ABOUT the research wish to see an increase in both the quantity and quality of content feeding into local information ecosystems as a way of enhancing development or democracy and governance goals, it will be important to temper runaway excitement about Myanmar’s “opening” with an understanding of some of the constraints and idiosyncrasies in the country’s national and local information ecosystems. It is the contention of this paper that a better understanding of the information ecosystem of any given community is crucial in order to improve the chances of information actually reaching its destination. on the press’s responsibility to society than on the freedom of the press. Moreover, the ways the laws are being crafted gives significant power to the state to disrupt the media environment through business and licensing practices rather than through the brute force of censorship. Thus its controls can be quite powerful but less visible.” In a recent report for Internews entitled “The Business of Media in Myanmar,” leading media management consultant Michelle Foster26 warns of the emergence of significant pressures on the media environment, primarily legal and economic. The report serves to highlight one of the most important supply equations that lies at the heart of any information ecosystem: that is the relationship between information access (the channels of delivery) and the quality (relevance, utility) of the information available on those channels. How Information Permeates: trust, need, flow and exchange Methodologies for analyzing local information ecosystems in historically marginalized areas like Mon State introduce a layer of complexity to the overarching supply equation by revealing localized “demand side” factors such as patterns of access, flow and exchange as functions of trust and need. What this means is that even where surveys show expanding audiences in Myanmar accessing new radio, TV and internet channels, questions need to be asked about the quality of news and information available, and how readily it is able to permeate effectively into complex local information ecosystems across large swathes of the country. “The government, which has always monopolized the broadcast sector, now is exerting equal dominance in the print field. Although it claims to be converting into a public service media organization, it continues to hold unfair advantages that directly and indirectly affect the ability of independent media to succeed. It has converted its journals to daily newspapers, charges only 50 kyats for them wholesale (compared to 140-170 kyats for the independent dailies) and uses its military transportation infrastructure to ensure nationwide daily distribution of more than 200,000 copies. The various media laws, well-detailed elsewhere, are being set up to operate under the “social responsibility model”… that places more emphasis There exists the risk that under the guise of increased media access, the formerly “information dark” ecosystems which prevailed across much of the country under military rule may be seamlessly replaced with “information lite” ecosystems in which unsophisticated media audiences consume primarily entertainment and “managed” news content. This sleight of hand would replicate the information ecosystems of the “disciplined democracies” of Singapore, Malaysia and China - to which Myanmar aspires - by (at best) doing nothing to foster the development of an informed citizenry and (at worst) perpetuating state influence over the architecture of public information and discourse. 26 findings This report can be accessed here: https://internews.org/sites/default/files/resources/Internews_Burma_Business_ Report2014.pdf Mobile phone shop Mawlamyaing - Pan Bae Dan Ward. 18 INFORMATION ECOSYSTEMS in transition: a case study from myanmar part one: rese arch findings 19 how to inform, empower, and impact communities INFORMATION ECOSYSTEMS in transition: a case study from myanmar how to inform, empower, and impact communities PART ONE: RESEARCH FINDINGS