12 / Myanmar's media from an audience perspective Sharing is caring With limited access to information, Myanmar people have become accustomed to sharing news and information with each other. “Those who go to the town also share the news.” This culture of sharing is best illustrated with an account of a scene taking place during one of the focus group discussions. The participants were (18-year-old woman from rural Rakhine). asked to read three articles with the purposes of discussing them afterwards. People quietly began reading the distributed articles when the silence was suddenly broken by one of the participants. “You need to hear this,” she yelled out, addressing a group of fellow villagers standing not far from where the focus group was taking place. The news, which happened to be about education enrollment, was immediately shared. When asked about why she shared the news, she just stated, “I knew they would be interested in it. It would be important to them”. From both the interviews and the focus group discussions, it is clear that this informal sharing culture plays a big role in the way people receive information. Some people rely almost solely on this type of secondhand information as they have either limited access to media themselves or no obvious interest in or habit of accessing information. As a 39-year-old woman from rural Yangon says when asked about her use of Facebook: “I cannot use it as I am busy. I have to take care of my children. If I want to know something, I look at my husband’s account. I don’t have my own account.” 9 As other studies have also pointed out , it is particularly women who are restricted in their access to information. In some cases, their husbands function as gatekeepers to the sort of news and information they receive – or they rely on the information that they can get through interaction with others e.g. at the local market. Despite the positive aspects of the sharing culture, it is not without consequences. Not least in terms of the quality of information that people are exposed to. All new messengers in an information chain will add new filters and interpretations to the original message, potentially altering facts and vital nuances. Although some people appear to be aware of the way information can become tainted by word-of-mouth transmissions, most do not have any other means of obtaining information or verifying the information that they receive. For many people second hand information is all that they get. 9 “My husband does not allow me to use Facebook. He shares only the news he wants to tell me.” (28-year-old woman from rural Rakhine). Fojo Media Institute, 2016, Gender in the Myanmar Media Landscape, fojo.se/images/pdf/publications/EN_MM_Gender_2016.pdf