An informal workshop on verifying news and information spread across social media was held recently at Phandeeyar in Yangon, Burma, led by the Foundation’s Special Advisor, Sanjana Hattotuwa. Amongst the confirmed participants were:
Media and Media Support Organizations
Irrawaddy
BBC Media Action
Kumudra and Modern Journal
Democratic Voice of Burma
Myanmar Journalism Institute
Civil Society Organizations
PEN Myanmar
People in Need
Burma Human Rights Network
Myanmar ICT Development Organization
Center for Diversity and National Harmony
Women Peace Arakan Network
Funders, Researchers, INGOS
Andaman Research and Advisory
Peace Support Fund
The Swedish Burma Committee
Fortify Rights
Humanitarian Dialogue Center
Covering Google, Error Level Analysis for images, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and other topics, the workshop was anchored to the source evaluation module of a longer course run by the ICT4Peace Foundation on the use of new media in crisis management. The workshop also drew on Sanjana’s experience of countering-rumors and violent extremism in Sri Lanka. Participants were alerted to several leading social media verification guides, frameworks and best practices from the likes of the BBC, Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Reports, First Draft news and other sources.
Those attending had a range of questions around content, technical issues, platforms, apps and use case scenarios, at a time in Myanmar where the spread of misinformation and disinformation campaigns and content is rife. Sanjana’s workshop ties in with activities done with Phandeeyar in the recent past around countering violence extremism online and the production of counter-speech to combat the rise of hate and dangerous speech in the country.
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.
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