Given the vituperative pushback of the BBS online against those who participated in the vigil in Colombo a few weeks ago, immediate measures to secure content posted on to web based social media platforms are essential to protect one’s own privacy, and those of family, friends and colleagues. Engaging in liking content on Facebook, featuring […]
New media and citizen journalism: The case of Groundviews
Presented the work I had done with Groundviews to a group of activists from South Asia recently, noting that using social media platforms on the web, combined with mobiles, it is increasingly possible to bear witness to and report on inconvenient truths, no matter what the timbre of government. I also flagged that in contexts […]
Analysing Twitter Q&As
Reblogged from appvocacy: We’ve written before about the way political leaders use Twitter, and about Groundviews, the award-winning citizen journalism blog in Sri Lanka. Last week, UK Foreign Minister Alistair Burt held a live Twitter Q&A on Sri Lanka, in which Groundviews was one of the most engaged participants. After the event, Groundviews released a […]
The Sri Lankan President’s Twitter archive
Excerpt from a much longer piece I wrote for Groundviews (The Sri Lankan President’s Twitter archive and Propaganda 2.0: New challenges for online dissent), dealing with an archive I created that captures every single tweet published by the Sri Lankan President’s official Twitter account, and why this is so important. ### It is evident therefore […]
Growing online challenges for activists in Sri Lanka
Excerpt from a much longer piece I wrote for Groundviews (The Sri Lankan President’s Twitter archive and Propaganda 2.0: New challenges for online dissent), dealing with growing challenges for online activism in Sri Lanka. ### Aiding the regime’s increasingly competency and strategic use of new media is (domestic) civil society’s ignorance of its potential and […]
When words do more than hurt, by Anukshi Jayasinha
“The demographics on (sic) these hate groups on social media are very young, which is alarming,” says Sanjana Hattotuwa, editor of Groundviews. “A thrust of hate speech today takes place more on social media than on mainstream media, and it is going viral. These ‘pages’ also carry a lot of photographic and illustrative content that […]
Anti-Muslim hate online in post-war Sri Lanka
I was recently contacted by a journalist from one of the leading Sunday newspapers in Sri Lanka on the growing anti-Muslim hate campaigns in Sri Lanka. The journalist asked two questions (reproduced verbatim), Anti-Muslim/Anti-Buddhist sentiments are being spread around effectively by social media, how do you analyse this? How can social media be used to […]
Panel Discussion: Women’s Engagement with New Media
The proverbial glass ceiling has long been in the way of women’s upward movement within the public sphere, including in media institutions. How have women overcome the limitations of access and opportunity of the conventional media structures by increasingly and innovatively engaging with online media platforms and spaces? The Sri Lankan chapter of South Asian […]
Introduction to new media, Internet security and web based social media strategies
Around a fortnight ago I was invited by two leading civil society organisations (Women and Media Collective and Young Asia Television) to conduct full day training programmes for civil society activists, mostly women and from outside the Western Province, introducing them to web based social and new media, new media advocacy strategies and Internet security. […]
