Risk communication during COVID-19 is essential to have support, but it is challenging in developing countries due to a lack of communication setup. It is more difficult for the low-income, marginal communities, and specifically, women in developing countries. To understand this, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted a qualitative study among N = 37 women (urban 20, rural = 17) across Bangladesh that presents the risk communication factors related to social and financial challenges. It reveals that the majority of the urban communities lack communication with local authorities, where urban low-income communities are the worst sufferers. Due to that, the majority of the urban participants could not get financial support, whereas the rural participants received such support for having communications with local authorities during the pandemic. However, access to technology helped some participants share and receive pandemic-related information about risk communication, and the adoption of financial technology helped to get emergency financial support through risk communication. Moreover, this work is expected to understand the role of risk communication during the COVID-19 pandemic among women in Bangladesh.

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BACKGROUND: Though smartphone is popular and loneliness is higher among the youth, in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) such as Bangladesh, the relation of loneliness with actual app usage is unexplored amid pandemic. Also, the studies conducted in developed countries are limited by exploration of some app categories. METHODS: We conducted two studies in Bangladesh: in 2020 (N1=100) and 2021 (N2=105). We collected participant’s ULS-8 score and 7 days’ actual app usage. We extracted app usage behavioral data from 1.69 million events and did semi-partial and partial correlation analyses. RESULTS: Our analysis did not present any significant relation which may indicate a negative impact on loneliness. However, we found higher usage of Social Media, Communication, Education, Books, and Shopping apps and higher entropy of Browser apps had significant (q<.05) relation with lower loneliness. CONCLUSION: Smartphone may not negatively impact loneliness. Instead, some app categories can play a role to mitigate loneliness.

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