A Brief on the Book
This book is an output of a study titled ‘Social and digital media behavior of the cross – sector people to understand and combat mis-/disinformation in three districts (Dhaka, Mymensingh and Brahmanbaria) of Bangladesh: A situation analysis’ has been carried out by South Asia Centre for Media in Development (SACMID) under the funding support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The study findings facilitate to implement a project ‘Combating Mis-/disinformation sparked by the digital and social media platforms in Bangladesh’ in the aforesaid districts based on empirical data and information around the subject. Dhaka is the capital city of Bangladesh and Mymensingh is a division with a higher illiteracy rate according to the latest population census (2022) while Brahmanbaria frequently comes to the frontline for sparking violence against the religious minority based on mis-/disinformation spread through the digital and social media platforms.
The project mainly targets the youth i.e. the college and university students and others of this age since they are mostly engaged in digital and social media. The youths form the major portion of our population and represent the future citizenry which is in a risky position as they create and share sensitive contents through the digital and social media platforms without proper understanding of their consequences. The women, Gender Diverse People (GDP) and other marginalized communities become the worst victims of irresponsible digital and social media behavior of the wanton users. Apart from these, the project also targets the local journalists and the local government representatives as the direct beneficiaries having close contact with communities and have direct role to influence their decision-making process. This will help to make them more rational and active to safeguard freedom and justice in their own communities. So, their engagement and capacity need to be developed. Additionally, the project also targets some stakeholders like the teachers at the universities, schools and colleges, better-informed parents, imams/religious leaders, government officials, development workers, human rights defenders whose supports need to be availed for the smooth conduction of the project activities to attain its stated objectives.
The overall objective of the situation analysis study is to understand the existing knowledge, attitude and practice of the people in terms of using digital and social media platforms. With this objective, a mixed-method approach of social research i.e. questionnaire survey on 400 cross-sector populations, 06 Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and 25 Key Informant Interviews (KII) in the aforesaid districts, has been applied for conducting the study. The scope of the situation analysis includes to gather and analyze data and information in the areas of understanding the social media behavior of the populations, reasons of using various social and digital media platforms, respondent’s knowledge, abilities and attitude on mis-/disinformation, hate speech, verification of information/fact-check etc. The study further advanced to figure out the practice levels–what the users do with social media i.e. what they create, post, respond to others’ post and share, and understand whether they verify information/do fact-check, etc.