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 […]
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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 […]
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 […]
The skeletons in all our cupboards: Google Earth’s importance in recent Sri Lankan history
Cross-posted from my personal blog. ### To remember is a choice, a hard one. To remember is to hold in check those who wish to return to the horrors of the past. To not revisit policies that led to past horrors is to give Sri Lanka a greater chance of healing, and reconciliation. And yet, […]
Using Google Earth to interrogate Sri Lanka’s war: An open invitation
Every single white dot in the satellite image above, taken in March 2009, is the temporary shelter for an internally displaced family in Sri Lanka. When viewed at full resolution on Google Earth, it is a mind-boggling concentration of people in conditions that were absolutely appalling. After working on it for a whole day, I […]
A Twitter storm over a cartoon
On Groundviews this morning, I covered in detail conversations on Twitter with Sri Lankans and Indians on the publication of an utterly tasteless cartoon, depicting the Prime Minister of India and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, in the Sunday edition of Lakbima, a newspaper with good circulation and owned by a businessman very close […]
The long arc of Nandikadal: New media bearing witness
Cross-posted from my personal blog, and published as my regular column in the print edition of The Nation, on 9 September 2012. ### Recent events in Tamil Nadu demonstrate the risk inherent in what most suggest is the Rajapaksa regime’s LLRC gambit – to drag on a process of enfeebled accountability and reductive reconciliation until […]
Legal Guarantees for FOE in Sri Lanka and how they are being eroded (in English, Sinhala and Tamil)
Legal Guarantees for FOE in Sri Lanka and how they are being eroded from Centre for Policy Alternatives on Vimeo.
Legal Guarantees for FOE in Sri Lanka and how they are being eroded (Sinhala) from Centre for Policy Alternatives on Vimeo.
Legal Guarantees for FOE in Sri Lanka and how they are being eroded (Tamil) from Centre for Policy Alternatives on Vimeo.
See related posters on Flickr here.
