On Easter Sunday, Sri Lanka was hit by devasting terrorist attacks across the country, claimed by ISIS some days later. The attacks killed over 250, and injured many hundreds more.
Throughout the week, more arms caches, known associates of the suicide bombers and safe houses were discovered and raided.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks, with no warning, the Sri Lankan government blocked social media including Viber, Facebook and WhatsApp. It did not, however, block Twitter. Some, welcomed the move, including Ivan Segal from the renowned GlobalVoices (sharing some initial thoughts on Twitter), and Kara Swisher, a journalist from the New York Times. It is unclear if Swisher has ever visited Sri Lanka or studied, to any degree, the country’s complex media eco-systems.
Pushing back on the Western gaze, which used Sri Lanka’s tragedy to simplistically spin, somehow, that since Facebook allowed vast amount of toxicity on its platform, it could and would be weaponised in the aftermath of the terrorism to seed more violence, many commentators in Sri Lanka painted a far more nuanced, cautious approach. Placing the block, the second time the government of Sri Lanka has done it in just over a year, in context, activists, journalists and public commentators on the ground offered perspectives that were anchored to how inextricably entwined social media was in response, recovery, public information, political and crisis communications, news and credible information dissemination as well as a vector for an unprecedented national disaster to connect in grief and loss.
Sanjana Hattotuwa, Special Advisor at the ICT4Peace Foundation, was featured in international media talking about the social media block, including the possible reasons for it and the ramifications on account of it.
A comprehensive article on the attacks and the social media block was published on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Religion and Ethics website. Read Can social media be a force for good in Sri Lanka after the Easter Sunday bombings? It’s complicated here.
Social media: promoter of democratic participation or purveyor of violence?, a podcast presented by Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens on Radio National in Australia, which was an extended take of a live broadcast on Australian radio, can be listened to here.
An interview with Kristie Lu Stout broadcast on CNN, Social media ban is not effective in Sri Lanka, can be viewed here.
Broadcast first on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Listening Post also featured Sanjana’s input in a segment dealing with the attacks and the aftermath. See the programme, Sri Lanka Easter bombings: Debating the social media clampdown, here.