Whitten-Woodring et al. 7 preferences, because this type of content is most likely to maximize a user’s time on the site. Pariser (2011) argues that Facebook’s algorithms are designed to hide information that may challenge users’ beliefs or expand their worldview. While the potential of narrowcasting and its effects are problematic for an established democracy, they may be more detrimental, and perhaps lethal, in a country rife with ethnic conflict and lacking in democratic traditions, if these algorithms prioritize incendiary information like extreme speech and disinformation targeting a particular group. Research Questions In short, scholars worry about the potential of social networks to deepen political and social polarization. Western media have widely blamed Facebook for the genocide of the Rohingya (McLaughlin 2018; Mozur 2018; Stecklow 2018), but the literature reviewed here shows that this may be an overly simplistic explanation that lacks social and historical context and leaves out the people who are at the center of this debate: Myanmar Facebook users. Our research seeks to answer the following questions: How do people in Myanmar use Facebook? Do they encounter extreme speech and disinformation on the platform, and if so, how do they react to it? Do they engage in selective exposure? How do they adjudicate the veracity of information on Facebook? What sentiments do Facebook users express toward the Rohingya (the people “who fled Rakhine state for Bangladesh”11) compared to non-users of Facebook and what effect does Facebook have on Myanmar’s emerging democracy according to the people of Myanmar? Method We conducted a series of in-depth individual interviews and focus groups. A full list of questions is available in the online supplementary information file. Our findings are based on twenty-two individual interviews and four focus group discussions (ranging from five to twelve participants each) with experts, average Facebook users, and nonusers in Myanmar. A majority of the interviews were conducted in Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar and the city with the largest population, but researchers also traveled to Mon, Kayin, and Kachin states, and the Mandalay and Sagaing regions, to conduct interviews. Each interview or focus group discussion lasted one to two hours. All interviews were conducted in Burmese. The two researchers, both Myanmar-born with a combined total of thirty years of research experience in the country, used a snowballing method and purposely include a range of respondents from diverse social, economic, gender, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds.12 We acknowledge the limitations of our method. Our research participants were not randomly selected. Thus, our results are not generalizable. To mitigate the effects of non-randomness, we selected a wide range of people from different social, economic, ethnic, religious, and geographical backgrounds for our sample. In spite of the differences among our participants, we find some surprising and important similarities in their answers about their use of Facebook and their perceptions of it. This heightens