Google recently invited me to write up 500 words for their Policy by the Numbers blog on big data and peacebuilding, taking points and examples from a much longer paper I wrote recently (A brief exploration of Open and Big Data: From investigative journalism to humanitarian aid and peacebuilding). My submission is now live on […]
Not In Our Name initiative in Sri Lanka: TV trailer
Young Asia Television kindly produced this 15 second TV spot for the Not In Our Name initiative.
Not In Our Name initiative in Sri Lanka: TV interview
Young Asia Television recently asked me the following questions about the Not In our Name initiative for their weekly Connections TV digest. Not in Our Name: Is it focusing just only on the incident in Dambulla or is it looking broadly at religious extremism in Sri Lanka ? Judging from the responses so far , […]
Online security for journalists and activists
I was invited by the International Center for Journalists to give two lectures to a group of South Asian journalists on digital media strategies and online safety. The first I gave a couple of days ago, and today I gave a presentation on how they could navigate online security issues. As expected, the questions ranged […]
Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
A week ago, a violent a mob of about 2,000 Sinhalese, including a group of Buddhist monks led by the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu chapter Inamaluwe Sumangala thero, stormed and vandalised a mosque in Dambulla. The mosque was declared an illegal structure, but it is unclear how this far this is accurate. The shameful […]
Writing for and curating content on the web: Short lecture
I was invited by the International Center for Journalists to give two lectures to a group of South Asian journalists on digital media strategies and online safety, the first of which I delivered yesterday at my old haunt, the Sri Lanka College of Journalism. Was very sad to note that there were just two Sri […]
Castigated on Twitter, is Yes FM now lying about its social media debacle?
On 11th April 2012, at the height of public panic and anxiety over a tsunami watch, YES FM tweeted about tickets for a Shaggy concert in Colombo. I’ve covered this in detail in YES FM’s tweet during a tsunami watch: An epic fail. YES FM, in a number of public tweets, apologised and put it down […]
OpenNet Initiative’s completely misleading assessment on Sri Lanka’s Internet freedom
As part of the Guardian’s ongoing Battle for the Internet series, looking “challenges facing the dream of an open internet”, it published an interactive map purporting to rank the level of government interference over Internet access around the world, with data sourced from the OpenNet Initiative (ONI). Bizarrely, on Sri Lanka it notes that “The […]
Sri Lanka’s tsunami warning on 11 April 2012: Twitter and social media role
Was asked in the morning by a friend and journalist to pen a quick response to the following questions, anchored to the events around Sri Lanka’s tsunami watch a couple of days ago: What did you think of speed and quality of official GOSL response? How, in your view, did mainstream media react? Both websites […]
YES FM’s tweet during a tsunami watch: An epic fail
It would have taken a singularly ignorant individual yesterday to not know about the tsunami watch Sri Lanka was under, for a couple of very tense and chaotic hours, after an earthquake and strong aftershocks occurred off Indonesia. Rohan Samarajiva has a good article noting the role social media (Twitter in particular) played in information […]
