1. Interactivity and online newspapers of Bangladesh
Shameem Mahmud∗, Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, University of
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abstract:
Technological development has been changing the form, character and content of
journalism, and the pace of changes is quickening after the invention and widespread use
of new media, specially the Internet. The practice of journalism, from newsgathering to
the process of news dissemination and consumption, has changed forever with the use of
the Internet since 1990s. The Internet has challenged one-way model of information
delivery by traditional broadcast and print media, and thus made mass communication
interactive or multi-directional. People are no longer passive receiver of information, they
are also contributing in the content of mass media in a great extent than any period of the
past. It is a public sphere for many. This article puts focus on online newspapers of a
developing nation – Bangladesh - to identify how the online newspapers of the country
are exploring the distinct and powerful feature of the Internet - interactivity. An
exploratory content analysis of Bangladeshi online newspapers came out with the
conclusion that they provide very limited or no interactive option to their users. It is
found that despite having the potential to turn online newspapers into a public sphere of
debate through using different interactive features, online newspapers of Bangladesh
follow the traditional model of one-way information delivery, though the first newspaper
went online 10 years back. On contrary, it has been found in the study that many online
portals, produced by Bangladeshi diasporas, are very much interactive in nature and
number of such portals are increasing. Another finding of the present study is that over
half of the users of Bangladeshi online newspapers are from outside the country, that
means Bangladeshi diasporas or Non Residential Bangladeshis (NRBs) are using the
media to search their lost community.
∗
Email: s.mahmud@bracnet.net
1

2. Introduction:
One of the thing that is often considered about the digital revolution in general and the
Internet in particular is that they give everyone the power to be a publisher. Technology
has given the voice to the voiceless. It has enabled people to produce their own
newspapers, newsletters, magazines, audio and video documentaries, and publish those
on the web. In the case of online newspapers, the experience is two way that allow
readers to contribute via e-mail, discussion forums, and all matter of annotation as they
navigate the web, having a democratizing effect (Levinson, 1999: 38).
Though the main objective of the paper is to study level of interactivity offered by
Bangladeshi online newspapers, the author thinks it is necessary to provide back ground
information about Internet access, services, content and challenges in Bangladesh as well
as data about Bangladeshi diasporas or NRBs, who are living mainly in Gulf States,
United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore. The Table
below will show a clear picture of Bangladeshi diasporas’ use of Bangladeshi online
newspapers.
Table 1: Users of Bangladeshi online newspapers
No Name Type Users from Users from Rank of the
Bangladesh other website in
in percent countries in Bangladesh,
percent among all
websites in
terms of use
1 The daily Popular 46.9 53.1 13
Prothom Alo Bangla
daily
2 BDNews24.com Country’s 62 38 26
first online
newspaper,
bi-lingual
2

3. 3 The daily Popular 42 58 28
Jugantor Bangla
daily
4 Somewhereinblog First Bangla 78.5 21.5 29
blog engine
5 The daily Ittefaq Popular 27.5 72.5 36
Bangla
daily
6 The daily Amader Popular 40.8 59.2 42
Somoy Bangla
daily
7 The Daily Star Popular 43.7 56.3 50
English
daily
8 The daily Popular 39.5 41.5 61
Samokal Bangla
daily
9 The daily Popular 34.4 65.6 88
Amardesh Bangla
daily
10 The daily Jai Jai Popular 38.9 61.1 89
Din Bangla
daily
Source: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=BD&ts_mode=country&lang=none
Bangladesh, its mediascape and the Internet:
Bangladesh is the seventh most populous nation in the world with 140 million people in
an area of 144,000 square kilometres. A South Asian nation, it is surrounded by India on
all sides except for a small border with Myanmar to the far southeast and the Bay of
Bengal to the south. Bengali is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world
3

4. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangla_language), and is shared by Bangladesh and the
Indian province of West Bengal, when the latter has a population of about 80 million (as
per 2001 census) who speak in Bangla (http://www.censusindia.net/). These two facts
have a significant bearing on the Bangladeshi media or Bangla community on the net.
Bangladesh was created as a nation in 1971 after brutal war of independence with
Pakistan in which India played a significant part. Prior to 1971 the region was known as
East Pakistan, which had been created under the partition of India in 1947 when the
region gained independence from Britain. Partition severed a huge hinterland from its
principal city, Kolkata (Calcutta), which was not only the economic centre of the region
but also the Bengali cultural capital as well. In 1947 what was to become Bangladesh had
very few newspapers, one state-run radio station and no television. The national
mediascape was created post-1971 period and is closely allied to the Bengali language
movement, which provided the intellectual, as well ideological, impetus to the separation
of East Pakistan from its western counterpart and the creation of Bangladesh.
Consequently, Bengali or Bangla is the dominant language of the media in the country,
although there are very influential English language newspapers and magazines.
Bangladesh is regarded as a poor nation with significant development issues, not least of
which is the gap between the urban centres and the rural areas. The media are an urban
phenomenon in Bangladesh, although this is gradually changing. Other major issues, set
out in Tables 2 and 3 respectively, impacting upon the Bangladeshi mediascape are the
general levels of poverty and the literacy level (particularly in rural areas).
Table 2: Quality of Life Indicators
Population Population Urban Life Literacy People per People
Growth Population Expectancy Rate Telephone per
(Fixed TV
Line)
140.6 1.42% 25% 65.1 (2004) 62.66 134 170.5*
million (2004) (2002) Total fixed
4

5. (estimated telephones:
as of 104,771,7
2007)
Table 3: Economic Data
Per GDP Per Foreign GDP Exports: Inflation
capita Capita currency Growth 9 (CPI)
GDP national Reserves months
(PPP) income (July
06-
March
07)
$ 482 $ 438 b $520 $4.36 b 6.71% $9.03b 7.06%
as of (2006- (as of
May 15, 07) May 07)
07
Table 2 and 3: sources: Bangladesh Economic Review 2007, Finance Division, Ministry
of Finance, Government of Bangladesh except those marked * which are from
www.virtualbangladesh.com. [All figures are in US$. US$1= BTD 67.22 (July 06-April
07).]
The Bangladeshi economy is augmented by $ 4.9 billion foreign remittance (July 06-
April 07 period), which represented 6.89 percent of the GDP and 45.62 percent in
comparison to the export income of the country as in 2005-06. The major sources for the
remittances are the Gulf States, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and
North America (United States and Canada). Expatriate Bangladeshis play a major role in
5

6. the economy of Bangladesh. The table 4 below will illustrate a partial picture of
Bangladeshi migrant workers in different countries, which is now over 4 million.
Table 1: Number of Bangladeshi migrant workers in different countries
No Country Number
1 KSA 2.22 million
2 Kuwait 0.47 million
3 UAE 0.68 million
4 Qatar 1.00 million
5 Iraq 67,000
6 Libya 54,000
7 Bahrain 0.14 million
8 Oman 0.25 million
9 Malaysia 0.29 million
10 South Korea 19,000
11 Singapore 0.14 million
12 Brunei 16,000
13 Jordan 22,000
14 Ireland 453
15 UK 7,000
16 Laos 463
17 Mauritius 5,000
18 Italy 3,000
19 Spain 1300
20 Lebabnon 4500
21 Namibia 468
22 Others 32,000
Total 4,558,245
Source: Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), Government of
Bangladesh.
6

7. This is a partial picture of the total expatriate Bangladeshis or diasporas as a whole. The
Table only listed the people who left the country as a labour, but their family members as
well as people who have been migrated and are now abroad on study purpose are not on
the list. Besides, a large number of Bangladeshis are now British and US citizens. The
Bengali community, who started to go the UK since 1960s, has now second generation
there. Similar is the case for USA and Canada. Besides, the country has expatriates in
Australia, and Japan also. As Georgiou, Myria (2001) mentioned a total of 160,300
Bangladeshis in the UK, while a census profile of New York city’s Bangladeshi
American population (2000) says there are 28,269 Bangladeshi Americans in the NY
City.
Bangladesh and its accommodation to new communication technologies:
Bangladesh remains at the bottom in South Asia in the UN’s ICT Diffusion Index, with a
rank of 164 in 1997 and 171 in 2001 and 2004 (UN, 2006) and in the year 2004, Internet
users for per 100 people was only 0.22 and only 1.20 per cent people have the access to
personal computer (ICT4D Status Report 1, 2006). Though the situation has improved
slightly in recent days, situation in other South Asian countries are almost same.
South Asia has yet to fully enter the digital age despite the high take up rates for mobile
phones. It is estimated that only 3% of the 1.5 billion people in the region have
broadband connection. One of the major reasons for this is the cost involved. Broadband
connection still very high in the region in comparison to their per capita income while the
service of local providers is also very slow. This situation is reflected in the utilization of
the 14-Gigabyte capacity of the single SEA-ME-WE-4 fibre optic cable connection of
Bangladesh, which currently stands at 15%. For Bangladesh, the problems are not
technological but economic, political and cultural, and also language of the technology is
a barrier.
A brief comparison of the relative take up rates of the major South Asian countries
reinforces this view.
7

8. Table 4
Country Population Internet Latest Market % of Growth
(estimated Users Data Penetration Users
2005) 2005 Rate Asia
(estimated)
India 1.12 5 million 42 million 3.7% 9.6% 740%
billion
Pakistan 167.8 133 900 12 million 7.2% 2.7% 8,661%
million
Sri Lanka 19.79 121 500 350 000 1.8% 0.1% 188.1%
million
Bangladesh 139.47 100 000 370 000 0.3% 0.1% 270%
million
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/
The lack of uptake in Bangladesh is further illustrated if we compare these figures to the
five most wired nations in the world.
Table 5
Country Population Number of Users Market
Penetration
Singapore 3.54 million 2.13 million 60.2%
Denmark 5.4 million 3.72 million 68.7%
Canada 32.5 million 20.45 million 68.8%
Sweden 9.04 million 6.64 million 73.6%
USA 296 million 200.9 million 67.8%
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/
Clearly economic and developmental factors are issues but in the case of Bangladesh
other factors are even more significant, particularly the role of the government and its
rigid regulatory regime.
8

9. The Internet operates in a very clear policy framework that was devised in the 1990s and
was legalized in Bangladesh in 1996 when the first Internet Service Provider (ISP),
Information Services Network (ISN), began services on June 4, 1996. Subsequently 185
listed ISPs were registered in Bangladesh but many of the ISPs are inactive. In 2003
sixty-two continued to operate, providing services to a limited number of subscribers and
the rest (123) were inactive. There is no evidence to suggest that this situation has
changed. Most of the ISPs services are centred in the capital Dhaka, and second largest
city Chittagong. The state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB)
has extended ISP services to all sixty-four district headquarters and 165 sub district
headquarters (called upazillas) out of 507, the local government units, and the BTTB has
announced plans to provide Internet service to all the upazillas.
In May 2006, Bangladesh connected with one fibre optic cable link (SEA-ME-WE-4) to
the outside world that comes ashore at Chokoria some 121 kilometers south of
Chittagong, the main port on the eastern coast. Broadband services are available in big
cities and recently the private mobile telephone operators, like the Grameen Phone and
the Citycell started to offer wireless Internet connection across the country, except the
three hills district in the country’s east where no mobile phones are allowed for security
reasons.
The leading mobile phone operator Grameen Phone has taken a new initiative to take the
Internet in the rural areas, setting up 500 Community Information Centres (CICs) so far
at rural areas. Here it should be pointed out that Grameem Phone is party owned by
Grameen Telecom, an off-shoot of Grameem Bank, the pioneer of micro credit in
Bangladesh. Indeed its founder, Muhammad Yunus, received the Nobel Peace Prize in
2006 for his work in alleviating poverty in Bangladesh through micro credit. Grameem
Phone is managed by the Norwegian telco Telenor and phones are easily purchased by all
classes. From a very small base in 2000 the number of mobile phones has increased to 29
million in 2007 (Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, 2007) with a
9

10. prediction of 50 million phones by 2009 that is one third of the population will have a
mobile phone.
Most of the government ministries and offices as well as private organizations, NGOs,
newspapers, television stations and universities have websites. Newspapers like The
Daily Star (the first to have a website) and the daily Prothom Alo, and Amader Somoy
update their online editions several times a day. Most of the online editions of these
newspapers are free, but the leading Bangla daily, Prothom Alo requires an annual
subscription fee of $ 30 or monthly $ 5 for access to its updated versions of the day.
In 2005, BDNews24.com, was launched as the country’s first and the only online
newspaper. This online newspaper has achieved popularity with Internet users both in
home and abroad but has little or no competition. The ownership of mobile phones, by
contrast to the Internet, has boomed in Bangladesh. In the Bangladeshi context mobile
telephony is the technology of convergence and innovation. For example, bdnews24.com
can be accessed on mobile phones, PDAs or any other mobile device. The mobile version
is specially designed to fit with the technology and offers the latest news, top stories,
Bangladesh news, political news, business news, sports news and world news.
Another recent phenomenon is blogging, which is particularly popular with the
Bangladeshi diaspora and students, who are the main users of the Internet in Bangladesh.
The blog <somewhereinblog.net> attracts huge numbers of users because they may
contribute in Bangla The added attraction of blogs is that they can also be an outlet for
news when the mainstream media are censored, fulfilling their function as outlets for
citizen journalism. There is evidence to suggest that the military are monitoring blogs for
dissent in the current situation. On May 11, 2007 The Daily Star (Bangladesh’s leading
English daily) released a statement under the signature of its editor Mahfuz Anam in
regard to the arrest on one of its journalists, Tasneem Khalil by the Army. The statement
read in part [I] ‘was informed that his being questioned was not due to his journalistic
[activity] and had nothing to do with his function at The Daily Star. In fact, it was
because of the contents of his personal blog and some SMSs he had sent recently ….
10

11. Because of the caretaker government’s commitment to the policy of freedom of the
media’ Khalil was released (The Daily Star Press Release, 11.05.2007).
As it has been mentioned earlier and quite clear now is that cyber culture in Bangladesh
is basically focused on the capital city of Dhaka. There are a few hundred Cyber Café,
most of which are well furnished, air conditioned facilities with broadband connectivity.
Some of them have private cabins with fifty or more computers. Computers are generally
networked. Locations of these Cafes are on the main road and on prime locations. Some
Cyber Cafes serves snacks and other fast-foods to their clients. Most of them have
scanning, CD writing, printing and other facilities. Charges for browsing are from BDT
20 to 35 per hour (approximately 50 US cents). Students form the largest community to
use the Cyber Cafes. In short, these are places where the young may socialise outside of
the repressive gaze of authority.
The second biggest commercial and port city of Chittagong is also aware of the
technology and has lots of Cyber Cafes but not on the same scale as Dhaka. In addition
the district towns are just testing the technology successfully. The handful of Cyber Cafes
in these towns are well patronised. Internet Kiosks are used mostly for e-mail purposes.
People communicate with their domestic and international counterparts through e-mail.
In some areas where relatives of expatriates are large in number, Internet Kiosks are used
for International Phone Calls. They use Net2Phone and other VOIP technologies for this
purpose. It is thought that VOIP might be very useful for the rural people where they
have relatives living aboard. It might turn to be an opportunity for them as the cost of
phone calls comes down to around one tenth of the state owned BTTB's rate. The
government recently legalised VOIP after initially closing down all the private operators
at the insistence of BTTB who feared it was loosing revenue. This action caused phone
traffic congestion, which in turn led to a review of the situation. Indeed it has now been
decided to privatize BTTB, leading, hopefully, to a more flexible telecommunication
sector that can take advantage of the technologies that have transformed other Asian
mediascapes.
11

12. The reality about Internet and other media in Bangladesh is that they are confined to the
urban, sub-urban & semi urban areas of the country. However, the majority of the
population, the rural poor and even the rich farmers are excluded from using this
technology. Dhaka, the capital city, is the home base for all the major newspaper, the
television and radio stations as well as the most Internet users. Although this is a small
base a cyber community has developed in Dhaka that can claim to be real cyber citizens
as well as media literate.
Thus it can be concluded here that the advent of Internet is understood as an opportunity
for shifting and sharing power until now concentrated in the hands of the urban elites.
The decentralization issue, or how to empower rural and poor people through the use of
the information technologies, then become the central. It may be question for another
paper. Lets focus on the purpose of the present study.
Mass Communication: from one-to-many to many-to-many
Interactivity is a distinct and powerful feature of online media, which is a process rather
than a product (Ward, 2002: 144). Interactive communication process also bears some of
the characteristics of interpersonal communication (Defluer and Rokeach, 1989) when
sender and receiver alternatively share the role of communicator, and each partner
receives immediate feedback of the content. In the traditional model, the media are all
powerful providers and audiences are passive receptors. Traditional newspapers and
broadcasters control the flow of information by identifying, selecting and publishing the
issues or events, which they think have public interest or which are newsworthy in their
definition. In this process news media have enormous power to highlight an event and
kill any event, if they think it has no news value. The question can be raised how can the
audience be potential creators or contributors? The online media come with the solution
with huge opportunity from the receivers’ point of view.
Considering the power on online media, Ward (2002) uses three different models of mass
communication to illustrate the varying levels of interactivity. The traditional model
(newspapers and broadcasters) is predominantly passive and dos not involve any input
from the audience. It is all one way, while the two-way model gives the user a choice in
12

13. the information they want to consume and an opportunity to contribute. The (triangular)
three-way model might involve users sharing information and possibly news with other
users, with the journalist acting as a user as well as a provider (Ward, 2002: 144-8). This
dimension of mass communication begins to challenge the journalist’s traditional roles as
the sole gatekeeper of news and raises important issues including accuracy and veracity
(Ward: 25).
In journalism, interaction happens in the case of users’ consuming information that
means sender and receiver interchange ideas and views or receivers give instant response
on what they receive from the media. Web designers use a handful of interactive tools to
enhance their products (Dibean and Garrison, 2001) and online newspapers in the
developed world generally use options like e-mail contact with journalists or editors, chat
rooms or live discussions, blogs, online forums, links to other stories, archive and
searchable database to make the communication two way, or even multi-directional.
In the three-way model (Ward, 2002: 146), users contribute to users as well as the
journalists. The most common feature of the three-way model is the newsgroup or
discussion forums where users share information and hear news without or with the input
of the journalists. Newsgroups and message boards (Ward, 2002:149) are a useful way of
understanding users’ needs, interests and pre-occupations. The use of discussion forums
or live chat rooms on web sites allows readers to exchange views and information, which
can provide different textures and perspectives to a story.
Bangladeshi online media - Inactive online newspapers, interactive online portals by
diasporas:
The small-scale study for this paper was undertaken in September 2007 to find out what
and how many interactive tools do online newspapers (online versions of daily
newspapers) in Bangladesh offer to its users, both in home and abroad. The main goal
was to determine the level of participatory communication process in the mass
communication structure that has been brought out with the invention of the Internet. The
survey questions were very simple – how many online newspapers offer general e-mail
13

14. addresses that readers can use to contact the newsroom, how many offers posting forms
to respond any news or other contents, how many of the newspapers offer individual
reporter or editor’s e-mail address to contact, how many offer chat rooms and discussion
forums, polls and surveys.
A total of 15 newspapers (See Appendix 2 for full list of sample newspapers and their
web addresses) were chosen purposively on the basis of their print circulation as well as
their average online hits. Besides, I took few English language newspapers to get an idea
whether language is a barrier in making the online media more interactive. The
newspapers’ are chosen from the list of http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/banglade.htm.
Of the 15 newspapers surveyed, almost all have a printed version and only one sample is
purely an online newspaper (BDNews24.com). The sample was comprised of 11 Bangla
language newspapers, three English and one (BDNews24.com) is a bi-lingual that has
both Bangla and English versions.
The content analysis of the study revealed that interactive features are very limited in
Bangladeshi online newspapers or generally no use of interactive features. Even when
interactive features were available in few newspapers, they often did not work. That
means users of Bangladeshi online newspapers have no or very little scope to add
information to a website.
However, it was found that all of the samples provide at least one general e-mail address
in their websites to contact the newsroom. Many newspapers even have different e-mail
addresses or e-mail based posting forms for each editorial section or for different
purposes (i.e. to submit letters to the editor). Seven newspapers provide a list of e-mail
addresses of different sections of the newspapers.
Newspapers, like The Daily Star and New Age encourage feedback very openly, when
there are options in these newspapers’ toolbars like - Write to the Editor. The study
revealed that 10, out of 15 newspapers provide their editors’ e-mail address on the site.
14

15. Moreover, none of the Bangladeshi newspaper provide any e-mail address to contact the
story’s authors or journalists. The Daily Amardesh, a Bangla daily, uses posting forms for
every news item to get users’ feedback and publish those below the news items. Readers
were found giving feedback in English as there is no technology on the website for giving
feedback in Bangla. Some of the feedback were found in a ‘Banglish’ form that means
the readers have written Bangla using English letters/characters.
It was also found that the responses were uncensored. Though there is a notice on the top
by the Amardesh authority asking the readers not to post any abusive, but many words
were found which is defamatory to public figures, specially attacking the politicians. The
same newspaper is the only site, which offer a chat room in its website.
Polls and surveys is a popular tool of Bangladeshi online newspapers and seven
newspapers hold daily polls and surveys on different current issues. The issues range
from local politics to international affairs as well as sports and economy. The print
edition of the newspapers publish polls results next day in its first page. Most often, the
online newspapers offer simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ style quick polls, without a chance to put
additional comments. But, such a poll lacks reliability as if any user wants he or she can
give more than one vote. None of the newspapers were found which try to make voting
second time a difficult task. Besides, these newspapers do not use any disclaimer in their
websites explaining the poll is not scientific.
Only two newspapers (The Daily Star and BDnews24.com) offer discussion forums, a
very important option for interactive communication process. But, in the case of
BDnews24.com it was found that the paper recently withdrew the section and one of the
insider of the paper told this author that they have lack of moderator that forced them to
stop the service. However, the paper is planning to resume the option soon. In the case of
The Daily Star, its ‘Talk Back’ section is very poorly organised that frustrate potential
responses. The author visited the website in September 2007 and found that the latest
posting on the political discussion was of June 2006. The process to registrar oneself in
the paper’s Talk Back site is quite complicated that may discourage many potential
discussants to take part in the forum discussions. It can also be suggested here that the
15

16. Daily Star can advertise in its print edition seeking feedback or postings on the listed
issues for the Talk Back section.
Of the surveyed newspapers, six update their content on a round the clock basis, while
rest nine are nothing but a mirror of print edition.
Most of the Bangla newspapers offer the readers to free download of Bangla fonts if there
is any problem in reading the Bangla contents.
Only the BDNews24.com requests registration, but the content is free, while the daily
Prothom Alo, the most circulated Bangla daily and its web hits is also very high have
registration fees to get updated news of the day. The registration rates have been provided
earlier.
It was also found that none of the Bangla newspaper offers search option, though all of
them have archive of previous issues. All English newspapers offer search option of their
contents. This is a technical problems for Bangla newspapers as there is no Bangla
search engine currently. This problem is related to the localization of new communication
technologies and their offer, and the paper will discuss the situation regarding this later
end of the paper.
In contrast to the newspapers online, an analysis of some Bangladeshi online portals and
blogging sites revealed that they offer a quite number of interactive options for readers,
from immediate and full feedback to discussion forums and blogging. Many of such web
portals are created and maintained by Bangladeshi diasporas.
The Drishtipat (www.drishtipat.org) is such an initiative by Bangladeshi expatriates
primarily in the United States, which has now branches in the United Kingdom, Canada
and Australia. The web portal is a platform for Bangladeshis, home and abroad, to
promote human rights issues. Its language is in English that may be a reason which
discourage most of the Bangladeshi expatriates in Gulf States to contribute in the site.
Generally, educated and skilled Bangladeshi workers or migrants are living in countries
like United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia, while migrant workers with
low education level are in the Middle-East countries, and in Malaysia.
16

17. As the website of Drishtipat says: “Drishtipat is a non-profit, non-political progressive
expatriate Bangladeshi organization committed to safeguarding every individual's basic
democratic rights, including freedom of expression, and is opposed to any and all kinds
of human rights abuses in Bangladesh. We are based in the United States, and have
members in every part of the globe via memberships and local chapters. This website is
intended for disseminating information about the state of human rights and social change
in Bangladesh, and to discuss potential campaigns. Drishtipat and its local chapters have
undertaken numerous campaigns every year since its inception in 2001.”
The most exciting section of the website is its daily blog, titled ‘Unheard Voices’. This
section is regularly updated and there is a good number of response or comments on the
postings that make the site a platform of public debate. The site has huge postings on
Bangla diaspora, civil society, climate change, corruption, culture, democracy, economy,
energy policy, environment, generation new, free speech, ethnic minority, book reviews,
human rights, news and views, politics etc. While visiting the site on September 25,
2007, it was found that the site has 314 postings on politics, 200 posting discussed human
rights issues in Bangladesh and 179 postings for news and views. An example will make
the point more clear.
Recently a cartoon at a weekly satire supplement of Bangladesh’s largest Bangla daily
Prothom Alo raised protests among the bigots and Muslim fundamentalists of
Bangladesh. The cartoon allegedly defamed the Muslims community and the daily
Prothom Alo swiftly withdrew the issue and apologized for the cartoon. Bangladesh
Government has arrested the cartoonist in another quick response. As the author was not
in the country during this time and the cartoon is no longer available on the online
version of the paper, the author did not get the controversial cartoon. But, the Internet
resolved the problem when I found a lot of debate regarding the cartoon issue on the
Drishtipat website. In three days, from September 18 to 21, 2007 there was at least 68
postings on the site either supporting or criticizing the event, and also the cartoon was
there (http://drishtipat.org/blog/).
17

18. Bangla Community online (http://www.bangla.org) is another initiative having more than
15,000 registered users (mostly Bangladeshis) from around the world discussing issues
related to their everyday life abroad. Every registered member is able to discuss latest
news and have chat with other Bangladeshis. The site’s discussion forums sections
include immigration, community and student life, showbiz and so on. The members can
also post their own events, photos or views. Besides, the site members have a free access
to download Bangla music and MP3.
World Wide Bengali Community (http://www.barnamala.com) is initiated expatriate
Bengalees of West Bengal, India. It says its aim is to bring the worldwide Bengalee
community closer, with a strong identity on the Net as a virtual, as well as real
community with an exhaustive, searchable database. The sites link pages included
Bangla newspapers from countries of origin (West Bengal in India and Bangladesh) as
well as popular magazines, music, recipe, and addresses of benglai association
worldwide.
Another site nurtures an online community in order to unite Bangalees around the world
under one banner - shorgol.com. In Bangla "ShorgoL" means "To Make Noise" either
with a good or a bad intention. With good faith, the site has been named as it wants to
create opportunities for Bangladeshi diasporas to break the silence so that they will have
a vibrant presence in the web world. The site has chat, forum, guestbook, and other
interactive media. The registered members has the opportunities to have personal
portfolio, instant messaging, download of Bangla MP3s. polling options, events and link
submission,
The above findings on Bangladeshi websites by diasporas suggest that the Internet can
play a unifying role for diasporic communities and it can looses the class, gender and
intellectual barriers which used to divide them (Alzouma: 2005). Today, this is true for
many scattered peoples who find in the Internet a way to regain a sense of lost
community, according to Maybury-Lewis (1998). The flexibility of the Internet makes
18

19. possible a greater number of positive expressions of individual or collective identities.
Internet has become a powerful tool to break their isolation.
Bangla on the Net - problems of localisation:
As per the ICT4D Status Report on Bangladesh, documented by different non-
government organisations in 2006, observed that organized efforts in software and
content localization are not very visible in the country
(http://bangladeshictpolicy.bytesforall.net). It is obvious that some basic standards for
encoding the language must be developed and these include character set encoding,
keyboard layout, keypad layout, terminology translation and locale definition to enable
computer interface in the local language.
In the early 1980s, the first attempt at localization was made with Bangla font
development in the Windows environment. But an absence of organised and planned
efforts made the localization process cumbersome, and the results were not good. Many
fonts were developed in haphazard way resulting in gross inoperability. In the late 1990s
Unicode shed new light on the issue, and the process of localization began to take a new
shape. Since then the major initiatives have been run by volunteers, while institutional
initiatives have recently started to emerge on the scene. Government localization
initiatives have, however, been absent even while Bangla has been included on its official
websites. In many cases, the government websites post Bangla notices and circulars as
pdf versions.
In the late 1990s, the voluntary group Ankur (www.ankurbangla.org) started localizing
open source software like Linux and OpenOffice.org. Another voluntary organization,
Ekushey (http://www.ekushey.org/), started developing open source Unicode fonts and a
Bangla input system (i.e. determining how Bangla fonts can be arranged using the
existing keyboard). Around this time, the country’s sole centre for localization, the
Centre for Research on Bangla Language Processing (CRBLP) at BRAC University,
Bangladesh took an initiative. The centre is currently working on Bangla document
authoring, information retrieval (spelling checker, search engine), optical character
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20. recognition, pronunciation generator, speech processing, grammar checker, etc
(http://www.bracuniversity.ac.bd/research/crblp/).
The Bangla Wikipedia project is loosely organised using Internet-based mailing lists.
Most of the participants in Bangla Wikipedia are students in Bangladesh and West
Bengal, or expatriates living in North America, Europe and Japan.
Suggestions:
Online newspapers in Bangladesh can exploit e-mail, posting forms, blogs, live chat
rooms, more detail online polls and surveys, the discussion forums primarily in a bid to
engage its people in the public discourse. These feedback tools can help establish reactive
and possibly interactive communication processes, in the way to make the media a public
sphere of discussion. E-mail can be served as fast and easiest way of interpersonal
communication between journalists and readers. It can also be used for reactive
questions-and-answer sessions. One way can be that newspapers can advertise in its print
edition asking readers to send e-mail questions to the reporter who is covering a certain
issue or to the newspaper’s editorial team in general. Moreover, traditional letters to the
editor can be sent quickly online. Like the BBC online, online newspapers can also ask
readers to send words, pictures and video footages of a certain event or issue which can
be published. For example, BBC made request to the people of Burma to send news,
pictures and footages of the country’s recent protest against the military junta. This
option is useful when there is little scope for the newspapers to send their own staffs.
Interactive communication process can be used by live chats or live discussion (i.e.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/liveonline/?hpid=discussions).
Such journalistic chat rooms should be guided by moderating hosts and defined topics.
Users will get the chance to exchange views with reporters and editors. Besides, the
newspapers can invite experts or a celebrity, may be politicians for the live chat, and
advertise in its print edition that the person will be available at the live chat room of the
paper for a certain period of time. The newspapers can also publish e-mail address in its
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21. print or online edition before the session to send questions to the moderator, which will
be posed to the celebrity later.
It was found that almost half of the online newspapers offered quick online polls and
surveys. But the problem is that such polls are not scientific and if any user wish he or
she can post more than one votes. The newspapers can think about the matter and try to
use some software or mechanism which will prevent more than one voting at least in one
sitting.
The newspapers can introduce editor’s blog, like the BBC online Editor’s Blog
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/) and the Asian Age of India – M.J. Akbar’s
Corner (http://www.mjakbar.org/). Such a blog will create a more personal relationships
between the newspaper editor and its readers.
Finally, it is needless to say that online discussion forums is one of the most effective
way to turn the medium into a public platform of debate. The newspapers of Bangladesh
should exploit the tool vigorously specially when they struggle to publish many of
readers’ reaction or letters in the print edition just due to lack of enough space.
Conclusion:
As discussed, the small scale study found a very low level of interactivity in the online
newspapers of Bangladesh and receivers are not sharing the power of the communication
process as information providers. In addition, it found that such interactive options as did
exist on the site were not effectively utilised. The findings of this paper in terms of
effective use of interactive options of Bangladeshi online newspapers, correspond to
Schultz’s observation that while most news media are represented on the Internet, they do
not necessarily apply the specific tools characteristic of the medium (Schults 1999).
To make the online newspapers truly interactive or a forum of public communication, it
is also necessary to consider a lot of practical challenges. The challenges range from lack
of financial and human resources, relevant training and skills, bandwidth issues, while the
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22. lack of appropriate technology in local language is a big concern for Bangla online
newspapers and web portals. This is the author’s hope that this paper is only a
contribution to study the matter further, and raise question about the reality of online
journalism in developing nations particularly. Finally, interactivity in online journalism
is am extremely broad and diverse topic. In the developed parts of the worlds a lot of
communication research into the area is going on. Within the South Asian context, or a
context of a developing nation like Bangladesh, the topic remains largely unexplored and
there are a lot of possibilities and scopes for scholarly research.
Bibliography:
- Alzouma, Gado (2005), Myths of digital technology in Africa – leapfrogging
development? Global Media and Communication, Volume 1(3): 339-356, Sage
Publications (London, 2005, accessed from http://gmc.sagepub.com), on 28/2/2007
- Dibean and Garrison (2001), “Online newspaper market size and use of world wide web
technologies”. [This paper was first presented at the Media in Transition Conference at
MIT on October 8, 1999. The paper was revised in 2001.]
- Georgiou, Myria (2001) Mapping minorities and their Media: The National. Context –
The UK Report. London: London School of Economics.
- Levinson, P. (1999) Digital McLuhan, London: Routledge.
- Maybury-Lewis, D. (1998) ‘The Internet and Indigenous Group’, Cultural Survival 21
(4), January, cited in Alzouma (2005).
- Melvin L. De Fleur and Sandra Ball-Rokeach, Theories of Mass Communication. 5th
ed. New York: Longman, 1989
- Mike Ward, Journalism Online, Focal Press, Oxford, 2002
22

23. - Schultz, T. (1999). “Interactive Options in Online Journalism: A Content Analysis of
100 U.S. Newspapers”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 5 (1).
Available: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol5/issue1/schultz.html
List of websites consulted (September 2007):
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7020465.stm
2. http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=BD&ts_mode=country&lang=none
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangla_language
4. http://www.censusindia.net/
5. http://www.mof.gov.bd/economic/index.php
6. http://www.virtualbangladesh.com/
7. http://bangladeshictpolicy.bytesforall.net/?q=national_report
8. http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2006/press06_52.shtml
9. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
10. http://www.btrc.gov.bd/
11. http://www.somewhereinblog.net/
12. http://drishtipat.org/
13. http://www.bangla.org/
14. http://www.barnamala.com/
15. http://www.shorgol.com/
16. http://www.bengalinux.org/
17. http://www.ekushey.org/
18. http://www.mjakbar.org/
19. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/liveonline/?hpid=discussions
20. http://www.mjakbar.org/
Appendix A: List of Bangladeshi newspapers and web addresses
1. Daily Prothom Alo (http://www.prothom-alo.com/)
2. Daily Ittefaq (http://www.ittefaq.com/)
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24. 3. Daily Jugantor (http://jugantor.com/)
4. Daily Samokal (http://www.shamokal.com/)
5. Daily Inqilab (http://www.inqilab.com/)
6. Daily Amader Somoy (http://www.amadershomoy.com/)
7. Daily Manabjamin (http://www.manabzamin.net/)
8. Daily Bhorer Kagoj (http://bhorerkagoj.net/)
9. Daily Amardesh (http://www.amardeshbd.com/)
10. Daily Naya Diganta (http://www.dailynayadiganta.com/)
11. Daily Jai Jai Din (http://www.jaijaidin.com/)
12. The Daily Star (www.thedailystar.net)
13. New Age (http://www.newagebd.com/)
14. The Financial Express (http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/)
15. BDNews24.com (http://www.bdnews24.com/)
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