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Policy Analysis
What a policy will actually do before it passes — and what it did after.
- Regulatory impact assessment
- Cost, capacity, and implementation feasibility
- Ex-post evaluation of enacted law
- Legislative drafting support
Established 2024 · Dhaka, Bangladesh
Leading Through Strategic Insight
BISD is Bangladesh's institute for policy analysis — grounded in political science and comparative policy method, and working where communication, culture, information, and technology meet the state. We turn theory into evidence, and evidence into policy that can actually be implemented.
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Practice pillars
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Fields of inquiry
বাংলা / EN
Every study published in both languages
Fields of inquiry
The disciplines
we work in
Policy analysis in Bangladesh sits at the intersection of four disciplines. Political science sets the question. Comparative method tests whether the answer travels. Policy analysis makes it implementable. And communication, culture, information, and technology decide what happens to it once it meets the public.
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Political Science
The theory that decides which question is worth asking.
- Institutions, parties, and electoral behaviour
- Political economy of reform
- State capacity and bureaucratic politics
- Survey design and measurement
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Comparative Policy
Whether an answer travels. Usually it does not, and why is the finding.
- Policy diffusion across South Asia
- Most-similar and most-different case design
- Regional regulatory benchmarking
- Transplant risk: what fails outside its origin
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Communication, Culture,
Information & Technology
Where the state meets the platform, and the citizen meets both.
- Media systems and information ecosystems
- Platform governance and content regulation
- Digital culture and public discourse
- Technology assessment and ethics
Our method
Three streams,
one channel
Research that is never acted on is commentary. Action that is not researched is guesswork. BISD runs both, and carries the result into policy. Political science sets the question; comparative method tests whether the answer travels. The three streams in our emblem meet in one channel before they reach open water — so does the work.
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Analysis & Research
- Real-time tracking of online manipulation, hate speech, and extremist mobilisation
- Social science pairing anthropological fieldwork with computational method
- Proprietary digital tools that deliver research-grade data analysis
- Cross-border monitoring of emerging threats and trends
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Action & Implementation
- Evidence-based intervention programmes at community level
- Digital citizenship and resilience training
- Youth leadership development
- Capacity building for practitioners and officials
- A standing network of community influencers and change-makers
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Policy & Advisory
- Government consultation and policy recommendation
- Digital governance frameworks
- Regulatory support and implementation guidance
- Regional cooperation initiatives
- Crisis response protocols
The BISD Observatory
What we are watching
The Observatory is BISD's measurement layer — a continuously updated picture of the Bangla-language information environment, and of where Bangladesh sits against comparable jurisdictions. The figures below are illustrative placeholders for the designed metric set — this is an identity and interface system, not live research output. Published figures would each ship with a codebook and sampling frame.
Illustrative figures — design placeholders, not measured data
Narrative clusters tracked
1,247
Rolling 12 months
Coordinated accounts mapped
38.4K
Across 6 platforms
Practitioners trained
2,860
In 32 districts
Policy submissions filed
46
To government and platforms
Verified narrative clusters, per month
Aug 2025 – Jul 2026 · Bangla-language platforms
Most-amplified narrative frames
Last 90 days · thousands of variants
Comparative digital-governance capacity
BISD index, 0–100 · 2024 → 2026 · eight jurisdictions
Method. Figures are drawn from a stratified sample; human coders adjudicate every machine classification, and a cluster is dropped when double-coded agreement falls below 0.80 Krippendorff's alpha. Codebooks, sampling frames, and uncertainty bounds are published alongside each report.
Publications
Research
Across all four fields — policy analysis, political science, comparative policy, and technology in society. Written for the people who have to act on it: regulators, platform teams, and community organisers. Every report is released in Bangla and English, open access.
Flagship report
Faultlines: the anatomy of electoral disinformation in Bangladesh
Built on eighteen months of collection and 412 interviews: how coordinated networks convert local grievance into national narrative — and which interventions measurably slow them down.
Read the report →Platform accountability for Bangla: a regulatory design
ReadGendered disinformation and candidate withdrawal
ReadInterfaith dialogue in Sylhet: what actually held
ReadClassifying Bangla hate speech: an open codebook
ReadWhat transplants: digital governance across eight jurisdictions
ReadTwelve-month outcomes of digital citizenship training
ReadImpact areas
Where we work
Two linked domains. What happens online ends up on the street — we treat them as one problem, not two portfolios.
Digital Society
Platforms, narratives, and the rules that govern them
- 01Online hate-speech monitoring
- 02Disinformation analysis and response
- 03Platform governance
- 04Digital citizenship education
- 05Tech policy innovation
Social Cohesion
The relationships that hold a society together under pressure
- 01Community resilience building
- 02Interfaith dialogue
- 03Youth engagement
- 04Cultural bridge-building
- 05Gender inclusion
The BISD Academy
Programmes
Prepare for the world's fastest-growing sectors — media and technology — and for the institutions trying to govern them. Four streams, each on the same terms: method and consequence taught together, never one without the other.
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Communication, Culture,
Information & Technology
How information moves through a society, who shapes it, and what it does once it arrives. Media and digital technologies, studied alongside their social consequences.
- Policy analyst
- Trust & safety
- Media researcher
- Communications strategist
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Digital Enterprise
Management
Use digital technology to build institutions that work — in government, in industry, and in the organisations between them. Systems thinking, procurement, security, and delivery.
- Digital transformation lead
- Cybersecurity manager
- Programme manager
- Public-sector technologist
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Professional Writing
and Communication
The skill that decides whether evidence is ever acted on. Write the brief a minister reads, the report a journalist can use, and the guidance a field officer can follow — in Bangla and in English.
- Policy writer
- Technical writer
- Media relations
- Editorial lead
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Technology, Coding
and Society
Design digital platforms and services, analyse data, and build the tools — while taking seriously what they do to the people who use them. Method and ethics in the same room.
- Data analyst
- Civic technologist
- Research engineer
- Technology ethicist
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Convening
The BISD Dialogue
Closed-door convenings under the Chatham House Rule, where regulators, platform staff, journalists, and community organisers sit at one table.
14 Sep 2026 Dhaka
The Electoral Integrity Table
Closed session with commission officials, platform policy teams, and election monitors.
By invitation
02 Nov 2026 Chattogram
Coastal Resilience Forum
Field reporting on climate displacement, rumour, and local conflict.
Registration open
18 Jan 2027 Online
Bangla Language Technology Roundtable
Moderation in low-resource languages: researchers and engineers together.
Call for papers
Governance
Independence
& Integrity
BISD maintains complete operational and intellectual independence and holds itself to the highest standards of research integrity and ethical practice. Our work rests on a diverse funding base — research grants, programme partnerships, and strategic collaborations — structured so that no single source can set the agenda.
No single funder above 15%
Funding composition is published annually, broken down by donor.
No pre-publication veto
No funder, government, or platform reviews or approves findings before release.
Open method
Codebooks, sampling frames, and stated limitations ship with every publication.
Ethics review
All human-subjects work is cleared by an independent ethics board.
People
Who does the work
Anthropologists, data scientists, former journalists, and community organisers on the same team.
RSResearch & AnalysisDirector
DPData & PlatformsHead
PAPolicy & AdvisoryHead
PRProgrammesHead
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Work with us
Bring evidence
to the table
We work with regulators, platforms, funders, and community organisations. Commission a study, partner on a programme, or join a Dialogue.