I was invited today by the American Centre in Colombo today to deliver a lecture on digital archives in general, from the perspective of a citizen archivist. The presentation looked at the ways information around contemporary events, issues and processes, in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, are being generated digitally and largely lost for posterity, raising the challenge of archiving ...
On 24th April at the American Centre in Colombo, from 3pm to I guess around 5pm, I’ll be talking about the challenges around archiving digital content on the Internet and web. Titled Capturing the ephemeral: Archiving our digital present, the presentation will look at the ways information around contemporary events, issues and processes, in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, are being generated digitally and ...
Cross-posted from the ICT4Peace Foundation’s blog. ### I March this year, Patrick Meier wrote to me and to Daniel Stauffacher, the head of the ICT4Peace Foundation, to give input into what at the time was a draft note around creating a global network of civilian UAV pilots to support humanitarian efforts. The draft concept note was a compelling call to ...
In early May I was invited to take part in an interview on ‘Beyond School Books’, a podcast series produced by UNICEF New York, looking at technology and peacebuilding. The podcast and related article was published today (you’ll need VLC or RealPlayer to listen to the audio stream). Talking about how technology has changed the way we monitor peace, ...
Given the vituperative pushback of the BBS online against those who participated in the vigil in Colombo a few weeks ago, immediate measures to secure content posted on to web based social media platforms are essential to protect one’s own privacy, and those of family, friends and colleagues. Engaging in liking content on Facebook, featuring articles on it, uploading ...
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 where mainstream media, for whatever ...
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 to parents, young adults and ...
Reblogged from appvocacy: We've written before about the way political leaders use Twitter, and about Groundviews, the award-winning citizen journalism blog in Sri Lanka. Last week, UK Foreign Minister Alistair Burt held a live Twitter Q&A on Sri Lanka, in which Groundviews was one of the most engaged participants. After the event, Groundviews released a summary of the Q&A, ...
We are getting closer to Build Peace 2016, which going by the agenda now online is shaping up to be the best yet. Spread over three days, we have a great line-up of speakers (online bots for activism, virtual reality for peacebuilding, combating extremism online) and a growing selection of workshops (videogames for peace, co-designing technology, trauma and wellbeing ...
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 that the President’s new media ...
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 reach. New media knowledge is ...
“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 is edited to look frightening ...
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 stop such conflicts between communities? ...
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 Women in Media Network (SAWM ...
Cross-posted from the ICT4Peace Foundation’s website. ### ICT4Peace is very pleased to announce that Sanjana Hattotuwa, Special Advisor ICT4Peace Foundation and PhD candidate at Otago University’s National Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies (NCPACS) has co-launched and will lead the research on a first of its kind academic partnership in New Zealand with Twitter on the use of social media in the ...
The green beans were wrapped in Time. The magazine, not the passage. The lentils usually in a Newsweek. Any purchase of over a kilo of manioc was rewarded by indeterminable foreign newsprint on international affairs as its wrapping. Perhaps my love and insatiable consumption of manioc was linked to the possibility of a reward by way of more crushed, stained ...
Technology does not feel. It does not bleed. Its very insensitivity to trauma can be its strength – the tireless information sharing frameworks Info Share created knew no time of day and didn’t clamour for rest. On the other hand, because it is value neutral, technology lends itself to abuse. It cannot by itself create relief processes. No matter ...
When I read Where Humbert Humbert Might Whisper in Your Ear in the New York Times on a flight back to Colombo from the US, I immediately thought of doing something along the same lines in Sri Lanka to explore to what degree, post-war, we were still under invisible frameworks of control and censorship. Upon my return, I emailed the ...
Excerpt from a letter penned to the UN Secretary-General penned by me on behalf of the ICT4Peace Foundation. Originally posted on the Foundation’s website on 19 June 2019. ### Image courtesy Vice The ICT4Peace Foundation congratulates the Secretary-General of the UN on the launch of the UN strategy and plan of action on hate speech. The Foundation’s research into and ...
Almost exactly a year ago, Facebook was in the news in New Zealand over a row with Privacy Commissioner John Edwards. The heated public exchange between Edwards and the company took place in the context of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the private information of millions of Facebook users was harvested, illicitly, for deeply divisive, partisan and political ...
