Image courtesy the President’s Twitter account
On the occasion of the World Conference on Youth 2014, the President Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa announced over social media he would have, and not for the first time, a Twitter Q&A on Thursday, 8th May at 11.30am. We archived the entire conversation, conducted under the hashtag #WCY2014MR.
At the end of the session, a data visualisation of the tweets posted to the President looked like this. The image shows that while many opted to ask the President a question by addressing him on Twitter (@presrajapaksa is a verified account) many others opted to just use the #WCY2014MR hashtag.
Soon after the President concluded the Q&A session, a little over an hour after it began, the archive featured over 1,300 unique tweets, and a combined total, with retweets, of close to 3,000 tweets for the session.
Revealingly, not a single one of the most retweeted questions during the session, posed to the President by three leading journalists in Sri Lanka, were answered.
The questions were,
@PresRajapaksa Are not near-weekly student protests an indicator that your Govt's policies are not inline with needs of students? #wcy2014MR
— Dinidu de Alwis (@dinidu) May 8, 2014
@PresRajapaksa If Govt is committed to youth empowerment & reconciliation why close Jaffna University during 'victory-week'? #WCY2014MR
— dharisha (@tingilye) May 8, 2014
As WCY hosted by SL we saw 3000 students protesting near ur office saying Govt not solved their problems even after 150 days,Why? #WCY2014MR
— Azzam Ameen (@AzzamAmeen) May 8, 2014
Not a single question we posed went answered either. In particular, we repeatedly asked the President, the father of Namal Rajapaksa MP and Rohitha Rajapaksa, how their reprehensible behaviour and utterances in public reflected on the values he, as the President, sought to inspire in youth.
@aufidius @Sabithl Do you think we should have asked how this example is any better for youth in #lka? http://t.co/im8fWizvXv #WCY2014MR
— Groundviews (@groundviews) May 8, 2014
@aufidius If @PresRajapaksa as father cannot set an example with his own sons, how can he as President determine policies for youth in #lka?
— Groundviews (@groundviews) May 8, 2014
@PresRajapaksa @Sabithl One young MP, in official role, publishes this sort of stuff. Do you endorse it? http://t.co/Vfldbsf8ig #WCY2014MR
— Groundviews (@groundviews) May 8, 2014
The Republic Square has three key take away points from the Twitter Q&A.
Prophetically, gifted cartoonist Gihan de Chickera published this cartoon in today’s Daily Mirror newspaper. It is a perfect capture of today’s Twitter Q&A of a President who is more keen to engage on social media than in strengthening peace.
Access the data visualisation of the Twitter Q&A here. Don’t try this unless you have a pretty powerful computer.
To search through and read every single tweet in the #WCY2014MR session, click here.
Note that live data collection for the archive was stopped at 5.44pm on 8th May 2014.