During the course of the last decade, a revolution has swept across Bangladesh. It did not happen through ballots or barricades, but on the screens glowing in the palms of ordinary people.

Just with a mere smartphone in their hands, citizens have become penmen of their own age, reporters without press identification, editors without newsrooms, story-tellers of the new dawn.

This is the saga of how citizen journalism rose from whispers in the streets to a force that could shake governments.

Once, truth in Bangladesh flowed through a few select gates - the newsroom, the press briefing, the evening bulletin. Today, it flows through millions of fingertips. By 2025, more than 77 million Bangladeshis were online, and over 60 million had social media accounts, according to the 'Digital 2025: Bangladesh' report by Global Digital Insights.

Social platforms have become our virtual town square, from Dhaka's smoky tea stalls to the remotest huts of Kurigram. There, politics is not just discussed; it is performed. The citizen has become both audience and presenter, witness and judge.

When Movements Found Their Voice

The roots of this digital uprising trace back to moments when the nation's conscience caught fire.

During the protest movements of Shahbagh 2013, the 2018 road safety protests, and the quota reform movement, social media flared up before media outlets even noticed.

Particularly during the latter two, students live-streamed clashes as tear gas clouded the air; activists uploaded raw, trembling videos from their phones.

The world observed that these movements were "visible on citizen networks" long before traditional outlets could cover them.

For the first time, stories did not wait for permission.

The Rise of the Independent Voice

In this new ecosystem, new voices began to dominate - unfiltered, unconventional and often polarising.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, once a budding physician who dabbled in politics, obtained a massive following through his sharp and spiky political analysis on Facebook and YouTube. Once an ardent supporter of the Shahbagh movement, he eventually turned against the last authoritarian regime, took asylum in Paris, and gradually became a voice of dissent for his followers. It is to be mentioned that he is a figure who blurred the line between activism and agitation to his critics as well.

In April 2024, Bangladesh authorities charged him under the controversial 'Digital Security Act', alleging that his contents spread misguiding information, a move that rekindled the debate over freedom of expression and digital accountability.

Similarly, Elias Hossain, the popular political YouTuber, broadcasting from New York, built an online audience of millions. His videos often sparks heated discussions, outpacing traditional media in reach.

His contents, as well, could not turn away criticism for its sensationalist tone and lack of editorial oversight. In 2025, he was acquitted by a Dhaka court on charges of misleading the mass people.

Then came the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) movement of 2024, where student leaders such as Hasnat Abdullah, Arif Sohel, Abdul Hannan Masud, Umama Fatema, Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud, and Sarjis Alam used social media to document protests and confront state narratives in real time. Their livestreams became an alternative news feed for many, though critics may argue that such coverage sometimes fuelled emotional responses.

The movement's digital momentum played a role in shaping the political unrest that culminated in the fall of the government, which is a turning point in Bangladesh's political landscape that continues to divide public opinion.

But revolutions are rarely clean. The same platforms that gave citizens a voice have also given birth to chaos.

During the 2018 quota reform protests, rumors spread faster than the truth could breathe. One viral post claimed a student had been shot dead; another said a young protester named Abu Bakar Siddique had been killed. Both were false.

Later, Siddique even went live on Facebook to prove he was alive. But by then, anger had already taken hold.

So it is obvious that a single lie, amplified a thousand times, can become a new kind of weapon.

In August 2024, social media erupted again through and following the student-led protests.

One of the incidents was a viral photo claiming cricketer Liton Das's house had been burned by protesters. The image was everywhere, stoking outrage and communal tension.

Only later did fact-checkers reveal that the house in the picture belonged not to Liton, but to Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, torched amid violence unrelated to any communal tension.

Truth, it seems, is no longer absolute as it constantly competes for attention in the current time. And in the contest between accuracy and virality, emotion almost always wins.

When Innocence Burns

The darkest cost of misinformation came in 2019, when Facebook rumors of "child kidnappers" ignited mob fury across the country.

Within months, at least 30 innocent people were attacked, and 8 were killed - among them, Taslima Begum, a mother of two who was killed by a violent mob at a school in Badda, where she had gone to seek ger children's admission. The tragic incident of her killing was recorded and shared online, proving that in the wrong hands, technology can turn ordinary people into executioners.

Even recent tragedies could not escape this barbaric instinct.

When a Bangladesh Air Force fighter jet accidentally crashed into Milestone College in July of 2025, graphic photos of children's burned remains flooded social media.

Then the authority stepped in and the High Court ordered the images to be removed, citing the violation of human dignity.

How pathetic it was that people forgot the faces behind the images in the rush to get views and shares. They saw only the shock, not the sorrow of the victims' families. When truth loses its soul, humanity loses its reflection.

A Nation Empowered and Haunted

There is no denying that citizen journalism has transformed Bangladesh. It has made the powerless visible, the invisible heard. It has exposed corruption, amplified protests and held the mighty to account.

But it has also made truth fragile as a smartphone today can start a revolution or a riot. It can liberate a voice or destroy a life. No one can deny that in today's Bangladesh, the more shocking the post, the faster it spreads - truth and lies alike often go unnoticed.

And so, we stand at a crossroads - between enlightenment and anarchy, between information and illusion.

The question that will define our democracy is not whether citizen journalism can survive, but whether we can handle the power it has placed in our hands.

As in this new era, every citizen can share news, and every story, true or false, can shape the conversation.