# The Politics of Fear and the Experience of Bangladeshi Religious Minority Communities Using Social Media Platforms

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.15207 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15207/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 19 Oct 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [How do datasets, developers, and models affect biases in a low-resourced language?: The Case of the Bengali Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06816/) (2025)
- [Mod-Guide: An LLM-based Content Moderation Feedback System to Address Insensitive Speech toward Indigenous Ethnic and Religious Minority Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13397/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite significant research on online harm, polarization, public deliberation, and justice, CSCW still lacks a comprehensive understanding of the experiences of religious minorities, particularly in relation to fear, as prominently evident in our study. Gaining faith-sensitive insights into the expression, participation, and inter-religious interactions on social media can contribute to CSCW's literature on online safety and interfaith communication. In pursuit of this goal, we conducted a six-month-long, interview-based study with the Hindu, Buddhist, and Indigenous communities in Bangladesh. Our study draws on an extensive body of research encompassing the spiral of silence, the cultural politics of fear, and communication accommodation to examine how social media use by religious minorities is influenced by fear, which is associated with social conformity, misinformation, stigma, stereotypes, and South Asian postcolonial memory. Moreover, we engage with scholarly perspectives from religious studies, justice, and South Asian violence and offer important critical insights and design lessons for the CSCW literature on public deliberation, justice, and interfaith communication.