Rohingya participatory media in protracted displacement: Counterpublic formation through calibrated participation

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.