I study information disorders, influence operations, and information integrity in order to evaluate the impact on public opinion, political discourse and democratic institutions.
Since 2023, Sri Lanka has enacted, circulated or in some way referred to at least 7 laws and draft laws that bear directly on what citizens and organisations can say, publish, fund and organise. These include the Online Safety Act (OSA), the Anti-Corruption Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act, the proposed Protection of the State … Continue reading A perfect storm: Digitalisation, new laws, draft…
A pale chair and a pale sofa sit in a photographed room in Kanesh Thabendran’s Lost / Loot X (2015), and neither has any business being there. Framed pictures stay on the wall. So does the clock. The furniture returns flat, almost luminous, emptied of fabric and wear and use. The work is small, barely … Continue reading Review of ‘Junctures’: Bearing witness, generation after generation →
Prathichara – ප්රතිචාර recently asked me to talk about Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). The conversation’s in Sinhala, and sets out what foreign information manipulation and interference does to a country, drawing on six years of continuous study since 2020 of Chinese operations on Facebook and Twitter aimed at Sri Lankan audiences, an undertaking … Continue reading…
TRCSL blocked 24 unlicensed gambling and betting sites on 4 August, and when I checked the following day seventeen of them still loaded over Dialog, one of the telcos the Commission itself regulates. Two days after the block, Sri Lanka Cricket published match highlights on its own YouTube channel, which carries 5.75 million subscribers, and … Continue reading Public responses to the gambling…
Sri Lanka has moved to shut the front door on the offshore betting industry, blocking two dozen named online services that the Government identifies as operating without Sri Lankan licences[1]. The Gambling Regulatory Authority initiated the action and the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) instructed telecommunications providers to restrict access at once, the ……
A study of the Hansard supports Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick’s allegation that Speaker Gerry Brownlee gives New Zealand First’s Winston Peters a latitude he denies her, and other MPs who challenge Peters’ conduct. The evidence to this effect is in Brownlee’s own rulings over the years – from the words he allowed, and warnings … Continue reading The Speaker’s selective severity: Rules for…
At the Hilton Colombo on 3 July, news reports indicate China’s Ambassador Qi Zhenhong commended the book titled “Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (Volume V)” to an audience that included Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne, and Deputy Minister of Education Madhura Senevirathne, alongside visiting officials from the Central Office of Cultural, and Ethical Progress and the … Continue reading Reading Xi…
I kept returning to a kitchen metaphor when asked about Sri Lanka’s Online Safety Act (OSA). Once the batter goes into the oven, you cannot get it back out as batter. You throw the cake out, and start again. This is part of an answer I gave in a recent interview with Prathichara – ප්රතිචාර … Continue reading The Online Safety Act (OSA): The person hunted tomorrow could very likely be you →
This short study maps the official record of the New Zealand Parliament against reports of social media content, and commentary studied from 2023 onwards, and mainstream media reporting on the targeting of various MPs in the House. The source material here is primarily drawn from the Hansard[1], and concerns New Zealand First and ACT – … Continue reading The wrong, dishonourable MPs: Targeted…
The Great Replacement, and its violence The Great Replacement is a conspiracy theory which holds that white European populations are being deliberately replaced through mass migration, demographic engineering and declining birth rates, with the connivance or complicity of political, cultural and media elites. The French writer Renaud Camus gave the theory its contemporary name in … Continue…