Acknowledgements

This report would not have been made possible without the expertise, hard work, and
dedication of research lead, Than Sin Oo, for conducting the data collecting and analysing the
findings. Research facilitator, Ye Min Thant, is also deserving of thanks for facilitating the
discussions and co-authoring the report with Thant Sin Oo. Special thanks is given to Melyn
McKay for providing the technical expertise on designing and implementing a rigorous
research project. Phandeeyar would also like to acknowledge Kathy Win and Zaw Myo Min
for their assistance in helping the focus group discussions that were central to the findings of
this study, and Cho Thazin Aung and Nora Thuzar Win for their help with the thankless task
of typing up endless hours of transcripts. Finally, Phandeeyar would like to thank ​the French
Embassy​ in Myanmar for the generous funding that made this research and report possible.

Author:
THANT SIN OO

Co-Author:
YE MIN THANT

Advisor:
MELYN MCKAY

Contact:
info@phandeeyar.org

©Phandeeyar
The content of this publication is copyright protected. Phandeeyar is happy to share the
content under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Please visit ​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/​ to learn more about the license.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION

KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

METHODOLOGY

ANALYSIS
MOBILE PHONES AND EVERYDAY LIFE
INFRASTRUCTURE DOESN’T BUY ACCESS: ARE DATA COSTS KEEPING MYANMAR OFFLINE?
MOBILE PHONES ARE TODAY’S TEACHER TO YOUNG ADULTS, IS THIS A GOOD THING?
IS OUR MOBILE PHONE A DOORWAY TO SOCIAL WORLDS THAT WE MAY NOT REACH OFFLINE
OTHERWISE?

FACEBOOK AND THE DIGITAL WORLD IN MYANMAR

FACEBOOK IS THE INTERNET, OR IS IT?
WHAT IS A FAKE ACCOUNT ANYWAY?
FACEBOOK: CAN'T LIVE WITH IT, CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT?
FACEBOOK GIVES US ACCESS TO INFORMATION AT OUR FINGERTIPS; HOW MUCH OF IT DO
WE TRUST?

SAFE INTERNET
DIGITAL SKILLS: WHERE SHOULD YOU LEARN IT OR SHOULD YOU BOTHER?
FACEBOOK OR FAKEBOOK: SHOULD WE ONLY POST WHEN WE ARE HAPPY?
MOBILE AND WOMEN
IS DIGITAL HARASSMENT THE NEW WOLF WHISTLE?

CONCLUSION

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Introduction
In late 2017, Phandeeyar conducted small-scale, qualitative research on Facebook use in
Myanmar. The findings of that research were insightful. For instance, the research suggested
that:
● Hate speech is often met with mockery (using the ‘ha ha’ reaction).​
Because Facebook’s algorithm translates engagement into greater visibility,
this behaviour serves to unintentionally extend the reach of the most
inflammatory and dangerous online content.
● Direct sharing is not the only option to share (copy + paste is preferred).
As a result, it’s nearly impossible to track content’s actual reach. This
behaviour also forces Myanmar Facebook users to rely on other means of
evaluating the origins of content, particularly, reading comments from other
users.
● Communities around the country know to question the veracity of online
content (but few have the skills to do so). Across the country, communities
shared a pervasive sense that Facebook was both the best and worst means
of staying informed.

Though the findings of the research were never published, they were used to improve the
impact of existing campaigns and to advocate for changes to Facebook’s community
management practices in Myanmar. Having thus proven the value of research-based
programming and advocacy, Phandeeyar resolved to conduct another qualitative study, this
time broadening the inquiry to explore a wider variety of online experiences, perceptions,
skills, and behaviours.
Between October 2018 and March 2019, Phandeeyar’s Tech for Peace team conducted 23
focus groups with 137 participants in 6 locations including: Hlaing Thar Yar, Yangon,
Meikhtila, Taunggyi, Kalay, and Hpa-an. The content in this report is the product of that
research and aims to collate the data collected in support of Phandeeyar’s own programming.
This report will also serve as the basis for further external communications and publications,
which the team hopes will help the civic tech sector, civil society organizations, and donors
better understand digital culture in Myanmar and its implications for policy and
programming. Ultimately, Phandeeyar hope that by sharing these findings, Myanmar’s
general public will be better able to safely navigate an increasingly diverse online ecosystem
whilst making the most of the many opportunities it provides.

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Key Findings and Recommendations

Mobile Phones and Everyday Life

The popularity of an app solely depends on its utility and how data economical it is.
While Facebook and Messenger are, without a doubt, the most popular, Youtube, Tiktok,
various video downloaders, and Zapya were also commonly in use.

- Civil Society/NGOs who are doing literacy and/or public education programming can
improve their reach by providing mobile phone apps that allow users to cheaply
download content to their phones for offline use.

- Offer learners incentives by providing mobile data or unlimited wifi support.

Apart from phone calling, ‘entertainment’ is the reason most people acquire smartphones.
Videos are the most popular content type. Given the larger file size of audio-visual files,
users develop their own ways of minimizing data cost.

- Those who are doing public education programming should incorporate an

entertainment element into their curriculum in either video or graphic format. For
example, mobile learning programmes could include instruction or teaching videos
that can be downloaded onto the phone and shared with other users

- Think about how existing television education programmes can be adapted to mobile.

Humourous content is the most popular (and potentially successful) online.

- Social entertainment or social change campaigners should use playful creativity with
elements of humour to gain online engagement. For instance, popular culture mimics
and memes easily go viral.

Although smartphones are seen as a distraction for high school students, for young adults
and university students they are an essential aid for self-improvement. Most new users
come online after they pass 11th grade.

- CSOs and NGOs interested in education or youth issues should use popular platforms
such as Facebook and Youtube to offer learning courses on a variety of subjects.

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There is more to social networking on smartphones. ​Facebook helps small businesses,
professionals and civil society in their networking and communication. For many in
Myanmar, Facebook is Google, LinkedIn, Tinder, Tumblr, and Reddit, all in one.

- Facebook can help students, shopkeepers, and many others to get ahead. However,
young women, especially of low digital literacy, are sometimes hindered by prevalent
online harassment or cultural prejudice from using internet and social media. Gender
should be mainstreamed into any programming with an online element. The private
sector may find opportunities in designing female-friendly ICT, for instance, digital
platforms with strict (and thoroughly implemented) guidelines on harassment.

Facebook and the Digital World in Myanmar

Contrary to common assumptions about the prevalence of passive information

consumption, Myanmar mobile users practice active searching. They find the information
that they need on Facebook rather than Google. ​People use Facebook as the internet
because it is more responsive to search and thus offers better quality content. Social
networking is secondary.

- If you want your content seen, make sure it is searchable.

Facebook accounts are not linked to identity. They are disposable, and many users make
as many accounts as they like based on what they need. ​There are many reasons why people
use different identities on Facebook. It does not always suggest they have malicious intent.

- CSO/NGO and advocacy networks should rethink the way they address the
prevalence of so-called ‘fake accounts’ - particularly, as it pertains to Facebook
advocacy efforts.

Even though participants were increasingly aware of the prevalence of negativity and
misleading content on Facebook, they have developed their own ways of curating their
experience.

- Information literacy, empathy, and safety tips will all help users improve their ability
to create positive digital ecosystems for themselves by making them (even) smarter
social media users.

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Participants put a lot of trust in some of the channels/pages related to their different topics
​ oung adults learn through reading and watching on mobile phones for
of interest. Y
self-improvement.

- Build audience trust on your existing pages by offering higher-quality content.

Regularly update with new posts. Consider providing helpful tips and learning
opportunities related to your topics.

- Invest in comment monitoring and community management to ensure bad actors are
not derailing discussion. Participants sometimes evaluate new sources of information
by reading the comments.

Safe Internet

Mobile phones are not seen as an extension of a person’s self. ​Many participants expressed
concern about password protecting their phones because it might mean that other people
could not use them in times of emergency.

- Western notions of privacy may not map to Myanmar directly. When thinking about
security, keep in mind that multiple users may access the internet from the same
device.

Most Facebook users have been exposed to a barrage of negative online content, as a
result, they prefer when other people post positive things on social media.

- However, this tendency toward policing negative emotions or opinions online may
contribute to a sense of alienation or inadequacy in people dealing with difficult
circumstances. Mental health materials should be made available and easily
searchable.

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Methodology
Over a six-month period, the social study conducted 23 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs)
with 137 participants (78 women and 59 men) in 6 locations: Hlaing Thar Yar, Yangon,
Meikhtila, Taunggyi, Kalay, and Hpa-an. Phandeeyar used purposive and snowball sampling
to recruit participants. The sampling criteria emphasised diversity, and thus ensured
participants were balanced in gender, educational background, and age.

In October, the team conducted a pilot study with three FGDs in Hlaing Thar Yar. Based on
the data collected, the team revised the questionnaire and the method of inquiry. Over the
next five months, the team visited places in Yangon, Meikhtila, Taunggyi, Kalay and Hpa-an
to conduct 20 more FGDs. These cities were selected to leverage Phandeeyar’s existing
network.

Each discussion group typically consisted of four to five users, while a few discussions were
joined by as many as nine people. Each discussion took 60 to 90 minutes depending on
participants’ engagement. The language of discussion was Myanmar.

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Realising after the pilot that the mobile users’ behaviours and experiences were highly
gendered, the team decided to separate men and women moving forward. The questionnaire
was designed around four different themes, which included common questions that carried
through each of the FGDs:

• Digital literacy,
• Digital culture,
• Interaction with digital technology, and
• Safety and concerns.

In order to achieve a good mix of digital literacy and socio-economic backgrounds, the team
tried to target both urban and peri-urban backgrounds.1 Although the majority of the
participants turned out to be college students, our sample was otherwise diverse in regards to
occupations: teachers, farmers, factory workers, brokers, business owners, nurses, and
community centre staff, all participated in the study.

Distribution of gender and (digital) access background - total 23 FGDs

City Urban Peri-urban

Hlaing Thar Yar 1 mixed gender 1 women’s group, 1 men’s group

Yangon 2 mixed groups 1 women’s group, 1 men’s group

Meikhtila 1 women’s group, 2 men’s groups 1 women’s group

Taunggyi 1 men’s group 2 women’s groups, 1 men’s group

Kalay 1 women’s group, 1 men’s group 1 women’s group, 1 men’s group

Hpa-An 2 women’s groups, 2 men’s groups -

Limitations
Given the nature of snowball sampling, which was used for recruitment, trust building
between the researchers and participants was sometimes challenging. What is more, in order
to respect participant privacy, researchers refrained from asking questions related to very
private or sensitive topics, which included questions about ethnic identity. As such, the data
cannot be disaggregated by ethnicity.

In some of the focus groups, the team was able to ask the participants to share their phone
screens, which enabled the researchers to observe actual usage. However, this was not
possible in every FGD as participants were sometimes reluctant and the team prioritised their
comfort.

1
We define “urban background” as a group of participants who have easier or more access to mobile shops and
digital services, and higher social awareness of digital technology, comparatively to “peri-urban” participants of
the same city or location.

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In addition, as the research was exploratory in nature, the team did not always adhere strictly
to the questions set out in the questionnaire, but rather, used them as a guideline to encourage
a free flowing conversation. Where conversation fixated on a certain topic and/or ran over
time, the team truncated certain questions from each theme in order to save time.

The method itself introduces additional confounding factors into the analysis of if and/or how
offline social settings influence online use. Although this research tried to probe the everyday
digital lives of ordinary citizens, we presume that users who are part of the digital leapfrog in
the past 4 - 6 years fairly represent a good majority of the new wave of mobile users across
Myanmar and the emerging digital cultures with it. Therefore, some common characteristics
of the users may form the basis that shapes the way we formulate our understanding. The
majority of our participants shared the following characteristics:

• Currently do not own nor use a laptop (nor have they extensively used it in the past);
• Use android phones (mostly older versions of Android OS);
• Cannot skilfully navigate user settings on their devices;
• Are currently connected with mobile 4G and have good reception;
• Have no convenient access to WIFI or unlimited data.

Our method of inquiry in social research represents only a glimpse into people's interactions
with mobile phones and the role they play in the social milieu. Like any other qualitative
research, our data is not representative of Myanmar in general, but rather, offers new
perspectives into digital-social dynamics. It goes without saying, that these findings do not
represent all types or subcultures of digital users, nor can any generalisation be made to all
users in Myanmar.

We present our findings in the form of questions that we hope will productively challenge
assumptions that are widely accepted as true. Moreover, Phandeeyar hopes that the study
findings give us, and our readers, deeper insight (as opposed to broad data) that might suggest
avenues and lines of inquiry for further research. We present almost all the findings with little
interpretation. Though our understanding of some social and digital phenomena may be
shallow, given the limitations of the method itself (semi-structured discussion); by presenting
all findings, rather than leaving some out because of insufficient data, we hope the report will
spark curiosity for further research.

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Analysis

Mobile Phones and Everyday Life

Infrastructure doesn’t buy access: Are data costs keeping

Myanmar offline?

Each focus group discussion began with a question: how do people in Myanmar use their
phones in daily life? In addition to making phone calls, we wanted to know about their most
used/useful applications. Our focus was not to identify any specific applications, but to
understand the underlying social factors that determine why and how people make choices
about what to put on their phone and how often they will use it. While participants had no
particular difficulty in acquiring a mobile phone and a 4G connection, we learned that having
access to a device does not always mean users have full access to the internet. In particular,
data cost was an important factor that shaped what applications were popular and when and
how they were being used. This led the team to ask about the culture of file sharing, different
ways of minimizing data cost, and other social perceptions around data cost.

For instance, one participant in Kalay reported that he bypassed data cost
on Facebook by screenshotting news articles. That way, he could come
back to reading them later when his data was turned off.

#PopularApps - In participants’ everyday language, the word လင ပ တကတယ/ ​line paw tat
tal -- “going online” -- is synonymous with “active on Facebook”. Although ​Facebook and
its ​Messenger are, undeniably, the most popular apps across all regions of Myanmar, data
cost deters their actual online usage. As such, people are very often using their phones offline
to read or watch content they have previously downloaded.

After Facebook, the next most popular apps include: ​Zapya​, ​Vidmate and
MX Player​.

While Facebook is favored for the diversity of its offering, including availability of Myanmar
content and information, web surfing, blogging, and video watching -- for many participants,
Youtube could rival Facebook in terms of interest and entertainment if its usage were less
expensive. Given the high cost of data for video content, participants in this study reported
that they preferred to download from Facebook or YouTube using downloader apps which
decrease the bandwidth requirements of streaming. This means downloading videos from the
internet is never seen as piracy; rather, participants saw these apps as a means of accessing
video content that would otherwise be out of reach because there is no wifi or unlimited data
at home. Popular apps used for this purpose include: ​Vidmate​, ​Tubemate, or ​FB HD

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Downloader​, and ​Zapya ​(used for ​file sharing). Such apps were present on the majority of
participants’ phones. However, participants with access to unlimited data were much less
likely to use these apps, preferring to stream instead.

There are, of course, other niche apps for users of different interests and geolocations:

• Despite users’ preference for ​Facebook ​Messenger​, ​Viber is, nevertheless, still being used
widely for social connection and for work communication.
• WeChat ​is popular among users in Taunggyi, particularly those who have business
relations with people from China.
• For game-playing users, apps such as ​PUPG and ​Mobile Legend ​are popular with men.
Candy Crush​ is popular with women.
• Dictionary ​apps are also mentioned frequently, and are popular for learning.

Tiktok appears to be on the rise; users like its entertainment value and
social broadcasting elements. Its straightforward functionality also
contributes to its popularity, especially among younger users. Instagram
tends to be seen as “part-elitist”, an app only made for “beautiful" or
“cele” users. “Cele”, in this context, refers to persons perceived to be
popular within their own circle or beyond on social media, but does not
necessarily refer only to celebrities.

#Videos ​- Apart from communication, the top reason people buy mobile phones is for
entertainment, with the internet as a doorway to various types of content. In every focus
group, participants reported that they most commonly used their phones to watch videos.

When it comes to entertainment, comedy is the preferred content type. Many participants
mentioned that they frequently search online for funny posts, stories, and videos. This helps
to explain why funny/meme groups on Facebook are extremely popular. Facebook has
Myanmar pages people can use to discover and watch new videos.

#FileSharing ​- Given the importance of mobile entertainment, especially given the heavy
data-usage of video watching, it’s no surprise ​Zapya is an extremely popular app. Its broad
usage is developing a culture of file sharing among social groups.

​ င’ ဆ ပ ဇတလမ
[တကသလ] က င တကတန ကဆရင အခန ထ ရ ကရင ‘ဟ Zapyaဖ

က ကတယ။

When I was in the university, as soon as I reached the classroom, I would

tell [my friends]: everybody open Zapya! And then we created copies of
movies [we had on our phones].

- 21 years old college student (woman), Hpa-an

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Many participants mentioned watching television series and movies on their mobile phones.
There are three avenues people can use to do this: copy content from friends through ​Zapya​;
download lower quality video off Facebook or Youtube using a ​downloader app; or
stream/download when ​wifi connection is conveniently accessible (generally, public wifi on
university campuses or in commercial/business spaces).

#DataCost - Younger users’ online time is often determined by the data allowance they
receive from parents. Sometimes, spending too much on mobile data is seen as a negative
behaviour -- particularly where too much time and money is spent on recreation or
“slacking”. As a result, young users are often embarrassed to admit how much time they
spend online. For instance, when we asked participants from Kalay and Hpa-an how much
they spent per month on data, they laughed (in a shy manner), stayed quiet, or lied (provided
illogical or inconsistent answers).

Mobile phones are today’s teacher to young adults, is this a

good thing?

Since Myanmar experienced a “digital connectivity revolution” around 2014, with user
numbers beginning to soar high starting from urban regions, we assumed that the majority of
mobile users today started using phones around that time. But it became interesting when we
factored in user’s age to understand their first mobile phone experience. As many of our
participants were young adults and college students, we discussed when they first got their
hands on a smartphone and what benefits they thought it brings.

#FirstMobilePhone ​- For our youngest participants, passing their matriculation exam is

a rite of passage into digital presence; many buy their phones right after passing the 11th
grade. There are only a few exceptions to this rule, for example, those who are well-off or
living away from their parents or relatives. However, young people may share a phone with
their parents or other family members before they graduate high school.

Early mobile adopters, who started as early as 2013, preferred using Viber because it was
easier to sign up for than Facebook. Mobile users without prior digital skills needed to ask
friends for help or pay a phone shop to open their first Facebook account for them. Only once
their digital skills had advanced could they figure out how to open another account by
themselves.

ဖဆသ (၁) - အငတ နကစသ တ အသက (၁၇) မ စသ တယ။ ဆယတန ပ ပ ။ [...]

စသ တန က တ သမ ရယတ ပ ပ။ မ တ လည ရယတယ။ [...]ဆယတန ပ ပ ခ င
ဖန စသ တ Google​ မသ တတဘ ။ တငပတ နတယ။ အခပ အငတ နကဆငမ သ ပရ တ

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 မလလ။ Facebook account​ က သငယခ င န က န ၅၀၀၀ န ဝယသ တယ။ တစခ ဆ
(၁) သ င လ ကန ဝယသ တယ။

Respondent (1) - I was 17 when I started using the internet. After I

graduated from high school. [...] When I started using it, I shared
everything I saw [on Facebook]. I shared even if it’s just a photo of a
snake. [...] When I started using mobile phone, I didn’t know how to use
Google. I was struggling. I thought of going to a mobile shop. Then I
bought Facebook account with 5000 kyats. Some people even bought with
10,000 kyats!

- 21 years old college student (man), Yangon

ဖဆသ (၂) - အမ ဆ က တ က ငသ တပ ပ ဝယသ တ ။ က န ဆ ဝယမသ ငလ

dictionary​ ဒ င ပ [ဘ သ ပန ပ ] FB account လ
​ ပတယ။ အဂလပလ တပ ရ ထ တယ။
က န Email​ ဖငတယ။ Account ​ရသ တယ။ န က က တ Facebook account
ပ ကသ တယ။

Respondent (2) - Mostly it’s students who bought accounts. I couldn’t

afford to buy account. So I downloaded a dictionary app. I translated the
words to create a Facebook account because it was all written in English.
I first opened email account and then got a Facebook account. Later I lost
that account.

- 18 years old ​college​ student (man), Yangon

#SelfImprovement ​- ​Many users seemed to recognise a need for younger users to reach
a certain level of maturity before mobile phones could reasonably be used. And yet, almost all
participants believed that the access to information, knowledge, and self-directed learning
provided by the internet was a net-good for users of all ages.

College students, in particular, acknowledged mobile phones’ utility and aid to their studies in
higher education, including: ability to develop useful skills; D.I.Y. and tutorials from
YouTube, Pinterest, and Facebook pages; and opportunity to look for courses, training,
extracurricular classes, and scholarships.

Mobile book reading was also discussed as a benefit of digital technology, particularly as
users can download many books not otherwise available in Myanmar and/or share books with
friends using Zapya.

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For teenagers, mobile phones and the internet are not generally seen as a learning aid (yet),
but rather, as a distraction from school lessons and examination studies. As a result, many
families opt not to buy teens a phone until they have passed the matriculation exam.

အတန က (၉)တန ။ အမန တ အမက မ နလက ဆ ငအ နန ဝယ ပ တ က

(၇)တန တည က။ ဒ ပမ အတန က အငတ နက မသ သ လ (၉)တန က မ [စသ တတတ ]။
(၉)တန က တ Facebook​ တဘ တ သ တတ န ပ။ (၁၀) တန က တ
ဖန သ တ ရပထ တ ပ ။ (၁၀) တန ပ မ [ ပနသ တ ]။ အတန က စ အတက သ ရမယလ
မသဘ လ၊ တကသလ ရ ကမ သရမယမန သတ ။ [၁၀ တန တန ]က အမက သမ သ တ ပ ။
ပ မ ပန တ င ရတ ။

It was grade 10 [when I started using it]. Actually my home bought me

as a birthday present since grade 8, but I didn’t know how to use
Internet then. Only in grade 10, I learnt how to use Facebook. Then I
stopped using the phone in grade 11 (final high school year) and used it
again after grade 11. Because I didn’t know I could use it for learning.
Only in the college, I realized that. [During grade 11], my
home[parents] took the phone from me. I asked for it again after [the
matriculation exam].

- 18 years old college student (woman), Hpa-An

Is our mobile phone a doorway to social worlds that we

may not reach offline otherwise?

We generally accept that mobile phones and social networks facilitate social connection with
friends and family with greater ease. However, we know very little about how users venture
into the different social spheres that mobile phones have unlocked for them. Especially when
it comes to work related to ​staying safe online​, these findings provided much needed insight
into how people connect with strangers (that they have not come to meet offline yet) -- be it
for hobby, romantic, business, or professional motives.

#MobileGaming ​- Although it is relatively less common for women users, playing

mobile games takes precedence over using social networking for young men. Male
participants in our study said mobile games occupy a significant amount of their mobile
phone time. Sometimes, male gamers use a different identity profile on Facebook to play
online, read about gaming, or connect with other gamers.

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#Mobile4Work ​- For people working in non-corporate culture, mobile phones are also a
workstation from which they build their network. Many of the participants reported that they
did not use email services, such as Gmail, to send and receive professional communication.
Instead, they relied on applications such as Viber and Facebook Messenger, and in
Taunggyi, WeChat.

Participants in Taunggyi said that civil society members use Facebook

Messenger for work related communication and rarely open their Gmail to
check for emails. Facebook groups are also used to communicate among
community members. Updates are given in private groups rather than by
phone or emails.

Some urban youth participants mentioned that Facebook was a good place to find job
opportunities. Those on the hunt for work often use their Facebook profiles as their portfolio,
so profiles become an important site for personal branding. Participants from civil society
also noted that they upload activity photos to Facebook as a means of updating their network
and gaining trust. As such, Facebook sometimes functions like ​LinkedIn, connecting people
with professional contacts and helping them to keep up-to-date with issues and opportunities
that affect their work.

က နမတ ပရဟတ သ အလ ရင သင အ နန တ [ ဖစဘတ အ က င] လအပတယ။

တစခ တစ လ ကရင ကယမ ရတ သ က ကနသ ပ။ လင ပ မ ဆရင သ လ တ
အသင တရတယ။ ကယကလည လင ပ မ သ လ တ လ တအ က င မတတမ တင ပ တ
လင ပ မ ရ ရတ လယတယ။ ယ ကညမတစခ ရသ တယ ပ ။

For our volunteer blood donation group, we need [Facebook account].

Sometimes we ran out of donated. But there are groups of volunteer
donors. And as we normally post photos of people donating blood, it’s
easier [for them] to find out about us. We build trust.

- 38 year old social worker (woman), Taunggyi

#Facebook4LocalBusiness ​- When it comes to business, it is not just people selling

products through their Facebook profile; trade agents benefit from learning up-to-date market
prices, news, and trends related to their products, for instance automobile retail or land sales.

Private groups of local merchants and tradespersons can also use groups as a channel for
publishing pictures of products and their sales prices.

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 ​ ပမတငဘ ပ ။ မန နဂ က အကနလပတယ။ မန နဂ က
က န က တ Facebook မ
ဒ မကကက သဝယတယဆရင က န လကမတထ ပ လကတယ။ မန နဂ က တ ကယ မကက
အကက ဖ ပ သ ပရငသက group ​ထ ပတင ပ လကတယ။ ဒ ဆရင ပစ တက
ဈ မ လ တယ။

I don’t post the photos on Facebook myself. My manager does it. Once my
manager bought a piece of land, I signed it. After the manager created
sections of the land, he uploaded the photos to the [Facebook] group.
Then, the other brokers came and asked for prices.

- ​52 years old broker (woman), Taunggyi

The research team also found several cases of people using their Facebook profile to sell
products and connect with others to create a small-scale online shop. According to
participants, deals were done through Facebook Messenger, with money exchanged either in
advance, via bank transfer, or in person when delivering the product. There is a mixed view
on how reliable this type of business can be; although participants said that they bought
online because many products are not available in physical shops, some said the products do
not live up to the quality that was advertised online, and they felt cheated. Some participants
also said they found such advertisements annoying on their social media feeds.

#Facebook&SocialCommunity ​- In Taunggyi and Kalay, Facebook is not just social

connection of close friends and family, but it also functions as a social sphere to learn about
events, including obituaries from community members living in a distant place. In Kalay in
particular, participants mentioned that Chin community would sometimes send condolences
or felicitation to their community members on Facebook, where unreliable and expensive
ground transportation, to say nothing of sheer distance, makes it difficult to connect in
person.

#Facebook4RomanticLife ​- Online or Facebook courting is common among men and

women living in rural and peri-urban areas as well as with migrant workers living abroad.
Online courting is the most common and happens primarily between people across different
regions. The primary reason for such cross-geographical connection, as enabled by Facebook,
is that the medium allows users to sometimes lie about themselves [possibly as a way to
impress the other person by misrepresenting oneself before they make a deeper connection,
rather than being exposed easily or soon, if they were geographically close]. Some
participants expressed concerns about the dating culture, and the issue of unsafe online dating
was mentioned more frequently by peri-urban focus groups.

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Naturally, although this type of behaviour enabled cheating or extramarital affairs (there were
many reports and rumours of just such activities) participants also recounted happier stories
of inter-regional romantic connections that blossomed into healthy offline partnerships.

A typical relationship like this involves talking online without meeting in person over an
extended period of time, sometimes years, until they finally arrange to meet outside and then
“elope” almost immediately. Although Facebook is the most common platform used for
finding potential partners, bantering, or developing online-only romantic relationships,
conversations can also take place on other messaging platforms such as ​Viber​.

ဖဆသ (၁) - မန က လ ကအမမ နတ မ တ လင က နပ တ ပ ခ ပ က တ ပ ပ။

တ ခ မ ကလ တန ဖန ထက န စက ပ ရင အမ ထ င က ကနတယ။ တခ ဆ ရနကနက န။
တခ ဆ အ ပငမ မ တ ဖ ပ ဖန ပ ရင လက ပ ကတ ။ သတက မစ စ ဘ
က ကရငလက ပ တ ပ။

Respondent (1) - As girls stay at home most of the time, they meet their
participants online [Facebook], and then they ended up eloping.
Sometimes their partners are from Yangon. For some, they never met
outside but only talked on the phone before they eloped. They don’t think;
they run away if they like each other.

- ​peri-urban women group, Meikhtila

ဖဆသ (၂) - ညမ တ သန Messenger​ က န တ တ စနစ က တ ခ ပ တယ။

က င လ က ရနကနက န က က တ ခ ပ တယ။ အ ပငမ န အနလင မ ပက အတတပ ပ။
ခ ပ မယလ ပ ထ ပ မ ခ ပ တ ။ က ဂတက လ က ပ ခ ပ ကတ ပ။

Respondent (2) - I met him on [Facebook] Messenger, and we eloped after

we talked for 2 years. The boy is from Yangon. His looks the same outside
as his photo online. We planned it before we ran away. We met at the bus
terminal to run away.

- peri-urban women group, Meikhtila

The use of online spaces for courtship sometimes leads to harassment, particularly when one
party is not interested or does not consent. Many women users have had bad experiences with
male users who become “rude”. According to participants in this study, such exchanges often
included: swearing; sending unsolicited nude photos; calling the number registered on
Facebook, often to make threats; and in the worst cases, photoshopping images posted on a
Facebook profile to make the female user appear promiscuous.

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 ညမသငယခ င ပ online​ က န က ကတ က င လ က န ပည တ က မ လ ရ မ

အလပလပတ ။ online​ မ ကယက မ က က တ လ ငင လက တ ဟဘကက က င လ က

လက ပဿန ရ တ ပ ။ မ လ ရ မ နတ က င လ က သ သငယခ င တ လတ ပ
ပသ န ရ ခင တယ။ န က က တ ပ ကသ ကတ ပ။

So my friend was courting online with a guy from Nay Pyi Taw, who was
working in Malaysia. Later she rejected the guy online that she no longer
liked him. Then he gave her troubles. The boy from Malaysia sent his
friends to harass her. But later they broke up.

- peri-urban women group, Meikhtila

The common negative outcomes of online courtship reported by participants included:

• Finding out later that men were already married or had children in another location,
• Minors getting married before reaching the legal age for (court) marriage,
• Being unemployed without a place to stay (being abandoned by family members because of
relationship),
• Quick divorce or break up, with girls and women being left behind,
• Broken marriages and families (married husbands/fathers running away with younger
women with whom they have affairs online).

ညမ သငယခ င ဆ တခ မ ရည စ မထ ဘ ပ ။ တစဘကရ က သက လပ ဆ ပ လမ က ကတ ။
လင ပ မ က က နရင လ တ င ခင တ မန မရမန သ တ သ ဘ မတဘ ပ ။
န က က တ ခ ပ ကတယ။ ပထမမန မက ပစထ ပ ညမ သငယခ င န လ ယတယ။
ပထမမန မရ က လ တပ ထန လကရတ ပ ။ န က က တ မဘ တက ပန ခ ထ တ ။

My friend had never been in a relationship before. Her online partner was
from another village and he lied to her that he was single. Once they fell
in love online, she asked him to ask for marriage [from her parents]. And,
of course, [her parents] didn’t agree as they found out he has a wife. But
later they eloped after he left his wife. She even had to take care of the
kids from the first wife. But in the end her parents took her back.​

- peri-urban women group, Meikhtila

There are a variety of reasons why people in Myanmar sometimes have limited opportunities
for finding or initiating a romantic relationship in the real world; cultural, economic, or
geographic constraints can all create very real barriers. Facebook-- where millions of
Myanmar users are connected-- offers an opportunity for people to find romantic partners

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despite these limitations. These digitally-mediated connections are also unique in that they
2
often connect people from different cities, sometimes even across ethnic lines.

Facebook account sharing between couples is common; only a few participants in this
research emphasised privacy. It is easier for young men, to have multiple separate accounts,
which their female romantic partner may or may not know about. We will discuss in detail
the gender differences related to having digital skills and different reasons why men are more
likely to have multiple accounts in the following sections.

Conclusions - ​When we design intervention programmes, we often overlook data cost as

factor that decides a selling point to potential users. Apart from some urban middle class
users, data cost may be a big barrier to making the most of the internet and it shapes the way
people interact with mobile phones in both rural and urban areas. Participants prefer
applications that allow them to search for content, and at the same time, spend minimal data
or keep content downloaded for offline access. Young adults see mobile phones as facilitator
of self-development, and yet, the heavy data cost of watching videos for learning deters them
from making full use.

We also learned that entertainment is the main reason people use mobile phones and that
people develop a culture of file sharing during their social interactions to cope with data cost.
Future research should explore the ways in which mobile phone use has (or has not) replaced
traditional TV watching, particularly how the ability to “personalise” content online, and the
lower cost of ownership affect consumer choices. By answering this question, CSO and
NGOs could better understand how television education programming can be adapted to
reach mobile-only populations more successfully.

It is generally known that social media allow users to create and interact in digital
communities, regardless of whether such virtual social connections cross to the offline world.
It was unexpected for us to learn the large extent to which Facebook in Myanmar connects
strangers across regions into romantic relationships, rendering physical, and sometimes
social, difficulties irrelevant. Our particular recommendation to organizations is that this
online social trend calls into question of staying safe online and (offline), which can no
longer be overlooked, specifically for women. Moving forward, it would also be beneficial to
understand how LGBTQ communities use mobile technology for dating and bypassing
traditional social barriers.

2
Given the sensitivities around these questions, we did not inquire about religion.

19 of 41
Facebook and the digital world in Myanmar

Facebook is the internet, or is it?

When we discussed the internet with participants, the conversation naturally turned to
Facebook. Given the importance of Facebook in Myanmar, we spent time trying to
understand Facebook culture. The common catchphrase, ‘Facebook is the internet of
Myanmar’, has been so often repeated as to become truth. However, even if it is in some
ways true, we wondered, to what extent? It is patronising to assume that people in Myanmar
only use Facebook as the internet because they do not have digital skills or because they only
consume information passively. We want to challenge the way people think about
Facebook’s role in Myanmar and support it with better social explanations derived from
research. To gather this data, we probed our participants about their primary motives for
joining and using Facebook.

#SocialNetworking - Surprisingly, the research team found that social networking is not
the primary reason why most users have Facebook. Rather, most participants claimed that
they used Facebook principally for surfing the internet and for entertainment. Not all but
most participants were clear that they rarely open the Facebook app solely to see what their
friends are up to, rather, this happens passively once they’ve logged in for other reasons.

Participants were not using Facebook to connect with family members, either, preferring to
keep their social details private for fear of being judged negatively by their elders. As such, it
was common for participants to claim they either do not accept family members requests to
connect, or to create a different account to connect for more parent-approved sharing. As it is
culturally common for young users to live with their family, they do not feel the need to
connect to those they are physically close to anyway.

အရငက ဒတင ပ အရငဖငထ တ ပ။ အခ တစ က ငက သ သန ဆရ တ မဘ တ အတက

ထ တယ။ တစ က ငက တ သငယခ င တအတက။ အမ တက တ Block​ ထ တယ။

I used to have just one Facebook account. Now I have a separate account
to add my teachers and then another account for my parents. And one for
my friends. I blocked my relatives though.

- 22 years old college student (woman), Hpa-An

Through the focus group discussions it became clear that the social networking aspect of
Facebook has shifted to chat groups, stories, or Facebook Messenger groups, where people
can share more personal details with a select group of people. While Facebook Messenger
groups keep close circles of people connected and communicating, Facebook groups are

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more often used to share information, learn more about hobbies, or discuss interests. Some
types of Facebook pages and groups most commonly used by participants in this research
included:
- Local town news groups
- Celebrity fan and news
- Movies and TV series groups
- Gamers groups
- Alumni networks
- Students/alumni groups.

Other groups, such as groups for food, travels, e-books, music, religion, health, fitness/sports,
aesthetics, language studies, and adult content, were also mentioned, but less frequently.

Degree of activeness on social media (Facebook) may depend on the following

interconnected factors:
• availability or amount of free/leisure time;
• demographic (student or working; wealth status);
• whether required to connect to the internet at work or for work related activity;
• affordability of data or access to unlimited wifi; and
• the extent to which being used to regularly using smart phone, social media and internet
(older users).

#InternetSearching - Many described access to information as the most positive aspect

of the internet. However, as far as surfing and searching is concerned, the lack of Myanmar
content, and the problem of inconsistent fonts, mean Google rarely yields satisfactory results.

Many of our participants knew about Google (and how to use it properly on their mobiles)
but tended to use it only to search in English. Non-English speakers were less likely to use
3
Google, in part because most prefer to search in Zawgyi.

On Facebook, there is an abundance of Myanmar language content that can be searched in

either Zawgyi or Unicode using the app. This shows that Myanmar language participants,
especially users of Zawgyi, choose Facebook at least in part, because it facilitates information
seeking. When it comes to internet searching, Facebook is the de facto Google of Myanmar.

3
Zawgyi is a widely used font system in Myanmar that does not conform to international Unicode
standards.

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 What is a fake account anyway?

Facebook typically demands that users use their real identity on their platform. But there is
more to social networking than connection with friends and family on Facebook in Myanmar.
Sometimes, Facebook functions as a micro-blogging platform like Tumblr, while other times
people form digital micro-communities on Facebook as if it is Reddit. In this context, we
explore what our participants think of profiles and accounts and how much they value them.

#Profiles - Because surfing and entertainment takes precedence over social connection,
sometimes users do not need to have real profiles to present to other users. Sometimes, a
dummy profile is just enough to browse Facebook’s world of content; a pen-name account
can be more safely used for social and political expression. While some users will have only
one real profile, which (s)he might use for both social connection and “leisure reading” on
Facebook, others might go to great lengths to create multiple profiles-- one for social use and
one for surfing and other purposes.

Using a real or different identity on Facebook is completely dependent on users’ preferences.

The research team did not find any one defining factor to explain why some choose to be
more anonymous than others. For example, people may:

• curate one profile only to build up a personal branding or a digital CV;

• create a pen name profile to read and write personal blogs under different names;
• use different profiles under their real name to connect with different social circles: game,
work, family etc.;
• have multiple accounts to deal with multiple romantic partners; or
• not use their real identity simply for introversion or to avoid online harassment and protect
privacy.

Other reasons why people choose not to use real names or photos on their profile include:

• People of very low internet literacy are not aware that real names should be used;
• Others are using fake names and they follow the trend; or
• An avatar name sounds much better or is what they always wanted to be called (i.e.
creating a new virtual identity to fulfill a personal fantasy).

In many focus groups, participants proudly expressed how many accounts they had; it is
considered normal to have more than one social media profile on the same platform. For most
ordinary users, having a different identity online does not always imply malicious intent.
However, it is important to note that participants did mention their experiences with and
awareness of fake profiles with malicious intentions and unverifiable identities.

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#Accounts - Many participants reported that a few years back, they did not know how to
sign up for a Facebook account because it required Gmail. The majority of the participants
have already abandoned their first ever Facebook account for any one of the three reasons:
because they lost it; they do not like it anymore; or they worry that somebody else has access
to it (i.e. those opened by mobile shops).

For young women users, it is most common for a new account to be opened because of a
forgotten password; young men commonly opened new accounts just because they can. Users
of both genders sometimes abandoned an account for personal reasons, for instance,
following a break up with a romantic partner.

Those who lose access to their Facebook account (forgetting passwords and having no reset
options) expressed their frustration about not being able to take down the account and its
content. Women participants mentioned that, being unable to deactivate their account, they
kept reporting their old account from a new one hoping that Facebook would take it down --
often, with little success.

For quite a number of participants, Facebook accounts are dispensable. The less refined a
person’s Facebook account is in terms of connections and a curated News Feed (either due to
lack of skills or due to disinterest), the less worried they are about losing their account and
opening a new one. Conversely, the more digitally savvy a person is, the more protective they
are of their passwords and their account ownership. Among participants who fit the former
category, many mentioned they rarely recall their password; once they log out, they will not
be sure of how to log in again.

For some, changing to a new phone means creating a new Facebook account -- simply for the
lack of skills in logging back in to an existing account just out of disinterest in going through
the process. Some users entrust their passwords to others around them (such as friends and
family) simply because they believe others can keep it better than they do. This suggests that
safekeeping digital profiles does not represent a significant concern for most people in their
day-to-day lives.

However, this does not mean digital privacy is completely unconcerning. Participants
worried that other people might be able to log in and look at their accounts; these concerns
were most acute for those who feel they lack digital skills.

Facebook: can't live with it, can't live without it?

Without prompt, participants sometimes expressed their self-assessment of behaviour on

social media as a developmental process, which they described as “maturity”. Many

23 of 41
participants were able to reflect on how their behaviour had shifted as they used social media
for longer periods. In the process, they also projected expectations about how others should
also behave online, an expectation which resonated from their own developed behaviour.

We did not ask explicit questions about what people think of hate-speech on social media,
given how little time for trust-building we had in each focus group. Nevertheless, the
participants discussed the issue with more openness than we anticipated and showed
perspectives that we did not expect. With the exception of a few, participants did not mention
hate-speech but referred to such contents as “​ ငင ဆ/ ​ngyinnso (​ ​disagreement)”,
“​ ဒ သထက/dawsahtwat (anger)” and “​ရန ဖစ/, raan hpy (fighting)”, all of which they regard as
having a negative impact on their mood.4 Intermittently5 barraged by such emotive
expressions, participants mentioned their subconscious gradual detachment from the
pseudo-reality constructed on Facebook, a form of detachment which they also partly
associated to their ‘maturity on social media’. Participants also mentioned the frequent
occurrence of “obvious hoaxes” and “ridiculous news”, which some choose to sarcastically
engage while others ignore. As this content contradicted our participants’ perceived
usefulness of access to information mentioned in the previous section, we will use the simple
umbrella terms ‘negative content’ and ‘trash content’ in this section to refer to them.

#MaturityorFatigue? - “​ရငက က/ring kyet (mature)” was a phrase and topic that
appeared in many focus groups in reference to becoming less and less active in posting
personal details. Participants noted that they have become less expressive of private matters
or feelings than before as they have matured in their social media use.

Some explained this as behaviour change stemming from having gained better understanding
about the online world. As their digital savvy increased, they felt ashamed of what they
posted in the past. This change in awareness differs from digital literacy in that it describes
and evaluates ​behaviour not skills. It also differs from ethics in that maturity sets self-realised
behaviour change in a larger context and situates it in a developmental process. Maturity is
neither literacy nor ethics but it seems to be related to both.

Participants also tend to see people who post everything as immature or “annoying”. For
example, those in Taunggyi talked about how they have become overstimulated and
gradually habituated to the same social media behaviours from their friends. Hpa-an
participants expressed that they also find it strange when people post about trivial personal
details, since other friends on their newsfeed are no longer posting in this way. Many users
expect their Facebook friends to be more mature and self-editing, just as they themselves care

4
As such, when we use the word ‘hate-speech’ in this report, it is only our interpretation, not participants’
language.
5
Some participants recounted certain period in the past, when hate-speech is more abundant than in other times,
for example late 2017.

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less about getting attention on their posts in the form of “social obligatory likes”, reactions,
and comments.

က န ဟ အရငတန က selfie ဆတ ဝ သန ပ တ ။ ထမင စ နရငလည ထမင စ နတပ

selfie ဆလကရမ။ န ကပင က တ တ ဖည ဖည န အသ သလ ထငပ တယ။ [...]

အရငတန ကဆရင သငယခ င ဘယ ရ က နလည မသဘ ။ ဒ ပမယ သအ မတမ ဒပကဒပပ

န ကတစရ သ လည “ဒ န ခ လ ၊ အသည လ တ ပ ပ ဦ ” ဒလပ ဖစ နမယဆရင တ
မ ကည ဖစ တ ဘ ။ င င လ တယ ပ န ။ [...]

နတင ဒအ က င အရ တ က ပ ထပခ ထပခ တင နတ ဆ တ ဖစ ငမယဆ

မ ကညခ င တ ဘ ပ ။ ခ တ လတ တ စသကတယ၊ အ က င တစခက အဓပ ယမရပ
ကယဖန ထမ သ တယလပ ခစ ရတယ။

I used to like selfie so much. I would take selfies all the time, even when
I’m eating I would take selfies. Then I got tired with selfie. [...]

In the past, I would be interested in my friends’ posts about what they

were doing or where they were. But if they keep posting about the same
thing every time they go somewhere, for example saying things like “do I
look good today?” I feel jaded. [...]

If it’s the same thing again and again, I don’t want to look at them if
possible. I like beautiful things, but if they don’t make sense to me or I
cannot relate to, I feel it just slows down my phone.

- peri-urban youth group (man), Taunggyi

This type of maturity may not be fully normative: while it is difficult to do a correlation of
this phenomenon to different factors such as digital literacy, digital age, socio-economic
background, exposure to certain contents, new platform features6, or even the emergence of
other applications, it appears that some mixture of factors does determine the degree to which
users self-edit. While it may not be related to participants’ age, it is perhaps more to do with
how long they have been using Facebook. Perhaps, it is also related to how users selectively
or non-selective befriend others on social media, which determines the degree to which one is
exposed to online-only behaviours of others, whom they may not know in real life, and
therefore, making themselves more detached from behaviours to which they cannot relate.
Thus, one focus group from urban Taunggyi with a slightly more tech savvy group of middle
class participants, who selectively add friends on Facebook, answered that their engagement
on social media contents has not seen any shift.

6
For example My Stories/My Day

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 အရငတန က like​ လပတယ။ ဖန အသစကငထ တ Facebook​ မ Like​ လပတယ။
ဘ တ တကလ မလဆ ပ တ ပ ။ အခ န ကပင က တ င င လ တယ။
မလပ ဖစ တ ဘ ။

I used to like [everything] on Facebook as I had a new phone. Also I was

curious what would come up on my NewsFeed. But later these days, I feel
jaded. I no longer give “likes”.

- 52 years old broker (woman), peri-urban Taunggyi

It may also be that this self-editing behaviour constitutes a type of identity projection, one
which emphasises aloofness or independence from social expectations. For instance, many
participants noted that the juxtaposition of online and offline personalities is jarring, with
many trying to present a certain face to the world in order to gain attention or impress others.
Such attention seeking behaviour was seen by participants as being too “​အ ပ ယဆန ​/
a-po-yan-san (superficial)”. When participants were asked questions about the ethics of what
people should or should not do on Facebook, they answered, among many other things, that
posting too much about your every trivial detail is not ethical. As such, it may be that this
behaviour is associated with materialism, consumerism, or boasting, which carries with it
cultural and moral connotations for many in Myanmar. By being aloof or not sharing too
many personal details, one ethically expresses perceived values of a good person on social
media.

Whatever the cause, the shift toward “maturity” was present in every focus group discussion.

#Trash&Negativity ​- Given the prevalence of trash content, and how seemingly

impossible it is to avoid it, some participants told us that they have become more indifferent
towards emotive, negative, false, or misleading content. Whereas in the past, many would
have written a response countering such content, now they just ignore it, without bothering to
report or even hide it. If trash content is repeatedly coming from the same person, participants
did say they would unfollow or unfriend the offender.

As people are more and more exposed, they are gradually developing immunity to online
negativity. Many users also expressed a degree of ‘hate speech and fake news fatigue’, which
also means that they no longer get absorbed into discussions and debates around such content
but rather, developed their own ways of coping with it. The less curated and refined a social
media account is, i.e. because the user adds random people as friends, or never fine-tune their
newsfeed, the more likely it is that users will be exposed to trash content. Such group of users
would be more likely to say that they are too frustrated with using Facebook.

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The more users are exposed to trash content, people seem to accept these as part of reality.
Participants noted that, while they used to comment on trash content in the past as a means of
letting other people know that those are problematic, now they realised that it was not going
to make a difference, and that by doing so, their actions were inadvertently boosting such
trash posts’ engagement and reach.

ဖဆသ (၁) - အခ န ကပင ဘ ကမ comment​ မ ပ တ တ ။ အ လ မစက တ ဘ ။ သတက

မ က ပ သလ ဖစ နတယ။ အရငတန က သတ တစခန ဆရင က န ဆယခန ပနဆ ဖစတယ။
န ကပင က ရင မဆ တ ပ ဘ ။ ဘ လလဆ တ အဒ သသရ က ပလည နတယ။ သကဆရင
က န က ပနဆမယ လဆယ ယ ကက ကည ပ မဆ တ ဘ ။ [...] င မဆလည သမ တဆမ ပ
ဆ ပ ပစထ လကတယ။

Respondent (1) - Later these days, I no longer comment [on public

places]. And I no longer pay attention. It’s like I was encouraging them.
In the past, if they argued [with swearing words] at my comment once, I
would respond with ten comments. But later on, I no longer argued back.
Because this is causing a vicious circle. I just thought of the potential 10
people who will swear back at my comment. [...] I just ignored and
thought if I don’t argue/swear, other people will do it anyway.

ဖဆသ (၂) - အခ န ကပင က တ Fake page​ တ မ လ တယ။ အခ သတက attention

မ ပ တ ဘ ။ သတဆမ comment​ တဆကရ နမ သတ ဆကလပ နမ ပ လ။ က န တက

သတက neglect​ လပထ မ သတရပသ မ လ။ Report​ ထလည ဘ မ မထ ခ တ ဆ တ ။

Respondent (2) - Later these days, there are tons of fake pages [on
Facebook]. I no longer gave attention to them [no longer countered
them]. Because as long as they receive comments, they will keep going. So
they would only stop if we neglect them. Reporting these pages to
Facebook does not make any difference either.

- peri-urban youth group (man), Yangon

Facebook​ မ like ​ ပ တ က တ အရငကဆရင သငယခ င တ တငလ တ ပ ဖစတယ။

အခက တ ကယတကယ က ကမ ပ တယ။ အ န တ မ ဖစ တ ဘ ပ ။ င တကယ က ကမ
ပ မယ ပ ။ [...] အရငက social media​ သ တ ခ နမ conflict​ မရဘ ။ Fake news​ မရ တ

simple​ ဖစတယ ပ ။ အခ င ခ င ပ လ တပ တငတယ။ အခ န ကပင သ လ စအတင မ

ဆ ဝ လ တယ။ Fake page ​ တ Fake account​ တ မ လ တယ။ န က ပ ကယနသတ
သ တရ အ မင တကလည ပ င လလ တယ။ ရပတညခ က တကအစ ပ င လလ တယ။

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 အ ပ လကတ မ မ ဖစ စခ ငဘ ။ သမ နတ လည ဖစ ငတယ လ။ ဒ က င
အရငကဆရင တ ဒ သတ စတခစ ခ ကပဆ ပ neglect​ လပထ လ ရတယ လ။ ဒ ပမ like
ပ လကရင အ ပ သလ ဖစမ ဆလ မ ပ တ ဘ ။ အ မန တတ အ င လက ငထ ရတယ။

I used to like friends’ posts on Facebook. But now I only give likes to posts
that I really like. I no longer feel obliged to give like, but only when I
actually like it. [...] When I was using Facebook in the past, there were no
conflicts. It was simple without Fake News. We just upload photos. It
become worse in the past 3-4 years. Fake pages and fake accounts have
increased. And also people I knew changed their opinions and their stance
[on political views]. So I don’t want to endorse them [by liking their posts].
They could be wrong. In the past, I could just neglect this by recognizing
that it was just their feelings. But these days, if I give like, I will be
supporting their view. I had to practice myself from being socially obliged.

- 50 years old journalist (woman), Taunggyi

Despite being aware of such abundant negativity, participants still found themselves unable
to give up using the social platform. As such, participants were frustrated by the online
experience, and many worked to detach themselves, at least to some extent, from the
pseudo-reality of the platform. After all, participants seemed to blame the negative
consequences of the internet [Facebook] on individual actors, rather than on the platform
itself. In particular, participants felt that a person’s critical thinking ability and self control
were central to their experience of the internet -- for good or for ill.

When asked whether they think the internet has a net positive or negative
impact on society, rather than giving a definite answer, most participants
had a similar comment that “a person who cannot use the platform for
good will have negative effects but that if you make good use of the
internet and technology, it will be beneficial for you.”

Facebook gives us access to information at our fingertips;

how much of it do we trust?

Phandeeyar engages regularly in activities designed to build digital literacy and fight against
disinformation on social media. As such, it is critical for us to understand the way people
consume information through the internet on their mobile phones. Sometimes, we presume in
our work that ordinary users do not verify information enough or that a lack of digital skills
or mobile savvy is the direct result of the lack of information literacy. Through this research
we put our assumptions to test in order to better understand how people receive and perceive
the barrage of information they see everyday on Facebook.

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#FacebookLeisure ​- Facebook “reading/watching”, “learning”, or “collecting
knowledge” (in participants’ terms) is a stronger pull to Facebook than social networking, be
it for learning or entertainment. Facebook was most participants’ preferred place for leisure
reading/watching, due in large part to the availability of Myanmar content that participants,
both youth and adults, referred to as “knowledge” or “something to learn”. Popular reading
topics included philosophy, inspiration, quotes, comedy, other people’s blogs, religious
information, and celebrity news. Quality of content is still the most important aspect of a
Facebook post: the source (page/profile) and number of likes matter less than the actual
content.

When it comes to active versus passive newsfeed scrolling, it is difficult to reach a conclusive
explanation of general habits. Participants demonstrated different reading behaviours based
on their interest and level of skill. For example, some participants who curate their own
newsfeed, by searching for new content or unfollowing uninterested pages/people, may have
developed skills for content evaluation. Nevertheless, it is not possible to assume that users
who do not actively curate their newsfeed are incapable of discerning fake content:
sometimes they knowingly look at such fake content just for their amusement.

#Facebook&News ​- Though participants cited Facebook as an important platform, or

sometimes even as the only source of news updates, participants knew and mentioned, even
without prompts, that what they see on Facebook cannot be trusted completely uncritically.
The level of scepticism expressed varied depending on the participants, regardless of their
background or gender

Participants in this study also claimed to obtain their news updates from local news groups or
groups made up of specific types of communities (i.e. religious, civil society, etc.).
Participant claimed that sometimes they were frustrated when different news pages upload
versions of the same news which featured inconsistencies among them, noting that this made
them confused about what is to trust. As a result, many participants felt that news posted by
trusted community members was more reliable than news posted to pages ostensibly
dedicated to keeping people in the know.

Though participants recognise that they cannot blindly trust online news, many were unable
to identify verification methods. Some participants commented that their evaluation methods
were largely dependent on the content, such as content analysis or critical analysis, rather
than verification cues method, such as checking the sources (page/account), dates, authors,
or references -- options many were not aware of. Many participants also said that the most
common way of confirming the validity of a content is to read the comments and see what
people are already saying; as such, many users appear to limit their critical reflection on
content validity to the information presented by other users.

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 It is hard to gauge whether users have active or passive news consumption
habits on Facebook. It is even difficult to define who’s a news reader and
who’s not, when information is pushed in to our daily surfing, rather than
by choice Perhaps it is an area that needs additional attention: an
ethnographic study of news reading behaviour on mobile phone could be
hugely informative.

While most participants said that they received their news updates primarily from Facebook,
others expressed their frustration with not having other choice but to source information from
Facebook, and in the process, they risk being exposed to low-quality or misleading news.

Conclusions - ​We all agree that Facebook is an important digital platform in Myanmar, and
that its impact extends to offline social dynamics. However, “Facebook is the internet of
Myanmar” over simplifies complex social dynamics, and ignores the subtle ways people
make meaning out of digital world. Facebook is the internet for many in that its function goes
beyond virtual socialization: it is the key to accessing information, for many, seemingly the
ONLY way.

အရငတန က သပ ပ မသ ကဘ ။ [...] သပ ပ ဗဟသတ မရ ကဘ ။ အ မငမက ယသ ဘ ။

လနည စပသ ကတယ။ အငတ နကဆင တမ ပ သ ရတယ။ အခ န ကပင က ဖန တန အလယတက
သ လရ သ က င အ မငက ယသ ပ။ လတင သ လ င ပ။ ဖန ကဒက အလယတကရ န ပ။

In the past, not everyone can use [Facebook]. We had less access to
knowledge. Our views were not very open [about the world]. Only a small
section of the people use it and we had to use it in internet cafes. Now these
days it’s so easy to use with phones and our views are now more broad.
Everybody can access. Sim cards can be easily bought.

- 24 years old user (woman) (Yangon)

There is clearly a trend that people are gradually getting frustrated and habituated to --
accepting as part of the reality -- the negativity disagreement on Facebook. But can we really
give up Facebook or figure out a way to avoid seeing such content on our Newsfeed? As one
Muslim participant from Yangon put it, “Facebook is like the world to me,” and yet she
understood Facebook was doing more harm than good for her community. Meanwhile many
others tried to explain this situation as the causality of individuals’ behaviours rather than the
platform’s existence: i.e. if you use it for your own good, then it is a good thing and vice
versa. For others, it is the platform’s unrestrictive nature that ‘anyone’ could join to use and
abuse and that results in exposure to a dangerous side of the world, one they may not
otherwise encounter in their offline social bubble.

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 လကရအ ခ နမ ဆ ဆ က မ တယ။ အရငကဆ လအနည စပ သ တယ။ အခက တ ဖန တန
လတင သ တ ဆ က ပမ လ တယ။ စတ ပလ စတယ။ လတင သ င တ တခ က တ
စတအ န ကယက ပ ဖ သ လ တ မ တယ။ Account​ တ အမ က သ ပ တကခကခ ငတယ
ဆရင တ င ဖန နပ တ တန ဖင ပ တကခကတယ။ အလယတကဖငလရ န တ ဆ က မ တယ။

Right now it’s more bad effects than good benefits. In the past only a small
portion of people use it. But now as everybody can use it with their
phones, it has more negative effects. It’s frustrating. As literally anyone is
there, some people are just there to annoy other people. It’s so easy if
someone wants to attack or harass you with so many accounts, you can
just do it by opening accounts with phone numbers. The fact that it is
easier to open accounts could give more negative consequences.

- 39 years old shop owner (man), Yangon

Facebook is also the most popular blogging platform for self-expression, public sphere and
surfing in such contents. We also learnt that many users in Myanmar disregard Facebook’s
requirement for true-identity profile. Facebook serves many functions, more than merely
connecting with friends and family, and therefore self-identification is not necessary. As
such, non-real identity accounts can be either simply ordinary or malicious. For this open and
equal access nature, this is when the institution is no longer capable of doing the quality
evaluation of all the information it hosts on its platform, it is up to users to become active
evaluator of information they are exposed to everyday.

There is no such answer to ‘is Facebook net good or bad for Myanmar?’. We conclude this
section with a table juxtaposing positive and negative aspects of the impact Facebook in
Myanmar as perceived by our participants.

#Facebook - GOOD & BAD

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Fake accounts (malicious accounts) Good connection with friends over distance.

Opportunity to better represent one’s region as

Hate-speech. Misleading, attacking or well as learn about others. Attract more
insulting one’s religion. interest and visit from people across the
country to one’s region.

More bad news in general on Facebook. Finding sources of inspiration.

Misinformation and disinformation. Unethical Access to information and “knowledge”.

media. Media tabloid / sensationalism. High Ability to search information (in Myanmar or
amount of trash posts (spam) online. local language)

Perception that online public sphere Better civil engagement with the Government
negatively impacts politics. (said by civil society)

Perception that time spent using social media

Helps business and professional life.
is time wasted.
Opinionating too much about public topics
and figures without actually knowing or
Availability of leisure reading, entertainment,
reading the details (in comments). Too much
self-learning and DIY.
opinions about celebrities’ lifestyle or
celebrity shaming.

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Safe Internet

Digital Skills: Where should you learn it or should you

bother?

Phandeeyar have struggled over the years to understand how people develop their digital
skills -- an insight which would enable better programme design. As such, we asked users to
explain how they learned their digital skills, but in the process, we came to discern how much
they felt digital skills were important to them. We also discussed how participants felt about
having (or not having) password locks on their phones. Participants saw privacy not in the
western notion of individual data but understood it instead as the protection of one’s own
secrets within social groups.

#DigitalSkills - None of the research participants had ever received proper digital skills
training. The mobile shops that help users to open accounts do not teach them how to use
their phones, nor do users return to these shops to ask specific questions. Every participant
we asked either learned their skills from their friends or family members; most of their skills
were acquired by self-directed learning or through trial and error.

Not all participants believed digital skills were particularly important. The same users who
see profiles as disposable, sometimes do not bother to learn phone/account settings out of
disinterest. These users were more likely to be among older participants. The lack of digital
skills can also relate to the lack of concern in protecting current accounts, i.e. opening a new
account would be a lot less work and worry. This has nothing to do with digital literacy or
access, but rather, appears dependent on a person’s own regard or interest.

There seemed to be general consensus that Myanmar language on phone and Facebook
settings and interface is poor quality in terms of intelligibility. Participants claimed that they
are now very accustomed to seeing English words on their devices, and that they understand
these words better than their Myanmar counterparts which sometimes have a different
meaning to the English word they displace.. In fact, several participants remarked that it is
actually annoying or “lame” to use devices in Myanmar language. In part, this is also due to
the issue of Zawgyi and Unicode font rendering on android mobile systems (e.g. system font
is in Zawgyi and system setting language is written in Unicode), which makes words appear
broken and reinforces the disbelief about workability of Myanmar language settings..

#SecuritySettings - Screen lock passwords were discussed as a matter of privacy in a

phone sharing context, rather than as a means of protecting one’s data— i.e. privacy to more
immediate persons, such as family or friends, rather than to thieves.

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There appears to be a roughly equal divide between people who think they should or should
not use a phone lock, pin-code, or pattern. Many users have not thought about the risks, or do
not know how to create a password, but these are not the only reasons. Even when users
recognise the danger to personal data if a phone is lost or stolen, many still opt to keep their
phone open because:

• They share their phone with other family members;

• Others might think that a password means they have low transparency with other family
members or have things to hide;
• They find signing into phone each time is an unnecessary process.

In fact, not being aware of the 'emergency call' function and how to make use of it,
participants also stressed the downside of using in the context of emergency. They would
rather prefer that their phone be available to use in events of accident or medical emergency
by other people, which many view as a more important thing than protecting privacy.

ဖန မ password​ မခထ ဘ ။ Password​ ထ တ ပလ။ ညမအထငက တ password

ထ လည memory strick​ ယလကရင ကယရ photo​ တ data​ တ ရသ မ ပ ဘ မ မထ လ
မထ တ ။

No, I don’t use password on my phone. It’s annoying. I think even if I have
a password, they will still get my photos and data [if stolen]. So it doesn’t
make a difference

- 21 years old factory worker (woman), Hlaing Thar Yar

Only a few participants-- particularly those with a civil society background, or with higher
digital literacy skills-- emphasised that people should use a password lock on their phones to
protect their personal data.

A significant proportion of participants have weak passwords and safeguarding practices for
their social accounts. For example, some users recorded their passwords; entrusted other
people to remember their passwords; or kept guessable passwords such as their name or
birthday. Participants with low digital literacy skills, who do not have email accounts and do
not know how to reset a password, are very often still using passwords that their friends,
family members, or phone shops helped set up. Some users in this same group have already
forgotten their password, though still logged in, and they would lose their current account
once logged out.

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Factors influencing the level of digital skills
Gender, age, social status (education, profession, wealth) and exposure are the main factors,
which seem to influence digital competency (knowledge, skill, attitude and practice). Based
on our research, one’s level of digital skill seems to mainly depend on:

● age (older <———> younger)

● gender (female <———> male)

● exposure to IT and electronic products (varying based on wealth status, geolocation,

values and attitudes in family, and peer influence, etc.)

● education, work and income level (low education / unskilled labourers <———>
skilled blue and white collar employees/professionals and/or business operators)

● personal interest (less interested in technology <———> highly interested in

technology)

People in the left-hand-side of the spectrum would have relatively very less knowledge in
managing their mobile phones.

In addition, individuals keep family members and friends as go-to resource persons for
questions or solutions. Possible persons/service who provide skills include:

1. Peers (relatively more tech savvy individuals; those who have free and/or 24/7 access to
WiFi or surf the internet a lot),

2. Mobile phone shops (but they seem to have varying levels of capacity but most of them
seem to have been not properly trained).

Most common ways of learning include:

• self-learning by trial and error;
• asking family members (younger family members are better with digital skills), or
involving in social digital activity with peers:

• Sitting down and discussing mobile phones activities together in a social group, for
example sharing of applications or files through apps such as Zapya.

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 Facebook or Fakebook: should we only post when we are
happy?

For our participants, being ethical is partly synonymous with being considerate. We asked
participants to help us understand what ethical behaviour looks like in practice, according to
their definition. We also asked participants what they would rather not see on social media. In
particular, participants called out online shaming (of mostly celebrities).

#DigitalSocialSphere - It seemed that participants are becoming increasingly aware that

their actions leave digital footprints others can see. Within the ethical question, some
participants evaluate posting, reacting and commenting in terms of the benefits for others and
building a good image of themselves. For example, a few participants discussed that they
would only post positive things or reflections of themselves so as not to bring their negativity
online to others. Therefore, quite a number of participants seem to agree that very critical
opinions, emotive content, or things that make others sad or upset should not be posted. This
is also related to posting shallow personal updates, as discussed in the maturity section above.
Considered partly as an issue of ethical social behaviour, participants said that they find
repeated occurrence of shallow or too personal posts in their newsfeed annoying, and
therefore, doing so would be inconsiderate of others.

Posting of “inconsiderate” items is not limited to personal things. It includes

any online content that would potentially upset others. One illustrative
example that participants said they commonly found annoying are the prank
videos that trick a person to watch and unexpectedly disturbing or
pornographic image appears in the middle of the video. Another example is
a kind of post that, when clicked see more, occupied the mobile screen with
characters and took too long to scroll to the end.

More importantly, there are a few things that participants strongly think should not be part of
social media. Many of them, are things that participants found frustrating-- in part because
they felt overexposed to them:

• Accidents photos [gore or graphic violence], which some participants found it hard to avoid
and deemed unnecessary to be updated with every crime events or accidents. They
mentioned that seeing such posts ruin their mood offline;
• Nudity and pornography was the second most mentioned unethical sharing in online space.
• Participants also expressed their frustration of the abundance of sensationalism, online
shaming, and cyberbullying of celebrity or online personalities, saying that people are too
opinionated on others’ lifestyle.
• Participants think people should not write insults on religion or expressions loaded with
vulgar, aggressive, or harsh words.

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 ပသ န တစခခ ဖစရင Facebook​ ပ ရ ကသ မလ ။ က က နရတယ။
လတလပမ တ ပ ကဆ သ တယ။ န ကတခက သတင တက အခ နန တစ ပ ည သ နရ တ
အက ရတယလ ထငတယ။ အ က င ဆ ပ ။ တစခ တစ လ က တ ရငလည က တက ပ သတ
သတင တ ညဘကလမ ကယဖတမရင ကယန တ မဆငဘ ။ ဒ ပမ စတမ က င ဘ ။ အလ ညမ
အပမ ပ ဘ က ကတယ ပ ။

If something bad were to happen outside, I’m afraid it could automatically

on Facebook. [We] lost freedom [privacy] [outside]. I think Facebook is
useful because we get news updates right away. For good or bad. But
sometimes, if I come across and read news like car accidents [on Facebook]
at night, I feel really bad even if it’s not related to me. In those kinds of
nights, I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid.

- 32 years old nursery teacher (woman), Yangon

#NegativePerception ​- Participants often mentioned that they had concerns about the
side effects of consuming digital technology, particularly from the perspective of offline
self-control. Further, mobile addiction, they felt, may cause damage to the eyes and waste
time and money. While younger people expressed these concerns about themselves, in Kalay,
adults (employees at a local clinic) talked about how using mobile phones at work is frowned
upon by their employer and that it is a form of slacking. The feeling of shame around
“excessive” or non-productive internet use was especially acute in the presence of parents,
seniors, or employers. Participants from Kalay even mentioned that their parents think mobile
phone “addiction” is making them lazy.

Game မကစ ခင ဘ လ။ အကနလ က အလပထမ ဖန မသ ခင ဘ ။ ပထမက Game ဆ တ

ခနခန အဆခရလ မ ဆ က တ ဘ ။ အက ငစ ရတပ ကတယ။ ဥပမ က လ တစ ယ ကက
ဖန ဆ နတအခ န တစခခခင ကည။ မလပခ ငဘ ။ လပရင တ င
ဆ င ဆ င အ င အ ငန သ တ ။ ကယဖန သ နလည အလပ ပ ။
တစ ယ က ယ ကကလ ခင ရင စတကသက အ င ဖစတယ။ က န တ တဆလည ဖန က ငန
ခ ကခ င မထတ တရတယ အလပရငကခင ရင တ င။ ဇ တလမ ကည နတအခ န
အလပ ပ လ ရင တ အဆငမ ပ တ ဘ ။

[Our employers won’t] let us play video games. At work, everyone is

forbidden from using phones. At first, we played mobile games a lot, and
we got scolded a lot, so we stopped playing. It's a bad habit and morals.
For example, when a kid is playing mobile phone, he/she doesn’t want to
help if [parents] ask them to help. They become grumpy if they have to get
up. I’m the same while I’m using mobile. If someone orders me to do
something, I could get frustrated. Even for us, we don’t get up immediately

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 when our employer ask something. It’s inconvenient while I’m watching
movies.

- 42 years old Clinic Security Guard (man), Kalay

Conclusions - ​Beyond the civil society’s understanding of hate-speech, where hate-speech is

sometimes politicized within the framework of freedom of speech, participants simply
pointed out their desire for more positive and less negative content. In particular, they want to
see less content that annoys them on daily scale. However, on a more serious note, it points to
the possibility that persistence of certain types of emotive content will have negative
psychological impact on users in the long term. In light of this understanding, when we
discuss community standards for building safer and healthier online space, civil society
should rethink the way they approach hate-speech to include the perspective of psychological
well-being.

အခက တ F
​ acebook သ ရမ က ကသ တ အခ န တ ရတယ။ ​Facebook သ ရမ
အ က ကဆ က ဘ သ ရ ပဋပက ဖစတ အခ န လင သ ရမ အ က ကဆ ဖစခတယ။
တစဦ န တစဦ အ ကတအနယ ဆ နတ ပ နတ မငရ တ သတင တက အခ နန
သခ င သ လည အစတက အ န က ရ က သ တယ။ အလ န တဆရင ​Facebook
မဖငရ တ ဘ ။ သ ရမ က ကတရကဆ အလ နမ ဖစခဖ တယ။

There were times I was too scared of using Facebook. The time I was most
afraid of going online [Facebook] was when there were religious conflicts.
Although I wanted to get updated on the news of what was going on, I got
distracted by the cursing among one another. In those days, I was scared to
open Facebook. Those were the days of being too scared of using Facebook.

- 25 years old civil society leader (woman), Yangon

Lack of digital skills is also not necessarily the result of lack of access. Participants had
varying attitude when it comes to learning digital skills. A wider scale sensitization of why
digital skills are important and how they will benefit users in everyday settings should be
included in long term intervention plans.

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Mobile and Women
In our efforts to bridge the digital divide, it is important we understand that women have
different experiences online -- experiences that sometimes hinder them from utilising the full
potential of digital technology. According to Facebook Audience Insights, approximately 65
percent of Facebook accounts in Myanmar belong to men, and only 35 to women. In many
peri-urban and rural areas, digital skills are still seen as ‘male skills’. The research team
commonly heard women saying they would ask their male counterparts to help with settings
or passwords on their phones; men rarely asked women for help. Women were more likely to
say they entrust their passwords to their other female friends or siblings.

When it comes to negative view of the social media, women are traditionally more likely to
be associated more with negative effects of the digital technology. For example, women from
families with lower socio-economic standing sometimes need permission from parents to use
smart phones and social media because social media is seen as corrupting girls into bad
habits, which is less the case for boys. This sometimes results in women hiding their real
identity on Facebook, in an effort to avoid their use being discovered by family. This
behaviour was especially common in peri-urban community FGDs, where all participants
mentioned Facebook as a method of courting. Women using Facebook were seen as “looking
for a husband”, and this made younger women participants embarrassed to admit when and
how they used it -- particularly when their older family members were present.

Is digital harassment the new wolf whistle?

#OnlineHarassment ​is the biggest barrier that prevents women from fully navigating
digital space. Woman users on Facebook sometimes use an avatar rather than their real name
or photo, to avoid harassment or abuse -- particularly, abuse features a digital manipulation of
their pictures. Some women showed frustration that they did not know how to use settings to
prevent this harassment.

When it comes to photo abuse, the major concern is the impersonation on Facebook,
compounded by their feeling of helplessness in not knowing reporting or other risk-mitigating
settings. The primary means of coping with targeted harassment is to abandon old Facebook
accounts or to avoid uploading real photos.

အရငကဆ က နမ Facebook​ က တစ နကန ထငသ တယ ပ ။ ဟကခရတ လည ရတယ။ က နမ

ပသ ပ ဖငထ တ account​ တလည ရတယ ပ ။ န ကက နမပန တ ခ န မညန

သ တ လည ရတယ။ အလမ အရမ စတညစတယ။ က နမ သငယခ င တက မ လ တယ နင account

ဘယနစခ တ င သ တ လ ပ ။ က နမ မဟတဘ လ။ န က ပ က နမ ပန account​ ဝငလ တယ။

ဒ နငဘလ ပ ။ အလမ ဆ အရမ စတညစတယ။ အလမ တ လက ပ ပ နရတ ပငပက

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 အရမ ထခကတယ။ န ကပင က နမ သတန စက သ ပ တယ။ အရမ စ ရမတယ။ report ထတယ။
န ကဆ သ သ ထ တ account​ က report​ ထတယ။ ဒ ပမ မက ဘ ။

I used to use Facebook the whole day in the past. I’ve also experienced my
account being hacked. There were also accounts that were using my photos
[opened by other people]. There are also accounts with a different name that
were using my photos. These kinds of things really frustrate me. My friends
came and asked me: “How many accounts do you have?”. Then I said,
“Those were not mine”. And they showed me accounts with my photos. Was it
also me? That was very frustrating. I always had to explain [to them] that
those were not mine. It really hurt my image outside. Later on, I went and
messaged those accounts. I got really worried and reported them. I kept
reporting the last account. Still not taken down.

- 22 years old college student (woman), Taunggyi

Another common form of harassment is repeated calling or messaging over the phone, when
numbers have been taken from social media account or traded/shared by men among
themselves. If women lack digital skills for coping, for instance, by blocking numbers,
women are deterred from fully expressing themselves online.

အရင account​ ပ ။ ဒ တ င က ကပ။ ဆပငညပဆင က ငမ လ ပ။ က နမန လည တစခ မ မခငဘ ။

သ က နမ account ​က ဝငလ တယ။ သဘယလဝငလ တ မသဘ ။ အဟကခရတယ။ အမက သပကဆ

၂ သန တ င တယ။ အမက လထငတ ကယက ပကဆ တ င တယထငတ တစသန လလကတယ
အမက။ သငယခ င က messenger​ က စ ပတယ က နမ ဘယအခ န ပနမလ ပ ။ အဒ သက
မ က င တပ ပလကတယ။ အဒ န သငယခ င က ဒ င သငယခ င မဟတ တ ဘ ပ ။ အဒ န က
လ တက ပ ပ ပ report​ ထခင ခတယ။ အအခ နတန က တ အ account​ က သငယခ င က
ရနကနဆင တ ရနကနမ ပ ဖ ကရတယ။

It was my old account. That girl was from Taunggyi, from a hair salon. I never
met her outside. She logged in to my account. I didn’t know how she got in.
[My account] got hacked. She asked my home two hundred thousand kyats.
My home thought she was me and sent one hundred thousand. When my
friend sent me a message on the Messenger [of that account], [the hacker]
replied with an obscene photo. Then, my friend realized that it was not me. So
we asked [help from] people from the office and reported that account. We
had to delete that account in Yangon when my friend went to Yangon.

- 18 years old college student (woman), Taunggyi

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Conclusions - ​It is very important to note that women do also face many other forms of
harassment in their digital everyday life, which may not have surfaced during the discussions
due to privacy, trust, and group pressure. Furthermore, harassment was not intended to be a
major focus of this study. Therefore, a further exploration of the experiences of women
vis-a-vis online harassment in their everyday life in Myanmar would be hugely beneficial.

Conclusion
This is the first time that Phandeeyar has ventured out of its usual programme scope, i.e. to
actually comprehend the context in which we operate. As a non-research institution, our
capacity for social study is limited. Better understanding of the users and digital landscape,
not just using numbers, but also social/anthropological insight, gives us a better
understanding of the complex relationship users have with digital technology and enables
more appropriate and effective innovation in both programming and support to communities.
Furthermore, we present the findings to the public, donors, and other organizations so that
they may utilize these insights in their interventions to better benefit internet users for greater
social good in Myanmar. Through this research we understand that there are barriers for
people to make use of the full potential of the internet and that certain groups are at more risk
than the others. We also learned that Myanmar communities develop their own ways of
coping with negativity online, despite a lack of formal trainings and programme support. We
hope that these insights will allow us to challenge our previously held assumptions about the
internet in Myanmar.

Although we acknowledge some of the insights presented in this report would benefit from
further study, we believe it is important to recognize the issues raised by our participants. In
doing so, we hope to spark curiosity for deeper research. There are certain areas we came
across during the research that are out of our boundary of expertise, such as behaviours of
news consumption on mobile phones, forms of harassment and their coping mechanism, and
the various physiological impacts of negative online content on users -- all of which would
benefit from expert attention. Given the speed with which digital communities, their cultures,
and their behaviours evolve, there is definite need for ongoing learning. Most importantly,
these research made clear to Phandeeyar the importance of research-based programme
design, for both immediate interventions and longer-term systemic measures envisioned to
contribute to building a better and safer internet in Myanmar.

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