Sanjana Hattotuwa - Work and projects

Groundviews

Groundviews is Sri Lanka’s first and only award winning citizens journalism website and features an unparalleled range of ideas, opinions and analyses on humanitarian issues, media freedom, human rights, peace, democratic governance and constitutional reform.

Groundviews got over 144,280 page views and close to a million hits in 2007. In December 2007 the site was awarded an Award of Excellence in New Communications from the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) based in Boston. “Groundviews exemplifies the mission of this awards program: the successful and innovative use of new communications solutions and social media practices to enhance communications and relationships” commented Mike Manuel, SNCR Best Practices committee chairman.

Voices of Reconciliation Radio

VOR Radio aims to enhance social, political and cultural cohesion in Sri Lanka through digital media productions that feature the aspirations, fears, ideas and opinions from communities rarely featured in mainstream media.

Vikalpa

Vikalpa was my second citizen journalism initiative. It builds on the success of Groundviews by providing content in Sinhala and Tamil that explore facets of democracy and governance in Sri Lanka.

Vikalpa YouTube Video Channel

Sri Lanka's first and to date only citizen journalism video channel on YouTube. Videos on the channel have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times to date. More details here.

Election violence mapping in Sri Lanka

Set up a system for the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) to map election violence incidents, leverage RSS and Twitter and use SMS. The maps are available here and the Twitter channel here. This was the first time in Sri Lanka that election violence was plotted and shared on a map as and when reports were received from the field.

SMS reports from the field on election violence

Set up a Twitter channel to monitor and log reports from citizens on election violence as part of Vikalpa.

Writing on citizen journalism and ICT4Peace over 2007

Who’s afraid of citizen journalists? - Chapter from “Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book”
Television for peacebuilding: An impossible dream? - Chapter from Media & Peace in South Asia, published by South Asian Policy Analysts Network and edited by Imtiaz Alam, South Asian Studies, Volume XII
Citizen Journalism and humanitarian aid: Bane or boon? (unpublished book chapter)
Citizens + Media: Amplifying voices for peace through citizen journalism (speech for grassroots civil society activists in Sri Lanka on the potential of new media, CJ and ICTs in general to strengthen their work)
Citizen Journalism and Peacebuilding: Is there a connection? (published on Madrid11’s website)
Input into ICT for Disaster Management e-primer, authored by Chanuka Wattegama and published by APDIP
SMS alerts during emergencies - Lessons from Sri Lanka’s tsuanmi alert on 13 September 2007
Critique of Guidelines for Relations between US Armed Forces and Non-Governmental Humanitarian Organisations in Hostile or Potentially Hostile Environments published by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).