network layer, not the platform layer. Where a Facebook, X, TikTok, or Telegram URL is blocked, iMAP can detect the blocking; what is happening on those platforms when reachable is the work of the other 2C.1 and 1C.1 entries.

How to access¶

Free public access to the iMAP explorer at the Sinar Project iMAP website. The platform publishes country dashboards, blocking-event reports, and the underlying OONI measurement records for query. Researchers and civil-society partners can also volunteer to run measurement nodes through the OONI Probe app (mobile and desktop) or through dedicated measurement infrastructure for institutional deployment. Volunteering as a probe operator is documented through the OONI partner-onboarding process and Sinar Project's own volunteer channels.

Cost (current as of 2026-05)¶

Free. Open-source. The platform is grant-funded through Sinar Project's funding stack and is not user-priced. The structural cost is volunteer time for probe operators and analyst time for researchers reading the data; for institutional deployment the cost shifts to the institution running the dedicated measurement node infrastructure.

Quickstart¶

Open the Sinar Project iMAP website and navigate to the country dashboard for the focus country.
Review the recent blocking-event reports: which sites have been measured as blocked, from which networks, in what time window.
For a specific URL of interest (a competing fact-check outlet, a platform endpoint), search the OONI explorer for that URL's measurement record.
Cross-reference the iMAP finding with content-side monitoring from Information Tracer or Media Cloud where the question is what reached users on currently-reachable surfaces.
For institutional partners deploying their own measurement infrastructure: follow the OONI Probe and Sinar Project partner onboarding documentation; route measurement traffic through dedicated infrastructure rather than personal devices.
Document the iMAP-measured access conditions in any published investigation alongside the content findings; cite the Sinar Project iMAP and OONI Explorer URLs and measurement identifiers for reproducibility.

In the toolkit's workflow¶

Behaviour-pillar non-detector tool per Architectural Anchor 1. Sits in 2C.1 Automated claim monitoring as the SEA-specific civil- society alternative alongside Information Tracer (paid mid-tier cross-platform tracer), Media Cloud (free academic news-source corpus), and FactFlow AI (paid Telegram- specific alternative). Of the four 2C.1 entries, iMAP is the only SEA-grounded civil-society platform and the only one purpose-built for the network-access layer.

Standard combinations:

With Sebenarnya AIFA at 2B.1 as the independent-monitoring counterweight in the Malaysian information environment. AIFA is government-operated; iMAP is independent civil-society. Used together, they cover the Malaysian information environment at both layers: what the state has said about a claim (AIFA) and what alternative outlets are or are not reaching the public (iMAP).
With Information Tracer or Media Cloud at 2C.1 for the content layer that complements iMAP's network layer.
With CIB Mango Tree at 1C.1 for the platform-side CIB analysis that complements iMAP's network-side blocking analysis.
With Gephi at 2C.2 for visualisation of network- level findings where appropriate.
With ABCDE Framework at 2C.3 – iMAP's network-access findings codify under the Distribution axis where state blocking affects what reaches the audience, and under the Effect axis where the effect is measured at the access layer rather than at the engagement layer.

Decision-tree references: T5 escalation routes through iMAP at T5.13 (contextual OSINT) when an operation involves suspected state blocking of competing coverage in Malaysia or Sri Lanka, and feeds the 2C.1 access-layer view that single- platform CIB tools cannot resolve.

This card carries no detector signal class: iMAP produces a non-detector network-access behavioural signal. Per Anchor 2 that signal combines with content-layer signals from the other 2C.1 entries or from 1C.1 CIB tools to support a publishable institutional finding.

Override notes¶

Override notes

Malaysia documented use (b4-score-3-Malaysia-MalaysiaNow-blocking): the documented detection of MCMC blocking against MalaysiaNow and Malaysia- Today is the operational anchor case for this card. Country and platform applicability records this case under Malaysia with cross-link to Sebenarnya AIFA's framing of iMAP as the independent-monitoring counterweight.

Sources¶

Sinar Project. iMAP — Internet Monitoring Action Project. Sinar Project, 2024. imap.sinarproject.org.
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI). OONI Explorer — network interference measurement data. OONI, 2024. explorer.ooni.org.