Powerpoint Slide | Research Brief
Misinformation regarding the COVID-19 crisis among general citizens is one of the biggest challenges that we are tackling in the fight against the global pandemic. While communications materials have been developed quickly to serve national-level needs, we still have a long way to go in deploying an effective communication strategy. In partnership with researchers from the University of Sussex, and University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), BIGD has conducted a rapid qualitative research through telephone interviews and netnography (online research method for understanding social interaction in contemporary digital communications contexts) to develop a nuanced understanding of the different target groups who are at the receiving end of mass communication efforts.
Findings from the study were presented in a webinar titled “Crisis of Communication During COVID-19: A Rapid Research“, presented by Dr Shahaduzzaman, University of Sussex. The study aimed to understand how COVID-19 related information is being received, interpreted and enacted within the everyday life of the recipients, by identifying the prevailing interpretations and common misconceptions regarding COVID-19 messaging and assessing the trust, interest, and clarity in the information among the target groups.
Overall, the findings show that Bangladesh has been plagued by an “Infodemic” caused by excessive, conflicting and unclear information, making effective solutions more difficult to unearth. Starting from a “definitional crisis” in what “stay at home” meant – with definitions varying with the unit of residence, to the impracticality of the concept of “social distancing” in slum areas, and to the perception of these concepts as “administrative orders” rather than life-saving mechanisms, the understanding of the crisis has been blurry from the beginning. The infodemic was exacerbated by the uncritical transfer of global messages without any adjustment to the local audiences, rendering the messaging unclear and confusing for the masses. The researchers also provided a set of recommendations categorized into three groups – national, community and household level but in summary, the pandemic situation requires ‘out of the box’ thinking for optimum communication.
