Vikalpa (www.vikalpa.org) relaunched its website yesterday, with a renewed focus on compelling and original opinion and analysis in Sinhala from Sri Lanka. First launched in 2007, the old website had become unwieldy, inelegant and hard to navigate. The new website introduces a number of new sections, and makes it easier to follow content updates on […]
Tag Archives: Vikalpa
Is the LTTE really finished and the War over? videos watched over 37,000 times
Is the LTTE really finished and the War over? is a series of short videos in English, Sinhala and Tamil featuring promiment politicians, former LTTE members, academics and civil society activists. The 24 videos in this series have been viewed, just a few days after they were uploaded, well over 37,000 times collectively. Some videos […]
Vikalpa YouTube Channel in Top 100 list again
For the 3rd time since its launch, Vikalpa’s YouTube video channel has hit the Top 100 list. At the time of writing, it’s #31, though earlier this morning it was #29, the highest rank globally Vikalpa has attained to date. Earlier this year, Vikalpa was on the Top 100 list for its coverage of Lasantha […]
Mainstream bloggers?
Indi and Dinidu are two examples of bloggers who transition easily, and arguably effectively, between new and mainstream print media. Indi’s just taken up a column in the Sunday Leader (as I have, more anon) and Dinidu was formerly with the Daily Mirror, helping them inter alia to set up a Twitter feed. Both write […]
Internet and Web based Citizen Journalism in Sri Lanka
Background paper to a workshop on Citizen Journalism I’m organising in the near future. Full paper with references as a PDF from here. Many less radical institutions – governments, NGOs, think tanks – are struggling to address the same challenge, unable to respond to the rapidly shifting balance of power between the individual and the […]
Poetry, Prose and Satire: Exploring violence, war, religion and peace in Sri Lanka
In light of a Government unable and unwilling to investigate violence against journalists and independent media, satire is one way in which violent events, processes and individuals can be held up for public scrutiny more frequently. In the first submission to the site, Banyan News Reporters publishes a piece on how TV Remote Controllers are […]
25th commemoration of Black July across the web
Sites that over the week put up content to commemorate the anti-Tamil riots of 1983 in Sri Lanka were many and ranged from a plethora of wire services to an equally diverse range of blogs, each with their own take on the events a quarter century ago in real time, yet just yesterday for some […]
Vikalpa Video in the YouTube Reporters Top 100 for coverage of 1983 anti-Tamil riots
Screenshot taken at 9.15am, 30th July 2008 (+5.30GMT) The Vikalpa Video Channel made it to the top 100 most viewed channels on the YouTube Reporters category this week. The interest in and traffic to the site was largely generated by over 30 short videos on July ’83 available here. To put this significant achievement in […]
Mobile phone based citizen journalism videos on YouTube viewed over 104,000 times
Inspired by a post on Burning Bridge to do a count of the number of times all the videos on the Vikalpa YouTube channel had been viewed, I was pleased to note that the videos had been collectively viewed over 104,000 times to date. The channel itself has been viewed over 5,000 times. Writing in October 2007 […]
“Mass audiences” and citizen journalism
“Sri Lankan participatory media projects do not yet have mass audiences.” Burning Bridges makes this statement in a recent post on participatory media’s impact on abductions in Sri Lanka. I wonder though, should they? Does it require a “mass audience” to make an impact? I think the answer to this depends on place, context, issue, […]
