Meta: Building Understanding of Community Standards in Myanmar

In Myanmar, Facebook became the internet for millions of people within a few years. That scale brought responsibility and scrutiny: the platform was under pressure over harmful content and hate speech, and its reporting tools and community standards were poorly understood by users and by the journalists covering it.

Meta's APAC policy team needed a communications partner in market that understood the media landscape, could monitor and respond to issues as they arose and could help protect the platform's standing as a positive force in people's lives.

Ruder Finn Era developed a combined reactive and proactive programme. On the reactive side, the team monitored the range of issues surrounding the platform in Myanmar and advised on appropriate responses across different situations, so that key messages reached media quickly and accurately.

Proactively, the strategy was education. Media relations work explained Facebook's security and reporting measures and raised awareness of its community standards, so that journalists could report on the platform's safety tools with accuracy and pass that understanding to their audiences.

Media digital literacy events gave journalists hands-on knowledge of how reporting, moderation and account safety work, building a better informed press corps around one of the most sensitive subjects in the country.