An Uneven Playing Field: Bisliya Bhutto
Initially, Bisliya, a women’s rights activist based in Puttalam and researching on female participation in politics, didn’t want to enter the arena herself. Her interests lay more in working to get more…
Media and Communications
An Uneven Playing Field: Jeevanee Kariyawasam
‘When you’re having a conversation, your message might reach four or five people. With technology acting as a mouthpiece, you can reach thousands at a time. And when you don’t see the…
Keeping Time On World Press Freedom Day
Sri Lanka ranks 131 on the Reporters Without Borders 2018 World Press Freedom Index, an improvement of 10 points in the space of a year. The reason for this may be the…
Freedom of Expression on the decline in Sri Lanka
The last twelve months, since World Press Freedom day 2017, has not been a good year for freedom of expression in Sri Lanka. The war ravaged North bore the brunt of repression,…
A Superiority Complex: Why the Government Needs to Communicate with the People
The government has a superiority complex. Let me elaborate. Within the last few weeks, the Government of Sri Lanka has managed to host tourism and promotional events and business interactions in Japan,…
Weaponising 280 characters: What 200,000 tweets and 4,000 bots tell us about state of Twitter in Sri Lanka
In light of a recent spike in suspicious activity on Twitter in Sri Lanka, is pleased to publish a detailed report co-authored by Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Sanjana Hattotuwa and…
Facebook responds to open letter from Sri Lankan civil society
A day after our open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook representatives from Delhi, India, on his behalf, responded. The email is reproduced below in full. It is worth noting at the outset…
RTI Reveals Lanka E News Blocked On Order from President’s Office
In December 2017, received a list of 13 websites that had been blocked from 2015 onwards by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), via a Right to Information request. The documentation uncovered the…
Open letter to Facebook: Implement Your Own Community Standards
10 April 2018 Colombo, Sri Lanka. Dear Mark, In solidarity with and support of a letter signed by leading civil society organisations from Myanmar addressed to you recently, we, the undersigned,…
A Hellish Year: Misogyny in the Public Service Sector
The post itself was perfect at a glance – everything I could have imagined and more, and even stood up against my questioning nature. Regardless of the name of the position and…
Smart Phones and Stupid Governments: Blocking Social Media as Sri Lanka Burns
Struggling to contain a spate of Buddhist-led attacks on minority muslims, Sri Lanka’s government imposed temporary blocking of social media and chat applications on March 7. This followed the reintroduction of Emergency…
Tech vs. Democracy
BRUSSELS – Instagram, a photo-sharing platform owned by Facebook, recently caved in to a demand by the Russian government that it remove posts by opposition leader Alexey Navalny alleging misconduct on the…
New editors. Plus ça change.
Image from I am very pleased to announce that Raisa Wickrematunge has taken over as Editor-in-Chief of – earlier the same year. Raisa and Amalini share a range of skills, experience and interests…
Ekneligoda, Sugirtharajan and 24th January
For several years, the Free Media Movement (FMM) of Sri Lanka and free expression advocates have dubbed January as “Black January”. This was in the context of a large number of journalists…
Namal Rajapaksa, bots and trolls: New contours of digital propaganda and online discourse in Sri Lanka
Image courtesy , by Quartz Late 2017, the Twitter account of has generated all manner of violent, venomous pushback and responses to content it has produced, published and promoted. Over the years,…
