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The environment consists of natural elements (e.g., wildlife, air, and water) and social elements (e.g., humans and social institutions). While these two elements should be in a state of harmony, t...

Religion has a considerable contribution to the creation of present Bangladesh and Indonesia. Historically, religious communalism is common in these two regions and its presence is visible to date. Like other countries, both countries are moving more toward digitalization with a good number of digital migrants, making the internet a digital public sphere. Like offline society, online is now becoming a place of religious dakwah and contentions as well. Digital space offers both opportunities and challenges for the democratic religious public sphere. This article discusses the similarity and differences of online religious public spheres between Indonesia and Bangladesh. The research was conducted in 2021 observing social media particularly Facebook. This research finds that the online religious public sphere witnesses online piety, religious deliberation, the spread of religious hoaxes, and Islamism. While in Bangladesh, online disinformation leads to religious communalism and offline violence against religious minorities, in Indonesia, the digital public sphere is largely dominated by religious discourses argumentation among Muslims and the rise of post-Islamism. The online public sphere of both countries similarly witnesses the rise of hoaxes, post-truth, and banal religion.

In Bangladesh, the number of cyber-citizens has been skyrocketing since the 2010s. Violence against women is also proliferating along with the presence of Islam in public spheres and discourses. Using thematic analysis, this study analyzes the discourse data collected from Facebook, the dominant social media of Bangladesh. The key aim of the research is to find out the bedrock of Islamic vigilantism and verbal aggressiveness against women in social media. Subsequently, three interlinked themes have been explored: women’s religiosity, women’s attire, and women’s virtue. The findings have shown that men mainly capitalize on these three conventional and stereotyped ideas of popular Islam to conduct vigilantism against women in social media, which is most often accompanied by different types of verbal aggressiveness. Further, this study considering deep-rooted misogyny and patriarchy in Bangladesh society argues that these factors might have contributed to directing online vigilantism against women. As little research has been done in this area, this research study would lead to further researches in this area.

Due to various social advancements, Bangladesh has become more welcoming to digital technologies. Thus, a significant online community is flourishing here. Almost half of the country’s entire population uses the internet. The digital neighborhood is becoming larger the mediated interaction. What we now call online is nothing but a reflection of offline except its physicality. Like other social phenomena, religion and religious discourse is also a part of cyber society. Belief in cyberspace is often dubbed as “cyber-religion”. Debates on religion often harm the opposite group and contend faiths transform peace into communal animosity beyond cyberspace. Thus, society gets heated by hostile collective performances. In contemporary Bangladesh, online piety is an exclusive phenomenon that has considerable importance. By observing the dynamics of online religiosity, this paper focusing more on social media tries to present a concise overview of digital Islam(ism) and the social psychology of online Islamic piety in the context of Bangladesh.

This study analyzed 9,657 pieces of misinformation that originated in 138 countries and fact-checked by 94 organizations. Collected from Poynter Institute’s official website and following a quantitative content analysis method along with descriptive statistical analysis, this research produces some novel insights regarding COVID-19 misinformation. The findings show that India (15.94%), the US (9.74%), Brazil (8.57%), and Spain (8.03%) are the four most misinformation-affected countries. Based on the results, it is presumed that the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation can have a positive association with the COVID-19 situation. Social media (84.94%) produces the highest amount of misinformation, and the internet (90.5%) as a whole is responsible for most of the COVID-19 misinformation. Moreover, Facebook alone produces 66.87% misinformation among all social media platforms. Of all countries, India (18.07%) produced the highest amount of social media misinformation, perhaps thanks to the country’s higher internet penetration rate, increasing social media consumption, and users’ lack of internet literacy. On the other hand, countries like Turkey, the US, Brazil, and the Philippines where either political control over media is intense or political conservatism is apparent, experienced a higher amount of misinformation from mainstream media, political figures, and celebrities. Although the prevalence of misinformation was the highest in March 2020, given the present trends, it may likely to increase slightly in 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed a lot of lives around the world, not only with the virus but also with misinformation. Many researchers have investigated COVID-19 misinformation, but none of them was related to social media users’ diverse responses to different types of COVID-19 misinformation, which could be a timely exploration. To bridge this gap in scholarly literature, the present study based on 11,716 comments from 876 Facebook posts on five COVID-19 misinformation seeks to answer two relevant research questions: (a) How ignorant social media users are about misinformation? (b) How do they react to different types of misinformation? Following a quantitative content analysis method, this study produces a few novel findings. The results show that most of the users trust misinformation (60.88%), and fewer can deny (16.15%) or doubt (13.30%) the claims based on proper reasons. The acceptance of religious misinformation (94.72%) surpassed other types of misinformation. Most of the users react happily (34.50%) to misinformation: the users who accept misinformation are mostly happy (55.02%) because it may satisfy their expectations, and the users who distrust misinformation are mostly angry (44.05%) presuming it may cause harm to people. The chi-square and phi coefficient values show strong positive and significant associations between the themes, levels of ignorance, and reactions to misinformation. Some strengths, limitations, and ethical concerns of this study have also been discussed., social media; ignorance; misinformation; COVID-19; Facebook

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe impact worldwide. Developed countries, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain, had their highly efficient medical infrastructure greatly stressed and suffered from high death tolls. Similarly, Bangladesh, a poverty-stricken South Asian country, is losing its battle against the pandemic, but mainly because of its incompetent healthcare system. The casualties are escalating and public sufferings are becoming unimaginable. On this backdrop, this perspective piece discusses the healthcare crisis in Bangladesh during the pandemic. This article also identifies three responsible issues for the country’s deteriorating health care: 1) poor governance and increased corruption, 2) inadequate healthcare facilities, and 3) weak public health communication.

Social media rumor is becoming a prominent spectacle thanks to the rapid surge of internet usage worldwide. However, little research has been done so far that takes social media rumor into account. This chapter attempts to understand the nature and narrative of social media rumor. The discussion revolves around three important and interlaced concepts: social media storytelling, social media rhetoric, and social media rumor. The chapter attempts to show that a story requires rhetoric to be successful and most of the rumours are successful stories because they contain rhetorical elements. To understand the storytelling and rhetorical aspects of social media rumors, remarks based on three prominent cases of social media rumors are presented. The conclusion is that social media rumors are more literary, have more emotional elements than logical proofs, and the structure is meticulously designed to have specific impacts. These features echo disinformation, an important mode of rumor.

A healthy and democratic political community is built on effective and meaningful communication among diverse political groups and individuals. Political engagement in earlier days was confined to a limited number of people, which often impeded the rational criticism and effective- ness of public policies. In Bangladesh, many people remain outside the boundaries of policymaking. To a cer- tain degree, traditional media failed to bridge the gap be- tween public and political authority. Digital media has re- cently entered into public life and offers various groups a chance to engage in political communication. Even com- munication through digital media has started to deter- mine the fortune of political events in Bangladesh like elsewhere in the world. Therefore, digital media, as a key player in political communication, has to be studied care- fully. In this article, it has been discussed why and how digital media has earned power regarding political com- munication. This study also seeks the state of democracy and political pluralism in contemporary Bangladesh. Identifying three key players of Bangladesh politics: polit- ical leaders, political activists, and grassroots citizens, this article further elucidates the nature of their chemistry in the digital age.

India has recently become a hotspot of misinformation: the COVID-19 brings a new opportunity for the rumor-spreaders. Of various categories, religious misinformation seems harmful for both Indian society and public health. In this paper, therefore, I tried to sketch a few necessary aspects of religious misinformation in India during the COVID-19. From the previous literature and ongoing trend of Indian misinformation, I identified two important phenomena: (a) Though Muslims produce more spiritual misinformation, most of the religious misinformation targeting Muslims is inspired by Islamophobia; (b) misinformation that tries to champion Hinduism is more related to the contemporary political ideologies of India. I also tried to explain how religion as a political issue relates to public health