The Ceylon Today newspaper quotes me in what is becoming a familiar story – identity theft and the unauthorised use of photos posted to various online social media fora for nefarious activities. Women and Media Collective‘s Sepali Kottegoda underscores the problem, yet the challenge remains on how to build and teach this (new) media literacy […]
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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. […]
From paper to pixels: News today
Yet something of the old media world is deeply missed. The serendipitous discovery of news and information, for example. We all now live in so-called ‘filter bubbles’, consuming information either curated by us, or for us. Some of this curation is human, which offers agency and choice to the few who wish to really engage […]
Citizen Journalism in Sri Lanka: Video of book launch (in Sinhala)
Read this post for a full description of this event and book, which also contains a video interview with me in English. This video of the launch was produced by Young Asia Television, and was part of a longer episode in the Connections series. The original video can be viewed on Vimeo here.
Retention and discoverability: Disappearing tweets, archiving information and peacebuilding
The problem is simply stated. Peacebuilding today, however defined and conducted, cannot exclude the importance and impact of content produced and shared on Twitter (and other social media platforms). This content is particularly resonant when produced and disseminated within cycles of violence, either during or after war. The volume of this content is growing. The […]
