groundviews presentation for manthan award 2008

Groundviews Sanjana Hattotuwa

Context

  3rd most dangerous country in the world for journalists

  Over 14 media workers killed since 2005

  7 abducted, 15 arrested

  Self-censorship rife

  Hate speech, racism and violence against journalists by all parties to the conflict

  Culture of impunity

Context

  First journalist charged under Prevention of Terrorism Act this year. Initial charge by Attorney General included “seeking to embarrass the government”

  Reports of torture and psychological abuse of those arrested by TID

  No meaningful investigation into any attack against journalists

  Telcos out of fear or for favour are subservient to the government

Groundviews

Groundviews   Started in 2006. First citizen journalism initiative in Sri

Lanka.

  700+ avg. readers a day

  Over 600 submissions, almost all original, including text, photos, videos

  Won SNCR Award of Excellence in 2007. The first ever international award won by any news website in Sri Lanka.

  No funding since February 2007

  Working journalists, civil servants, NGO workers, HR activists, diaspora, civil servants, students, lawyers, diplomatic corps, political parties and more contribute and comment

Outreach

  "For ongoing analysis of the conflict, the citizen journalism site groundviews.org provides interesting and often tragic reporting” Freedom House

  Groundviews got over 144,280 page views and close to a million hits in 2007.

  Already 169,817 page views in 2008.

  Groundviews is currently referenced on 39 other blogs globally and has a Technorati rank of 131,962 out of the over 70 million blogs.

Outreach

  Groundviews is the only citizen journalism website in Sri Lanka to be directly indexed on Google News and ranked Number 1 on Google by keyword.

  Articles on the site are regularly republished in other local media, including media websites such as InfoLanka News, Tamil Canadian and Tamilnet

  Article regularly republished in mainstream print media – Daily Mirror in particular

Guidelines on Groundviews

  Please treat others with respect. Flaming and trolling will not be accepted on Groundviews. Attack the issue, not the person. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved. Comments that seek to inflame tensions on the ground, or are of a defamatory nature, will not be approved, or will be taken off the website as soon as possible.

  Groundviews is a place for original and creative writing, not repetition or regurgitation.

  No NGO statements

  Creative Commons 3 Sharealike with attribution license

Challenges

  Dealing with hate speech psychologically draining

  Increasingly dangerous – “providing solace and relief to terrorists” / Deteriorating security context

  Time consuming and generally thankless

  Transference of skills problematic

  English knowledge ESSENTIAL even if blogging in the vernacular (interfaces, tags, content management)

  Personal risk profile

  Scaling up

Importance

  Citizens are empowered to bear witness, to speak out

  Issues highlighted that mainstream media cannot, or will not

  Information as a public good

  Contestation of policies including war, debunking black and white notions of patriot vs. terrorist

  Content

The future

  Ashoka Fellowship will help take the initiative(s) to the global stage in the next 3 years

  Scaling up and expanding within the country

  A working definition of citizen journalism as an idea central and integral to peacebuilding and conflict resolution

  Citizen journalism as bearing witness to violence promoted as a vehicle of strengthening democracy / adapting the model of Groundviews

Old media waking up

Hope

  “I don’t agree with what you say, but I see why Groundviews is there. Keep it up!”

Thank you!