Viewership and Listenership Survey

VIEWERSHIP &

Listenership Survey

Lashio & North Okkalapa

Research conducted by Ah Yo, Su Mon, Soe Win Myint with the assistance of LRC in Lashio, Saitta Thukha Development Institute in North Okkalapa, and Xavey Research Solutions.

FEBRUARY 2017

REPORT WRITTEN BY:

Anna Zongollowicz, PhD

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Isla Glaister Country, Director of Search

for Common Ground - Myanmar Email: [email protected]

VIEWERSHIP & LISTENERSHIP SURVEY

Lashio & North Okkalapa

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CONTENTS

Executive Summary

TV

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566677
Radio Social Media Reaction to News Conclusion Recommendations

Listenership & Viewership Survey

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Introduction Youth Media

Methodology

Sampling

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Limitations

Findings

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13 14 16 17

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Demographics TV Viewership Radio Listenership Social Media

Reaction to News

Conclusion Recommendations

References

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S E A R C H F O R C O M M O N G R O U N D

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© Search for Common Ground - Myanmar (2017) Disclaimer

The research has been carried out with the ﬁnancial assistance of the Peace Support Fund.

The opinions expressed in the report are those of the authors and in no circumstances

refer to the oﬃcial views of Search for Common Ground or the Peace Support Fund.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The report contains findings from a quantitative survey examining TV viewership, radio listenership and social media usage, which was conducted in the third week of November 2016 in Lashio (Shan State) and North Okkalapa (Greater Yangon). The survey targeted 488 respondents. The goal of the survey was to gather data related to people’s access to, usage of and preferences for various media, be it TV, radio or social media to better inform the multi-media campaign, which Search for Common Ground is preparing with Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV) as part of the 12-month “Let’s Think, Let’s Change: Promoting Diversity through Popular Culture” project funded by the Peace Support Fund. The survey was conducted alongside a qualitative rapid conflict assessment, whose objective was to understand the key driving factors for peace and conflict, and the dynamics and the actors in each of the target areas (available as a separate report).

The fieldwork was managed by an international consultant, who designed the methodology, and was supported by SFCG staff, local partners and Xavey Research Solutions - a private research solutions service provider in Myanmar. The data was collected using an electronic survey that was administered by enumerators equipped with tablets. Enumerators were drawn from the local partners’ networks and trained in North Okkalapa and Lashio by Xavey and SFCG staff. All the enumerators were Buddhist. The data was collected offline and uploaded at the end of each data collection day. Xavey Research Solutions

created the SPSS data sheet that was used for analysis.

Of the 488 respondents, 48.6% were women and 51.4% were men. The overwhelming majority of

respondents were Buddhists, followed by Christians, Muslims and Hindus. One reason for this disparity

is that Buddhists are the dominant religious group in both survey locations. Another reason, which explains why a higher number of Christians rather than Muslims were surveyed can be attributed to the

unease of enumerators who were predominantly Buddhist with limited links to the Muslim communities in the respected town.

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TV

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The survey found that in Lashio 98.3% and in North Okkalapa 91.1% of respondents watched TV.

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In both locations, Monday and Saturday emerged as the most popular days for viewing TV. Of the 462 respondents who answered the question about their preferred TV viewing day, 39.4% identiﬁed Monday and 28.4% indicated Saturday. Wednesday and Thursday were identiﬁed as the least popular days for watching TV with Wednesday being the least popular in Lashio and Thursday being the least popular in North Okkalapa. It is not clear from the survey why certain days are preferred over others. It may be related to programming, e.g. new TV series episodes are shown

on Saturdays and Sunday, and re-runs are likely to be shown on Mondays.

••

The survey found that the most popular TV channels in Lashio and North Okkalapa were MRTV4, MRTV and Channel 7. It is noteworthy that the favourite channels are state-owned or controlled media and available free of charge.

In both locations, Monday and Saturday emerged as the most popular days for viewing TV. It

is not clear from the survey why certain days are preferred over others. It may be related to

programming, e.g. new TV series episodes are shown on Saturdays and Sunday, and re-runs are

likely to be shown on Mondays.

•

The survey found that both women and men, in Lashio and North Okkalapa, were most likely

to tune in to TV to watch ‘the news’. ‘Music programmes’ emerged as the second most popular viewing material for women, while ‘sports’ emerged as the second most popular viewing material for men. A clear preference for a speciﬁc TV series, ﬁlm or programme did not emerge from the

survey.

••

The majority of respondents in both locations indicated that their preferred time to watch TV was in the evening, especially in the early evening between 6pm-8pm. The preferred times were almost the same for both sexes, although men were more likely than women to watch TV later in the evening, between 8pm-10pm.

People learn about upcoming programming from the TV itself, followed by friends and social media. In Lashio and North Okkalapa, over 80% of women learnt about new programming from the TV, less than 5% knew about it from social media and in North Okkalapa only one woman said she learnt from a friend, while 5.5% of women in Lashio knew from friends. In the case of men, just over 70% knew about upcoming programming from the TV itself, around 10% learnt about it on social media and some 8% knew about it from friends. This small but notable discrepancy is reﬂective of the roles that women and men play in Myanmar’s society/ies with women being more house-bound and exposed to TV than men who can spend time outside the household more freely

and access a variety of media.

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RADIO

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There was a notable diﬀerence in radio listenership between people in Lashio and North Okkalapa. Overall 67.8% of respondents in Lashio said they listened to the radio versus 42.7% in North Okkalapa. Almost 70% of

respondents said they listened to the radio at home with women more likely to listen at home than men in both

Lashio and North Okkalapa. The remaining 30% gave a variety of answers ranging from a teashop - particularly for men - to a public bus to a car or taxi. Among those who did not listen to the radio around 55% said they did not like the radio, 29.4% said they did not have a radio and 14.9% said they did not have time to listen to it.

•••

In both locations Mondays followed by weekends emerged as the preferred days for listening to the radio. Cherry FM was identiﬁed as the most received radio station in both Lashio and North Okkalapa. Following Cherry FM, Myanmar Radio and Shwe FM emerged as the second most popular radio stations in Lashio and

North Okkalaparespectively.

The survey found a clear diﬀerence in the listenership of radio talk shows. In Lashio respondents were more

12% more likely to like and listen regularly to talk shows than in North Okkalapa. In both places a similar percentage of respondents said they liked and listen sometimes to radio talk shows. People did not express an

obvious preference for a radiopersonality/presenter. While the data shows that respondents in Lashio and North Okkalapa slightly prefer to listen to the radio between 6am-8am, the data also shows that people tend to listen to the radio throughout the day (much more so than watching TV, for which people had clearly preferred times) although they are least likely to do so between 4pm-6pm, which is the time when families regroup at home after a day’s work or school, prepare

dinner, eat, do homework and tend to personal chores.

SOCIAL MEDIA

•••

The overwhelming majority of all respondents had internet access on their phones. In Lashio 94.6% of women and 96.9% of men said they had access to the internet on their phones. In North Okkalapa this was the case for 89.7% women and 96.7% of men.

In line with popular knowledge in Myanmar, Facebook and Viber emerged as social media platforms of choice, with Facebook clearly ahead of Viber. Almost 85% of respondents at both locations said they accessed social media every day primarily to access the news and for fun. The majority used their phones for access.

The 7 Daily, 11 Media and the Crime Journal were identiﬁed as the main sources of news. The downloading of apps and music emerged as common, with very few respondents downloading ﬁlms, books, games or educational materials. Facebook emerged as the most popular app.

REACTION TO NEWS

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In both Lashio and North Okkalapa, men showed a greater tendency to worry about news about disagreements, while women were more worried about news about violence. Collectively, over 90% of people in Lashio worried about disagreements and violence, while in North Okkalapa, 71% worried about disagreements and violence and around 16% worried about crime.

The most common ways for people to establish the veracity of news was to check other types of news. The rapid

conﬂict assessment found that this meant mostly checking print media against audio-visual media, especially TV news. ‘Other sources’ were revealed to be family and friends, and in both Lashio and North Okkalapa, men were more likely than women to check ‘other sources’.

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In addition to checking other news sources, ‘reading comments’ emerged as the second most common way of checking news. The risk of this - currently much discussed in the international media - is that people’s opinions - however biased, prejudiced or misinformed - become legitimate information possibly contributing to the spread of false information. What is more, if the comments are directly on someone’s FB wall, rather than the newsfeed or as part of the news item, people tend to see their own thoughts and opinions reﬂected at them, conﬁrming bias rather than challenging it.

CONCLUSION

The survey found that young people prefer television to radio, that they are more likely to trust state media rather than private media, and that they are habitual users of social media. Young people rely on family and friends to discuss worrisome information and to establish the veracity of certain news. Young people need access to credible information. They are susceptible to other people’s opinions - especially ‘group think’ - and ﬁnd social media, especially platforms such as FaceBook and Viber a good place to vent and garner support for what they think or worry about. Although the young know the risks of social media, they tend to see those risks apply only to non- plausible information rather than consider how bias and prejudice spread and contribute to stereotypes, who plausibility is seldom challenged.

RECOMMENDATIONS

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Interactive training sessions for youth and their designated family member on news sources, fact-checking, critical thinking in the context of news reading, and exposing the link between online activity and real life.

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Interactive training sessions for youth and their peers on the impact of online activity on their surroundings and beyond; interesting examples include teachers in other countries trying to show their young students the dangers of the internet by posting a message to Facebook and asking people to spread it and indicate their

location in the comment section.

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A deeper and wider study of media usage in the households and beyond, e.g. to gain a better understanding of who controls, which channel or programme on TV will be watched. A deeper study would allow to gain a better understanding of the extent to which youth access media as opposed to being exposed to it by others.

The most popular broadcasting times are in the early morning or evening, which correlates with the fact that news and films are shown at these respective times. It may be difficult to access those broadcast times with content that does not reflect the various stations priorities or desired rankings. It would be advisable, however,

to ensure that any media content produced within the framework of the Let’s Think, Let’s Change project Is

broadcast at times when people are very likely or likely to tune in rather than airing content when most young

people would not be able to view it.

•

The current survey did not explicitly reach out to disadvantaged youth, e.g. child labourers whose poverty compounds many of the issues that young people face, including discrimination on religious grounds. Child labourers, or youth labourers, tend to work very long days with little time oﬀ and may have limited access to any other media but social media. Speciﬁc pages on Facebook or Viber groups could be established to launch moderated discussions on topics of concerns and use the pages as a way to gather information for creating events and public services announcements (e.g. billboards) to draw a larger public to an issue.

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LISTENERSHIP & VIEWERSHIP SURVEY

The report contains ﬁndings from a survey examining TV viewership, radio listenership and social media usage, which was conducted in the third week of November 2016 in Lashio (Shan State) and North Okkalapa (Greater Yangon). The survey targeted 488 respondents across the two locations with the goal of gathering data related to people’s access to, usage of and preferences for various media, be it TV, radio or social media. The survey was conducted as part of the 12- month “Let’s Think, Let’s Change: Promoting Diversity through Popular Culture” project, which Search for Common Ground is implementing in an eﬀort to address rumours that contribute to an enabling environment for violence in Myanmar. Funded by the Peace Support Fund, the Project combines community-based work led by youth leaders with a multi-media campaign, television public service announcements (PSAs), and a radio talk show in collaboration with Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV) - Myanmar’s state-owned and most widely accessible television and radio

stations.

INTRODUCTION

In Myanmar, armed conﬂict between central government forces - the Tatmadaw - and etnic armed groups (EAGs) is well-documented. The root causes may be found in the colonial period, events leading up to independence – such as the 1947 Panglong Conference - and events following independence, which was achieved in 1948. Emerging as a democratic and federal ‘nation-state’ in 1948, Myanmar (then known as Burma) became a one party state in 1962 after General Ne Win took power in a military coup abolishing the federal system and inaugurating “the Burmese Way to Socialism”¹. Despite the economy undergoing reform in the early 1970s with some of those responsible for promoting rigid state control being moved aside, what followed were decades of military rule, discrimination against non-Burmans, insurgencies, and the suppression and persecution of political opposition and movements.

Inter-communal conﬂict, while not knew, emerged as an important governance challenge in step with the political transformation of the country, which began in 2011 under president Thein Sein. Decades of policies enacted to protect the Burman Buddhist identity – i.e. the national identity – have resulted not only in the insitituonalised discrimination

of those whose identity does not conform to the desired norm but also in their demonisation. In an article on ethnicity

and Burman privilege in Myanmar, the author Matthew Walton argued that such policies resulted in ‘Burman- ness [becoming] a form of institutionalised dominance similar to Whiteness’ and that ‘the inability of Burmans to recognise this privilege and to actively work against it inhibits eﬀorts to forge ethnic unity in Myanmar’². Indeed, research has shown that changes brought about since 2011 didnot only intensify the competition for resources but also ‘the desire to protect the Burmese Buddhist identity’³.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (DASSK) took power on March 30, 2016. The State Councillor made peace her priority. The ICG argued that by then ‘the peace process essentially was in stasis […] meanwhile the situation on the ground remained volatile, with ﬁghting continuing to break out sporadically, and often unexpectedly, in many diﬀerent parts of the country’⁴. Since her term began, DASSK has come under frequent criticism for her handling of the peace process - starting with the less than inclusive 21st century Panglong Conference⁵- and her apparent silence on the human rights

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Josef Silverstein, First Steps on the Burmese Way to Socialism, Asian Survey, Vol. 4, No. 2, A Survey of Asia in 1963: Part II (Feb., 1964), pp. 716-722 Matthew J. Walton, The ‘‘Wages of Burman-ness:’’ Ethnicity and Burman Privilege in Contemporary Myanmar, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 00, No. 0, Month 2012, pp. 1–27, p. 1-2

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Rachel Blomquist, Ethno-Demographic Dynamis of the Rohingya-Buddhist Conﬂcit, Fall 2016, Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs, pp. 95-117,

p.96; see also Matthew J. Walton and Susan Hayward, Contesting Buddhist Narratives: Democratization, Nation- alism, and Communal Violence in

Myanmar, Honolulu: East-West Center, 2014
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International Crisis Group, Myanmar’s Peace Process: Getting to a Political Dialogue, Crisis Group Asia Brieﬁng N°149, Yangon/Brussels, 19 October

2016, p.2 Richard Dolan, The Problem With the 21st Century Panglong Conference, The Diplomat, August 06, 2016, accessed on January 11, 2017 at

http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/the-problem-with-the-21st-century-panglong-conference/; see also Radio Free Asia, Myanmar’s Panglong Peace Conference to Begin on Aug. 31, August 8, 2016, accessed on January 11, 2017 at http://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/myanmars-panglong-

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abuses and alleged genocide in Rakhine State where the Rohingya people are being persecuted and driven out of their homes by security forces in retaliation for attacks on border guards by a small militant group⁶.

YOUTH

In Myanmar, there does not exist a consistent definition of youth. On the one hand, the 1993 Child Law, which is currently under review, defines youth as those between 16-18 years of age. On the other hand, in November 2016, The Myanmar Youth Forum defined ‘youths as people between the ages of 16 and 35’⁷. The Forum together with the National Youth Congress, and the National Youth Network claim to represent all youth in Maynmar⁸. The Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement began developing the National Youth Policy in April 2016.

The lack of consensus on the definition of youth exists on the international level too. The 2015 United Nations Security Council resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security, which represents‘an acknowledgment of the urgent need to engage young peacebuilders in promoting peace and countering extremism’ defines youth as those who fall into the 18-29 age range. This definition differs from those of the General Assembly (A /RES/50/81 and A /RES/56/117), which consider youth to be between 15-24 yrs. Search for Common Ground’s definition of youth encompasses 18-35 year

olds.

The main challenges faced by Myanmar youth are lack of aﬀordable and adequate education, poverty, unemployment⁹. These challenges, especially those due to poverty stand in the way of youth’s ability to participate fully in the development of their communities and beyond. The obligation to help their families ﬁnancially and the restrictive social norms, e.g. those, which do not allow young women to leave their homes in the evening until they reach a certain age are formidable obstacles to youth’s public engagement¹⁰.

This does not mean that young people do not want to be involved in matters aﬀecting their communities and country, especially the peace process. Until now, the Myanmar youth has played only a marginal part in the peace process but

it has made repeated calls for a more prominent role in the peace talks¹¹. A signiﬁcant initiative in this direction was

undertaken by the Ethnic Youth Conference which brought together some 800 youth delegates in August 2016¹². The

summit resulted in the creation of the Ethnic Youth Alliance, whose aim was to have youth voices considered at the

the 21st Century Panglong Conference.

MEDIA

The 2011-2016 government of Thein Sein introduced reforms that transformed Myanmar media. The most significant reforms included ‘the 2014 of the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Law (PPEL), which officially abolished past prior censorship and allowed newspapers to become editorially independent from the state; the Broadcasting Law of 2015, which enables private, public and community media to flourish [and the 2015] establishment of the Myanmar News