This chapter analyzes the media's role in depicting the Rohingya crisis on the ground. The media plays an important role in raising awareness of the Rohingya refugee crisis by exposing all aspects of the situation. Despite the fact that the Rohingya refugee crisis has captivated the attention of people worldwide, the media's portrayal of the Rohingyas’ situation is as contentious as that of any other group of people seeking safety from persecution. This has exacerbated the problem, resulting in a slew of economic, social, and political problems in Bangladesh. As a result, it's critical to investigate how the media frames the Rohingya refugee crisis, how those frames differ and overlap, and what can explain the media's selective focus on certain aspects of the problem. Academic research on the Rohingya refugees’ situation can help identify all of the aforementioned components. There have been studies of how the Rohingya refugee crisis is depicted in the media, but the data is insufficient, and no comparison of media coverage across regions has been conducted.

The Rohingyas have been presented as criminals and security threats in major South Asian media outlets. The condition of the Rohingya people in Bangladesh is detailed in newspaper stories such as ‘Desperate Rohingya turn to crime’, ‘Refugee camps in Cox's Bazar: Rohingya embroiled in crime’, and ‘Rohingya pose a threat to regional security’ (Wong and Suan, 2012). These stories have focused on the assumption that the Rohingya people are to blame for the breakdown of law and order in Bangladesh, as well as the initiation of many criminal actions, including murder, kidnapping, extortion, sexual harassment, and drug smuggling. Locals in Teknaf Upazila and Ukhia, where the camps are located, are extremely frightened about their safety as a result of the Rohingyas’ criminal acts, as presented in the aforementioned news stories. This is because, after three years of hardship and uncertainty, the Rohingya people have grown increasingly desperate.

We believe that the media's emphasis (Toole and Waldman, 1997; Turow, 2009) on these concerns is deliberate in order to capture the attention of international leaders and compel them to act on the repatriation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.