GKP Panel – Pushing the envelop: New Media, Citizens Journalism, Human Rights and Development

ICT for Peacebuilding, Links 1 Minute

GKP

Despite a degree of skepticism about the event, in which I am not alone, I helped design and will moderate a panel for the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference organized by Global Knowledge Partnership.

Pushing the envelop: New Media, Citizens Journalism, Human Rights and Development

This panel brings together key thought leaders and innovators in new media and citizen’s journalism to explore the intersection of traditional and new media and the opportunities and challenges this presents to support human rights and media freedom – especially in countries with violent and repressive regimes.

Key questions explored by this panel will be:

  • Are citizens journalism and new media mere buzzwords or do they really make a difference compared to the reach and impact of traditional media?
  • Does censorship that traditional media is often subjected apply any differently to new media and citizens journalism?
  • Placed in harm’s way for the content one produces or showcases, how resilient is citizens journalism in the face of regimes that attack human rights defenders and media freedom?
  • Broadband is a pre-requisite for most new media. Is the new media revolution exacerbating the digital divide? How much can we generalise on the potential of new media to strengthen sustainable development as well as political and human rights issues?
  • Is new media more or less reflecting the imbalances in old media (gender related, for example) or is it more representative and equitable?
  • YouTube and SecondLife play a visible role in the mainstream party politics of some countries – is it a sign of things to come and what are the possibilities it presents for the future?
  • What does the future hold? Will the new media in 2015 look, feel and sound like?

More details here.

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

Published