Abstract
This article examines Voice of Palong (VoP), a participatory audio-visual media initiative co-produced by Rohingya refugees and the Bangladeshi host community in Cox’s Bazar camps. Based on focus groups and field observations from 2023 to 2025, the study analyzes how VoP operates not simply as a communication project but as a relational media infrastructure through which counterpublic formations are assembled under conditions of displacement, surveillance, and legal precarity. Participation is calibrated and situational, shaped by mobility restrictions, gendered risk, limited access to technological resources, and asymmetries between host and refugee participants. VoP functioned as a situated counterpublic in which members calibrate storytelling, visibility, and circulation in relation to infrastructural and regulatory constraints. Findings also show that relational processes of co-production and circulation enabled incremental social repair across refugee-host divides. By situating participatory refugee media within border and media infrastructures, this article argues that counterpublic formation in protracted displacement is materially contingent, emerging through sustained negotiation with uneven conditions of access and control.
Keywords
Introduction
Media practices are often theorized as unfolding within relatively open communicative environments (Couldry, 2010; Jenkins, 2006). In contexts of displacement, and especially refugee camp settings, these practices operate under conditions of legal precarity, surveillance, intermittent connectivity, and gendered constraints (Gillespie et al., 2018; Wall et al., 2017). Yet scholarship on refugee media has often focused either on representation in mainstream coverage (Kollias et al., 2025; Kotilainen and Pellander, 2022) or on questions of digital connectivity (Gillespie et al., 2018), with comparatively less attention to how grassroots media initiatives operate within and negotiate the infrastructural conditions of border regimes, particularly in protracted camp contexts outside of Europe, where the vast majority of displaced populations reside (Seo and Kavakli, 2022). This analytical gap points to a broader issue: communication in contexts of displacement does not unfold within an open public sphere; rather, it is shaped by material and regulatory constraints that structure circulation, exposure, and participation, which in turn, shape the infrastructures through which voice becomes possible.
This paper examines Voice of Palong (VoP), a community-based audio-visual media initiative jointly produced by Rohingya refugees and members of the Bangladeshi host community. Drawing on focus group discussions and field observations conducted between 2023 and 2025, we analyze how VoP functions as a relational media infrastructure through which forms of counterpublic formation emerge under conditions of constraint. Rather than approaching voice as an abstract normative ideal, the study explores how participation, circulation, and listening are shaped by mobility restrictions, humanitarian governance, gendered risk, and infrastructural limitations.
We suggest that calibrated participation describes how participants actively adjust what they produce, share and circulate in these contexts. Unlike concepts such as self-censorship or strategic silence (Dingli, 2015), which emphasize withdrawal or the suppression of voice, calibrated participation captures an ongoing modulation of visibility and expression. Through this process, even seemingly every day content performs subtle political work by sustaining presence, recognition and relational repair under conditions of constraint. In doing so, the paper contributes to debates in participatory refugee media and counterpublic theory by foregrounding how media practices are embedded within everyday border infrastructures. It argues that counterpublic formation in displacement is not only discursive, but infrastructural, assembled through negotiation with systems regulating movement, visibility, and communication.
Literature review
Critical border studies have increasingly conceptualized borders not as fixed territorial lines but as borders capes—zones of negotiation, flux, and contestation (Dell’Agnese and Amilhat Szary, 2015; Rajaram and Grundy-Warr, 2007). This framing points to refugee camps as sites of ongoing bordering practices, where power, identity, and access are continually reshaped.
Extending this perspective, Mezzadra and Neilson (2013) reconceptualize borders as infrastructural systems shaping mobility, identity, and media access. Infrastructure scholars further emphasize that infrastructures are socio-material arrangements organizing circulation, visibility and power (Larkin, 2013). For example, there are geopolitical biases embedded in media infrastructures (from satellites to internet cables), which unevenly distribute access, shaping who can communicate and under what conditions (Parks and Starosielski, 2015). In humanitarian settings, these infrastructural asymmetries are intensified (Madianou, 2019). Situating digital practices within broader infrastructures of control reveals how states and humanitarian agencies extend bordering through communication technologies. States increasingly partner with telecom and tech corporations to track and regulate refugees (Wall et al., 2017). Humanitarian agencies often treat information infrastructures as secondary to food or shelter, creating what Wall et al. (2017) call information precarity. Chouliaraki and Georgiou (2020) theorize these dynamics as the digital border—a mediated space where communicative acts are entangled with regimes of visibility and securitization. Media practices therefore operate through, rather than outside border infrastructures.
Even where border regimes constrain communicative access, refugee communities develop adaptive practices. Hussain and Lee (2021) utilize the concept of digital borders capes to describe how Rohingya refugees navigate digital restrictions through SIM purchases, mobile repair shops, and localized “parallel internets.” These practices exemplify communicative bricolage—making do with limited infrastructures.
This emphasis resonates with wider literature on refugee media practices showing digital tools as both lifelines and sites of vulnerability (Gillespie et al., 2018). In these contexts, participatory media initiatives rarely operate through stable infrastructures and instead, rely on improvised combinations of tools, skills, networks and resources. As Seuferling (2019) reminds us, refugees’ creative communication practices predate the digital era, when improvised infrastructures such as noticeboards and word of mouth compensated for the absence of institutional channels. In Cox’s Bazzar, Hussain and Lee (2021) show how mobile phone shops in refugee camps became crucial hubs for news circulation, entertainment, and political mobilization, thereby substituting for absent humanitarian information infrastructures. Together, this suggests that refugee media operates as an improvised communicative infrastructure shaped by material and regulatory limits.
These infrastructural practices intersect with longstanding debates on counterpublics and mediated voice. Nancy Fraser (1990) identifies subaltern counterpublics as alternative discursive arenas where marginalized groups formulate and circulate their counter-narratives. Warner (2002) extends this by analyzing how publics emerge through the circulation of discourse and the dynamics of address. Squires (2002) contributes a nuanced typology—enclave, counter, and satellite publics—illustrating how marginalized communities navigate visibility and critique under oppressive conditions. Building on this, Jackson and Kreiss (2023) argue that counterpublics must be defined primarily by their relationship to social power rather than the style or tone of their discourse. From this perspective, the oppositional nature of a counterpublic is context-dependent—where overt political confrontation may invite immediate shutdown or violence, opposition may instead be expressed through the refusal of invisibility. Counterpublic practices in such contexts may be oriented as much toward sustaining presence, recognition and circulation as toward explicit critique, as participants must remain publicly present while navigating risk, uneven visibility and constrained access. We conceptualize calibrated participation as the ongoing, situated process through which participants actively manage visibility in contextually specific ways—shaping what is expressed, how it is expressed and how it circulates in order to sustain public presence under these conditions.
Refugee media scholarship builds on these insights. Couldry’s (2010) concept of voice as value underscores media participation as public presence, while Milan (2013) demonstrates how grassroots media activism builds participatory infrastructures. Leurs et al. (2018) show how refugee youth, faced with being framed as dependent, dangerous or victims, use social and digital media practices to assert their agency, including acts such as “video CVs” to manage how they are seen by colleges or employers and make visible their own creative skills. Their study points to how these practices were used by youth to move from being the object of the camera to the subject behind it. Participatory radio projects similarly highlight how processes of collaboration and skill-building are as valuable as the final media products in enabling refugees to “learn to love their voice” (Anderson and Masocha, 2017: 85).
In Rohingya context, recent empirical research highlights the diverse ways in which Rohingya communities exercise agency through media and digital self-representation. Sonia (2023) shows how Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar use social media to assert narratives of resilience and self-reliance, thereby contesting dominant humanitarian framings that cast them primarily as passive victims. Mazumdar (2024) documents how Rohingya digital creators have mobilized platforms such as Facebook and YouTube during crises—including campfires—to provide real-time accounts and foster transnational solidarity. Beyond immediate crisis communication, Rohingya content production also extends into cultural preservation and political resistance: projects such as the animated folktale series Dadir Kissa, supported by BBC Media Action, demonstrate how digital storytelling can sustain collective memory while challenging erasure (Mazumdar, 2024). Mukta (2020) similarly documents how radio continues to play a vital role in Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, providing both cultural connection and practical information in contexts of exclusion. At the same time, the emergence of what some scholars term a “digital diaspora” underscores the significance of online platforms in sustaining collective identity and political consciousness across transnational Rohingya communities (Ansar and Khaled, 2023).
However, these expressions of agency remain deeply conditioned by intersectional constraints that structure voice, visibility and uptake. Hussain and Lee’s (2021) findings show that Rohingya women, despite facing intersecting barriers of gender and displacement, mobilize digital tools to push back against “double discrimination”—requesting technical training, appropriating phones to counter harassment, and creating new forms of community presence. This aligns with broader intersectional approaches that stress how class, gender, and ethnicity structure refugee access to digital publics (Erel et al., 2016). In addition, Dreher (2009) expands our attention to examining intersectional constraints from voice to listening, urging scholars to not only consider who speaks, but who is heard and what conditions.
Building on scholarship on border infrastructures, subaltern counterpublics, and Rohingya digital practices, this article advances the argument that participatory refugee media operates as a counterpublic through border infrastructure rather than despite it. While existing research has documented the constraints posed by camp governance, digital surveillance, and unequal access to communication technologies, these conditions are often treated as external limitations on voice and participation. This study instead asks how such infrastructural conditions actively shape the forms, practices, and relational dynamics of media production itself. In doing so, it advances the proposition that participatory refugee media may function as a counterpublic through an empirical analysis of a grassroots media initiative operating within a protracted camp context in the Global South.
Study context
Rohingya displacement and camp governance in Cox’s bazar
The Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, have faced decades of exclusion and state-based violence (Alam, 2019). The displacement of the Rohingya has been cumulative and systematic since the late 1970s, with each episode deepening their precarity. The 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar triggered a mass exodus across the border into Bangladesh, primarily into Cox’s Bazar. The Kutuplaong-Balukhali settlement complex now constitutes the largest refugee camp in the world (Hussein and Duggal, 2023).
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh remain without a pathway to durable legal status and are governed through a layered system of state oversight, camp-level administrative controls and humanitarian agencies (Wahab, 2022). Mobility outside camp boundaries is restricted, formal employment is limited and access to education and communication technology is regulated (Hussain et al., 2020). For example, in the absence of official biometric ID cards issued by the Bangladesh Government, the Rohingyas are also not legally allowed to have ownership of mobile SIM cards. Internet coverage across the wide camp areas is significantly poorer than in the adjacent host communities (Hussain, 2018) and there are periodic internet shutdowns and communication restrictions (Hussain et al., 2020).
Rohingyas still do not have a recognized set of alphabets for their language. Low literacy levels in camps and the absence of a widely institutionalized written form make audio, visual and face-to-face modes of communication particularly central. Media initiatives in the camps therefore operate within a communicative environment where listening, oral circulation and visual storytelling carry heightened significance.
Everyday life in the camps is structured through documentation systems, humanitarian service infrastructures and formal and informal security arrangements. These overlapping systems regulate access to aid, shape patterns of movement and influence community interactions (Hussain et al., 2020; Wahab, 2022). Gender norms and safety concerns further mediate participation in public life, particularly for women and girls.
At the same time, the camps are not socially closed spaces. They are embedded within surrounding Bangladeshi host communities, whose economies, labor markets and social relations have been significantly affected by the refugee presence (Khan and Minca, 2022). Tensions and collaborations coexist, and information flows circulate across refugee-host divides through formal and informal channels.
It is within this complex setting that Voice of Palong operates.
Voice of Palong
Voice of Palong (VoP), also known as “Palong er Hota,” is a community-based media initiative led by Young Power in Social Action (YPSA) and supported by DW Academie of Germany. Established in 2018, VoP aims to serve the Rohingya refugees and the local host community by developing audiovisual and digital content that addresses socio-economic issues. VoP operates with a volunteer team of 16 members—8 Rohingya refugees and 8 Bangladeshis. Through join media production, the initiative facilitates storytelling, information exchange, and dialog across refugee-host divides. Content is disseminated both traditional and digital channels.
VoP produces a 30-minute weekly infotainment magazine program with Bangladesh Betar, the national public broadcaster. Topics are collectively generated by volunteers, discussed, shortlisted, and finalized by leadership. It also creates educational and current affairs videos for distribution via Facebook and YouTube. Video production is supported by DW Akademie and organized around annual production targets—90 videos in 2024 and 100 in 2025. VoP produces both educational and contemporary content and develops visual reports on timely topics for its audiences. All visual content is disseminated through VoP’s official Facebook and YouTube pages.
VoP also maintains a network of listener clubs in refugee camps and surrounding host communities. These clubs regularly engage with VoP content and provide feedback, creating structured mechanisms for reception and community dialog.
Notably, approximately one-third of VoP’s volunteers are young women from both communities—a significant presence in a context where gendered mobility restrictions and safety concerns often limit women’s participation in public media work.
Situated at the outskirts of the Kutupalong refugee camp and connected to both camp-based and host community networks, VoP thus operates within a complex communicative environment shaped by humanitarian governance, mobility restrictions, infrastructural constraints, and uneven access to technology. It is within this setting that this study examines how participatory media functions as a relational and infrastructural practice.
Data and methods
This study adopts an interpretive lens to collect and analyze qualitative data generated through (i) in-depth focus group discussions (FGD) and (ii) in-person observations of the works of VoP practitioners, trainers, and their listeners.
Research in refugee camp settings is mediated by complex humanitarian and administrative gatekeeping structures, which shape both researcher access and participant engagement (Chughtai and Myers, 2017). The first author, with the support of the parent organization of VoP, Young Power in Social Action (YPSA), conducted the field research. YPSA provided the necessary logistical support, including obtaining research permissions from the refugee camp administration, providing a local interpreter and note-taker, and securing local transportation to and from the camp areas. YPSA and VoP also facilitated the voluntary participation of the eight Rohingya refugee and eight Bangladeshi VoP participants for this research.
Methodological reflexivity was central to navigating the complex world of the camp. The structural vulnerabilities and deteriorating security conditions directly shape what participants feel able to share (Chughtai and Myers, 2017). While institutional facilitation enabled logistical access and may have influenced initial responses, the first author’s sustained engagement with the refugee and host communities since 2017 helped build relational trust and deeper knowledge of the social, institutional and security dynamics of the camps and the associated vulnerabilities refugees faced. For this study, engagement was concentrated across three field visits (2023–2025) at the VoP office and camp outposts, each lasting 2–4 days. Conducting separate FGDs for refugee and host participants across these multiple visits created space for more open discussion and iterative contextualization, while also allowing us to better capture their distinct perspectives on media production, processes, challenges and aspirations.
To minimize power asymmetries between the research team and participants, especially the refugees, the study objectives and implications were explained in participants’ own languages in consultation with the local experts. Participations were assured of their anonymity and voluntary participation. The first author’s ability to converse in Rohingya also enabled more direct communication during the interviews and FGDs, reducing the loss of contextual meaning through translation.
Each field visit required prior coordination among the authors, YPSA leadership and the Bangladeshi camp administration. Days began with briefings at the local YPSA office, followed by fieldwork, and ended with debriefings, where the first author shared their observations with the VoP volunteers and YPSA staff. These check-ins supported ongoing verification of emerging observations. The first author also maintained contact with Rohingya refugee point persons during each visit to ensure in-depth contextualization.
Four FGDs were held in two phases. The first phase of FGDs consisted of 12 questions. In the second phase, FGDs used five questions with follow-up inquiries. The FGD questions were developed in English, translated into Bengali, and verbally into Rohingya during the interview. During each FGD, an YPSA representative translated between Bengali and Rohingya and took notes, while the first author, conversant in Rohingya, translated responses into Bengali in real time. Before each FGD, participants were briefed in language and gave informed consent. After each session, the team compared notes to ensure consistency and accuracy.
All FGDs were audio-recorded (with consent), transcribed, anonymized, and analyzed thematically in two stages. First, we conducted inductive thematic coding to identify patterns around participation, circulation, risk, infrastructural constraint and relational dynamics. Next, we examined how patterns identified in the initial coding related to questions of border infrastructures, counterpublic formation and listening practices. The revised thematic structure was then collaboratively reviewed to ensure coherence between empirical interpretation and theoretical framing.
Findings
Drawing on participants’ narratives, this section examines how VoP members described their media work as creating an alternative communicative space, within and across refugee and host communities. Participants described VoP not simply as a content-producing initiative, but as a collaborative space where refugee and host members learned, planned and produced media together.
The initial findings examine Rohingya refugee and host community narratives to highlight convergences and divergences in their experiences of VoP. Narratives highlight the structural differences in citizenship status, mobility and access to facilities and resources where digital storytelling emerges as a situated practice. However, participants also shared overlapping ideas, aspirations and struggles, pointing to relational forms of solidarity and communicative engagement that cut across the refugee-host divide.
Relational storytelling, co-production and community impact
Both host and refugee participants described VoP’s storytelling as meaningful not only for producing content, but for how it was received and experienced within their communities. Across interviews, participants emphasized that hearing familiar voices, everyday stories, and shared concerns on VoP created a sense of recognition and engagement that was often absent in dominant mainstream media. Rather than positioning media work solely as information delivery, participants repeatedly framed storytelling as a way to inspire reflection, reduce tensions, and create more empathetic relationships within and across communities.
This emphasis on audience recognition and engagement was particularly visible in participants’ reflections on listener clubs and community feedback mechanisms. A network of well-attended listener clubs across different camps has played a critical role in VoP’s success, especially among the Rohingya population. These clubs are usually comprised of 15 to 20 listeners who weekly congregate at any of their households or at a YPSA-run center, gather around a radio/audio player, and listen to either the live broadcast or the recorded version of the weekly bulletin and other content from VoP. As one host explained: Through the listener club, they hear our content and say that this is actually ours. They can understand their mistakes. There are fewer quarrels among them now. (R5, Host)
Beyond conflict mitigation, participants also described how collective listening practices enabled audiences to draw practical inspiration from VoP’s stories, translating mediated narratives into everyday action. Refugee participants shared examples of how listeners responded to stories of resilience and success: We had the experience of seeing Rohingya refugees getting inspired after seeing our media content. . . One of our viewers. . . started a business. . . He is financially doing much better now. (R7, Refugee) I recall creating a piece about a physically disabled individual. . . This success story motivated many young people. . . Now, many of them are following his example. (R3, Refugee) We began creating different audio and visual content that depicted the lives of large families with many children, juxtaposed with smaller families. . . We effectively communicated the importance of family planning. (R5, Refugee)
While these types of responses point to VoP’s impact at the level of audience engagement and community reflection, participants also emphasized how such outcomes were rooted in the emotional and relational dimensions of storytelling and collaboration.
The host respondents in particular, emphasized the emotional and relational dimensions of their storytelling through VoP’s localized reporting: I can capture their stories of both happiness and sorrow. For instance, I spoke with a refugee who lost everything in a fire that broke out in the camp. Experiencing such real-life stories motivates me to do even more. (R7, Host).
This sense of proximity was also described as deeply motivating for host participants, who framed their involvement as a form of relational engagement rather than just conventional profession: If I were in another profession, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to collect other people’s emotions and voices. Additionally, being in the field allows me to learn from others, which inspires me to work harder. (R1, Host)
These accounts suggest that host participants’ engagement with VoP is shaped less by distant representation and more by affective proximity. Everyday practices of co-production, translation and mutual reliance were seen to build relationships: We assist our Rohingya colleagues with creating content scripts in their local language, and in return, they provide significant support during our field activities. . . These efforts contribute to building a strong team. (R3, Host)
The way VoP collaborative practices helped to undermine the dominant us versus them narratives were highlighted in these emergent relationship-building practices by another host: Rohingyas help us a lot during our field visits to the refugee camps. They also help us as interpreters when we are interacting with the camp population. Our homes are theirs as well. We belong to the same team. (R2, Host)
Hosts further highlighted how collaboration with Rohingya creators and participants helped them confront their own assumptions, as well as wider misinformation about the Rohingya people and enabled them to create more contextually grounded content: I heard many wrong and negative things about the Rohingyas. . . But now I realize that I was very wrong. . . They are just like us. I consider my colleagues as my brothers and sisters. (R1, Host)
Their emphasis was placed on learning and building empathy–engaging closely with a community they previously knew little about.
Hosts also framed their role within VoP as one of mediation–enabling stories to circulate across linguistic and social spaces often inaccessible to mainstream media: “Working closely with Rohingya refugees has helped me overcome my misconceptions about them. Most importantly, I can amplify their voices in their own language, which brings me great satisfaction. My work allows me to reach people and communities that traditional media often cannot access” (R6, Host)
One refugee participant described how such shifts in perception emerged gradually through mediated encounters, rather than immediate acceptance: A very senior woman from the host community used to be very negative towards all of us. . . After we screened our videos, her behavior changed significantly. She is now very interested in our work and has requested that we share more of VoP’s videos with her. She even addresses me now as one of her grandchildren! (R5, Refugee)
Refugee participants also pointed to how VoP practices helped to build relationships that countered the us versus them narratives for themselves: Our seniors and colleagues from the host community emphasized that there was no difference between us. . . This changed my perspective, and I began to feel more comfortable collaborating with them. (R2, Refugee)
Rohingya participants described VoP as helping counter misinformation and generate positive impact. However, their engagement was more explicitly shaped by the need to navigate volatile and risky environments within the camps. They described relying on peer-based information verification networks to capture ground realities absent in mainstream media: I use my personal friends’ network inside the camp areas to verify different information, especially when combating fake news" (R5, Refugee)
Importantly, Rohingya VoP members emphasized strategies of caution and avoiding conflict, while still addressing issues of significant harm and suffering in the refugee camps and the surrounding host communities. Rather than indicating disengagement, this careful orientation reflects a form of calibrated participation shaped by a context of surveillance, mobility restrictions and everyday precarity. As the same participant explained, We engage in constructive journalism rather than investigative journalism. . .we aim to avoid direct conflicts. . . When covering sensitive topics. . . we approach these issues strategically. (R5, Refugee)
While Rohingya participants explicitly framed these strategies in relation to safety, surveillance and precarity within the camps, some host participants articulated similar forms of selective storytelling through a discourse of positivity and community cohesion: Our work is such that we don’t highlight negative things at all. My positive attitude helps me create audiovisual content that promotes positivity within our communities. (R3, Host)
Strategic avoidance, however, did not mean silence. For example, another Rohingya creator reiterated how they balanced the need to address injustices against concerns about personal and collective safety, informed by local knowledge of harm and vulnerability: We address the issue of human trafficking directly. . .we focus on highlighting the victims of these crimes in our content. (R7, Refugee)
These types of statements by both groups of respondents suggest that VoP operates as a negotiated communicative space, where members challenge misinformation and address sensitive issues under conditions of constraint. While these practices underscore VoP’s importance as a space for alternative storytelling, participants also emphasized the personal and relational dimensions that sustain their continued involvement.
Motivation emerged not simply from producing content or contesting dominant narratives, but through proximity to community experiences, ethical responsibility to others and recognition by audiences. As the following section illustrates though, these affective and aspirational dimensions of participants are experienced unevenly, shaped by differences in access to skills, visibility and legitimacy within the project.
Motivation and personal fulfillment
Participants described VoP as a collaborative media space that sustained their motivation, recognition and sense of purpose. Both groups reported that working for VoP helped them to gain more self-confidence and a strong sense of purpose. However, the sources of motivation articulated by the two groups were not identical. Among the host participants, motivation was closely linked to how their association and work with VoP gave them social validation and public recognition.
For the first time, some career nurturing is happening. . .many people congratulate me on Facebook for my work at VoP. It feels great! (R5, Host)
Host participants also expressed satisfaction with getting the opportunity to reach more people through VoP. This engagement was sometimes described as having tangible impacts on changing many of the misconceptions held by their target audience: “There are individuals in my community who do not support the idea of women working outside the home. . . I motivated [a senior citizen] by sharing positive examples. . . he expressed positive thoughts about women’s empowerment.” (R4, Host)
In addition to recognition, hosts described VoP’s growing reputation as a trusted media establishment as another source of further motivation: “Working for VoP has been a significant opportunity. . . I can showcase my projects to a wider audience. . . now many people want to give us money to cover their programs via VoP” (R6, Host)
Although the VoP team has consistently maintained its position against conducting any paid coverage, hosts noted that the willingness of different community organizations and individuals to pay money for VoP to cover their events signaled VoP’s acceptance and credibility.
Unlike the hosts, the Rohingya emphasized motivation primarily in terms of personal growth, confidence-building and encouragement to participate publicly. Their accounts foregrounded the affective impact of being involved in media production and having the opportunity to express themselves: Since I started working for VoP, I have developed these skills and, more importantly, my self-confidence . . . All of this makes me very happy and inspires me to continue. (R2, Refugee)
Similarly, another refugee participant shared the satisfaction derived from collaborative storytelling with the host community members: Through these contents, we showed how to collaborate with the host community to be self-sufficient. . . such successes due to our videos make us very happy. (R7, Refugee)
Several Rohingya participants further described how participation in VoP increased self-confidence by reducing their hesitation to speak publicly: As a student, I used to ask a lot of questions. . . After joining VoP, I was no longer hesitant to speak in front of an audio recorder. (R5, Refugee)
Finally, both groups pointed to how regular interactions with the VoP target audience was an important source of motivation. Regular exchanges with listeners and other stakeholders reinforced participants’ sense that their work mattered, encouraging sustained engagement with VoP: Our regular listeners become very excited when they hear their voices . . . this level of participation encourages them to engage with us more frequently. (R2, Refugee)
Skill development and learning
VoP functioned as an informal learning infrastructure through which participants from both host and refugee communities gained technical, communicative and organizational skills. All the respondents described VoP as a space in which they gained practical media competencies through working on different collaborative VoP projects. While all participants reported on skill development, their pathways into learning were shaped by markedly different starting points, resources and forms of access.
Many of the host members spoke about building on their prior experience while working for VoP. They emphasized more on the transformative experience they are having with VoP–pointing to not only the technical skills they gained but also to the opportunities VoP produced to expand professional networks and communication skills: Since 2015, I have been working on video making and editing. . . after I joined this organization, I got better training on video editing. . . Working with this group also helped me with my networking and communication skills. (R7, Host)
Several host participants linked their skill development to the ability to mobilize social capital and infrastructural access, such as securing permissions or navigating institutional settings: In the past, I primarily worked with audio. . . However, I have gained a lot of confidence in my work. . . I leveraged my network to secure proper access, allowing me to cover the event successfully. (R1, Host)
In contrast, many refugee participants described VoP as providing their first sustained access to digital media literacy and skill development: My collaboration with VoP helped me improve my communication skills. . . I have learned how to create audiovisual content, and people appreciate my work. (R1, Refugee)
Another Rohingya participant emphasized structured learning facilitated by organizational leadership: I learned a great deal from the organization’s leadership and received training in audio and video content development, including editing and uploading. (R5, Refugee)
Participants highlighted the importance of peer-based learning in contexts of limited literacy. As one Rohingya participant explained: “Only a few of us can read and write the Bengali script. Such a skill helps us. . . We can help our other Rohingya teammates to develop this skill” (R3, Refugee)
These accounts indicate that learning within VoP is distributed unevenly and often mediated through mentorship, translation and internal collaboration rather than equal access to resources.
Beyond just skill development, VoP was described as also providing accessible opportunities for its participants with disabilities. For example, one participant said: I am a physically disabled person. . .I wanted to develop some skill sets that can help me earn while staying at home. . .. After joining VoP, these skills helped me quickly adapt to the responsibilities of creating high-quality audiovisual products and videography. (R6, Host)
Thus, we find that while VoP provides important opportunities for learning, access to skills and professional development remains shaped by prior experience, social networks, literacy and bodily capacity. These uneven conditions of learning form an important backdrop for understanding whose participation is most visible and sustainable and which groups may face greater barriers–an issue taken up in the following section.
Some of the VoP’s refugee members elaborated on the depth of their team’s collaboration further, and highlighted the importance of working closely with their own community as well: Our close collaboration with local refugees allowed our VoP team to become the main source for this critical news story. . . This showcases the strength of our collaboration. (R5, Refugee)
Infrastructural constraints: The politics of access
Despite VoP’s presence as a space of skill development, collaboration, and relationship-building, participants identified significant infrastructural and political constraints. Both groups described facing challenges ranging from documentation and surveillance to network infrastructure and gender-based harassment. Participants described how these constraints limited mobility and visibility, and shaped who could participate in media production, under what conditions and at what risk.
For all VoP members, one of the most significant issues is the lack of official identity cards. Without such a document, all the members of VoP –particularly Rohingya refugees–are harassed almost daily while crossing through the refugee camps’ check posts. Attending any government event in an official capacity without any official ID is also quite difficult, especially for the Rohingya members. One host member mentioned: “The most significant issue we face is the lack of an official identity card. . . Our Rohingya colleagues are also harassed at the different checkpoints while entering the camps. . . sometimes forced to bribe law enforcement officials.” (R3, Host)
Beyond physical mobility and harassment, participants also described forms of online harassment linked to their growing public visibility as media workers: According to one host member: As our faces are becoming familiar. . . many strangers knock us on Facebook and abuse us online. (R1, Host)
Host members also mentioned how communication infrastructures themselves constrained media production. They pointed to experiencing difficulties conducting their work within the camp areas due to the poor quality of the Internet and mobile networks. A host respondent shared: The quality of the Internet is very poor inside the camp areas. And the mobile network is also very weak. We cannot rely on mobile phones for good communication once we enter the camps. (R6, Host)
Gendered dimensions of access and safety were particularly pronounced. Participants described harassment of women VoP members–in both groups–s, in both the refugee camps as well as in the surrounding host community. One VoP member mentioned: “Eve-teasing is a huge problem for our women colleagues. It does not matter whether you are from the host community or a Rohingya. Some young male groups are always harassing them when they are in the field.”(R6, Host)
Another host echoed R6 as well: It is not safe to work inside the camp areas for women media personnel. Many young Rohingyas verbally harass us while we are in the camps. (R2, Host)
For refugees working for VoP, especially for the Rohingya women, broader concerns related to safety and precarity were compounded. One refugee respondent said: There are significant safety and security concerns related to traveling within the camp areas, especially for our women colleagues. (R1, Refugee)
Field observations and participant accounts highlighted broader gender disparities within the camp context. Participants noted that women’s access to health information, education, and external resources often depends on male family members and religious authorities in the camp. Observations also indicated that adolescent girls frequently discontinue attendance at learning centers when their first menstrual cycle begins, and that household responsibilities further limit women’s mobility outside the home. These gendered norms directly shape who can move, speak and appear within public and semi-public media spaces in camps.
At the same time, participants described deliberate efforts to address these gendered exclusions through its organizational practices. In contrast to dominant social norms within both Rohingya and host community contexts–where women’s public participation in media contexts remain limited–VoP intentionally sought to ensure that women constitute at least half its members across both communities. Moreover, beyond participation behind the scenes, VoP also produces audio-visual content in which Rohingya women appear as speakers and subjects–a practice that participants indicated was relatively rare within camp-based media and everyday communication contexts.
Beyond gendered harassment and other risks faced within the camp, participants also pointed to the routine scrutiny and intimidation by law enforcement, particularly in relation to their use of mobile phones for media production. A refugee VoP member shared: When we first started working, we all struggled with acceptance. . . our Rohingya volunteers got regularly harassed for carrying mobile phones with audiovisual content. (R3, Refugee)
In these accounts, we see how participation in VoP is shaped by layered infrastructures of control–including documentation regimes, surveillance, communication networks and gendered norms of mobility.
Discussion and conclusion
This paper examined Voice of Palong as a participatory, audio-visual media initiative situated at the intersection of displacement, marginality and mediated communication. The analysis traced how VoP functions not simply as a communication project but as a relational media infrastructure through which counterpublics formations are assembled, negotiated and sustained under conditions of constraint.
The findings contribute to theories of subaltern counterpublics by showing how counterpublic formation emerges through everyday practices of co-production, circulation and listening, rather than overt oppositional politics alone. Consistent with Fraser’s (1990) formulation of counterpublic, VoP provides an alternative discursive arena in which marginalized narratives–absent or distorted in mainstream media–can circulate. However, whereas participatory cultural frameworks often emphasize low barriers to expression (Jenkins, 2006), Jackson and Kreiss (2023) argue that counterpublics must be conceptualized through the lens of social power and historical access. Following this centering of power, we suggest that VoP operates as a negotiated counterpublic. Its oppositional character is not in an overtly defiant style of discourse, but in its persistent effort to build community and create visibility within a social structure designed to exclude it. Participation here is not a matter of low-barriers but of high-stakes negotiation with surveillance, legal precarity and uneven exposure to risk.
Both refugee and host participants described forms of calibrated participation: selective storytelling, constructive journalism and discourses of positivity that enabled them to remain visible (and active) without triggering retaliation or exclusion. Importantly, calibrated participation did not mean that media practice was stripped of political significance. As Mazumdar (2024) observes in her analysis of Rohingya digital creators, creative practices that flourished beyond humanitarian oversight often blur the line between what external observers may dismiss as “silly” and what participants experience as meaningful and political. Similarly, VoP’s productions cannot be reduced to either advocacy or information dissemination. Participants described playful formats, cultural programming and community storytelling as sustaining morale, recognition and collective presence. In highly surveilled and precarious environments, such everyday media practices may themselves constitute subtle political work.
These dynamics suggest that counterpublic formation in protracted displacement is not merely discursive but infrastructural: communicative space in the camps does not pre-exist expression but is assembled through negotiated access to electricity, mobility, documentation, devices and interpersonal trust. Counterpublic practices are structured by the participants’ social location and their relationship to dominant power (Jackson and Kreiss, 2023). In this context, VoP shifts across what Squires (2002) identifies as enclave, counter, and satellite publics, moving between inward-facing affirmation, strategic accommodation, and contestation depending on topic, audience and perceived risk. VoP thus operates as a negotiated counterpublic, where the “oppositional” character lies less in overt confrontation than in the ongoing management of visibility within the border infrastructure.
The findings also underscore the relational conditions under which voice becomes meaningful. Participant’s narratives show that communicative power lies not only in speaking but in being listened to—by peers, audiences and communities—a dynamic also noted in research emphasizing listening, circulation and recognition instead of simply expressive voice. (Seuferling, 2019). Listener clubs, community screenings and vernacular broadcasting enabled recognition and reflection, illustrating how counterpublic formations depend on conditions of uptake, response and recognition, not expression alone. Moreover, in a context where communicative traditions are predominantly oral (and visual in the digital space), the relational and auditory dimensions of media practice become especially salient.
Importantly, relational voice was co-produced across refugee-host divides. Media labor–translation, scripting, interviewing, verification–served as a site of mutual learning that gradually disrupted us versus them narratives. As Wall et al. (2017) argues in her analysis of refugees’ social navigation under conditions of uncertainty, communicative practices often function less as oppositional claims than as relational strategies for navigating risk, trust and belonging. In this sense, communicative practice operated less as overt opposition and more as calibrated navigation—an ongoing management of visibility shaped by the by the uneven consequences of visibility within camp governance structures. These mediated encounters point toward what might be understood as social repair–not the resolution of structural injustices, but modest reworkings of trust and empathy in deeply unequal settings.
At the same time, participation was uneven. Senior women, religious leaders and those with limited literacy or mobility were less present in VoP’s production practices, underscoring how intersectional inequalities shape access to media publics. This highlights the importance of who is able to participate, be heard and sustain visibility.
Relatedly, situating VoP within the border and media infrastructures highlights how communication practices are embedded within and constrained by systems of control. Consistent with research on how trust, access and communicative legitimacy are unevenly distributed across refugee media infrastructures (Graf, 2018), we found that lack of identification documents, network outages, harassment and gendered safety risks functioned as infrastructural borders, shaping where, how and by whom media could be produced and circulated. This echoes scholarship on borders as diffuse infrastructures regulating mobility, labor and visibility (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013).
Yet, VoP also illustrates how grassroots media initiatives can partially reconfigure these infrastructures. Through hybrid online-offline distribution, peer verification networks and localized storytelling, participants assembled alternative communicative pathways that operated alongside–and sometimes beyond humanitarian information systems. Rather than positioning refugees as passive recipients of aid communication, Nikunen and Valtonen (2022) describe refugees’ digital media practices as shaped by precarity, where communicative acts are assembled through improvised and adaptive uses of available tools, relationships and platforms. VoP participants similarly navigated infrastructural limits through bricolage–improvised and adaptive combinations of available tools, social networks and communicative strategies that assemble forms of visibility and audibility under uneven access, surveillance and precarity.
While such initiatives cannot undo the structural conditions of statelessness and exclusion, they illuminate how marginalized communities negotiate voice and belonging through mediated practices. VoP’s intentional efforts to address gender inequality have expanded the conditions under which Rohingya refugee women’s voices can circulate, both through participation in media production and through their visibility within audio-visual content. These efforts unfolded alongside, rather than in the absence of, persistent gendered risks and safety concerns. As with other Rohingya digital initiatives (Mazumdar, 2024), even forms of women’s participation that appear culturally modest or informal can carry political weight in contexts where public visibility itself is constrained.
For practitioners and scholars, the findings of this study suggest that participatory media initiatives cannot be evaluated solely through metrics of reach or representation. Attention to relational process, uneven access and the politics of safety is essential for understanding how such projects enable and limit mediated citizenship in contexts of displacement.
The findings of this study suggest that participatory refugee media operates as a negotiated counterpublic through border infrastructure rather than despite it. VoP’s media practices emerged not outside conditions of surveillance, mobility restriction, gendered risk, and humanitarian governance, but through sustained negotiation with these infrastructures. Through hybrid online–offline circulation, peer verification networks, gender-conscious participation, and strategically calibrated storytelling, participants assembled communicative pathways that enabled voice, recognition, and relational belonging under constraint. In foregrounding how counterpublic formation is both infrastructural and relational, this study extends participatory refugee media scholarship by situating media practice within everyday processes of adaptation, care, and collaboration shaped by unequal border regimes in the Global South. Paying attention to the interplay between constraint, calibration and creativity makes visible how marginalized media actors navigate not only exclusion, but the ambiguous space between the everyday and the political.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank all participants in this study for their time and contribution, as well as Young Power in Social Action (YPSA) and the Voice of Palong. We also acknowledge the support provided by the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at the College of Global Futures, Arizona State University.
Ethical considerations
This study received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Arizona State University (STUDY00018180) in October 2023.
Consent to participate
All participants provided written informed consent prior to participating.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Arizona State University provided the preliminary research funds for data collection.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability statement
All anonymized transcripts can be accessed via the first author.