Myanmar's media from an audience perspective / 5 Introduction Within the last five years, Myanmar’s media landscape has undergone significant changes. Prior to 2013, prepublication censorship and the existence of very few independent media made access to reliable information difficult and for the main part people had to rely on state propaganda. Although the internet and mobile technologies had reached the country, few had access. The price of a sim card was up to 300 USD and Myanmar had one of the world’s lowest mobile penetrations, just above of North Korea1. In 2018 the picture has changed dramatically. With the abolition of prepublication censorship, new and better media reforms making it easier for independent media to operate and heavy investments in infrastructure, Myanmar’s media landscape is far more diverse, and the population has access to an ever-growing number of media on a variety of platforms. Today approximately 34 percent of the population has access to the Internet (up from 26 percent in 2017) and are active social media users2. Facebook is by far the most popular social media – and for many Facebook is the Internet3. This poses some serious issues in terms of the quality of information people have access to, as well as people’s ability to distinguish between reliable information and misinformation. Unfortunately, very little is known about the public’s understanding of news and information flows in Myanmar, including their trust in mainstream media versus social media. The conflict in Rakhine has further highlighted the lack of knowledge of people’s media habits and their ability to critically reflect on digital content, with large amounts of disinformation and hate speech dominating Facebook feeds and spilling into the mainstream media’s narratives4. Thus, in an effort to understand people’s media repertoires as well as their level of media literacy, IMS-Fojo decided to carry out an audience study in Myanmar in 2018. It is the hope that the findings from the study may not only inform future media development efforts in Myanmar but may also help improve content production and distribution through better understanding of the audiences the Myanmar media is trying to reach and engage. In the interest of getting in-depth information and not merely overviews of people’s media habits, a qualitative approach was determined to be best suited. Furthermore, experiences from BBC Media Action show that quantitative studies on media habits in Myanmar result in poor results with participants being unwilling or hesitant to provide opinions5. In comparison, qualitative studies have proven much better suited in the local context. Thus, it was decided to use a combination of focus groups discussions and in-depth interviews with participants from four different states/regions: Yangon, Mandalay, Rakhine and Kachin. Whereas the in-depth interviews were designed to focus on the interviewee’s media/information repertoires, news habits and media literacy level, the focus groups delved into issues of trust and discussed perceptions of media and news. The data collection for this study was undertaken in May 2018 by a research team from EMReF with guidance and support from IMS-Fojo. A total of 168 participants took part in the study from the regions of Yangon, Mandalay, Rakhine and Kachin. 1 2 3 4 5 Myanmar Times, “Waiting for the sim card price drop”, published on February 11, 2013. www.mmtimes.com/special-features/159-digital-communications/4087-waiting-for-the-sim-card-price-drop.html We Are Social, Digital Yearbook 2018, published January 29, 2018 on: www.wearesocial.com/blog/2018/01/global-digital-report-2018 New York Times, “A war of words puts Facebook at the center of Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis”, published on October 27, 2017. www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/world/asia/myanmar-government-facebook-rohingya.html See for instance the report “Fake news on Facebook fans the flames of hate against the Rohingya in Burma”, from the Washington Post, December 8, 2017. BBC Media Action, Strengthening accountability through media in Myanmar – final evaluation, published in June 2017, dataportal. bbcmediaaction.org/site/assets/uploads/2016/07/Myanmar-Country-Report-2017.pdf