Featured Articles

Sanjana Hattotuwa

Sanjana Hattotuwa
September 05, 2008 01:43

As video games perpetuate the status quo, they also reinforce and extend gender-based inequalities. This element of video games should be taken seriously precisely because these technologies are toys. Children learn ideas about gender through video games - and, many children at that! These ideas...

Recent Articles

KONY 2012 and Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields

Sanjana Hattotuwa
March 10, 2012 23:30

Wrote the following for my newspaper column on Sunday, which has around a 700 word limit. KONY 2012′s generated a lot of attention. For me, Ethan Zuckerman’s excellent analysis and subsequent commentary raises the most pertinent questions. The following are some other articles...

Remarks by Navi Pillay at Panel Discussion on the Right to Freedom of Expression on the Internet

Sanjana Hattotuwa
March 02, 2012 14:51

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay’s succinct, clearly reasoned opening remarks at a panel discussion held on 29 February 2012 at the the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council is worth reproducing in full. I’ve been part of two studies, Sri Lanka’s...

Massively distributed intelligence: Two social gaming exercises and ICT4Peace

Sanjana Hattotuwa
March 02, 2012 14:13

“10 folks in a small apartment in Egypt used social media and cell phones to start a revolution, and 17 days later the president of many decades is out of power.” That’s clearly not what happened, but some people will believe what they will especially if simplifying complexity is an...

Teaching at the Folke Bernadotte Academy

Sanjana Hattotuwa
March 01, 2012 09:11

Photo of the Academy, taken by me. Just back from a stint of teaching at the Folke Bernadotte Academy. I’ve done a short write up about it at the ICT4Peace Foundation’s site. The participants were a tough, mixed bunch. All very experienced in either intelligence analysis or field work,...

The Guardian’s Open Journalism today and Sri Lanka’s Ravaya: A note from 2005

Sanjana Hattotuwa
March 01, 2012 08:02

In 2012, when leading Sri Lankan Editors are still plagiarising content from web and social media, don’t even know about correct attribution of web sources and demonstrate an outrageous ignorance about social and web based media, the Guardian’s new ad shows how it’s done, and just...

The Lede and the Koran

Sanjana Hattotuwa
February 22, 2012 06:24

In an article published in NYT’s The Lede blog by Robert Mackey on the desecration of the Koran by US soldiers, the author ended on an interesting note when it first went online, After the transcript of NATO Commander Gen. John R. Allen’s apology to the Afghan people, Mackey noted,...

Parliament 2.0

Sanjana Hattotuwa
February 19, 2012 13:49

Earlier this week, Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) organised a workshop on improving the access to and accountability of Parliament, based on a South Asian study of legislatures. Systemic flaws in our own Parliament were anchored to two broad areas – access to internal workings and...

iPhone (and) revolution

Sanjana Hattotuwa
February 17, 2012 02:27

Based on my presentation on how digital photography is now inextricably entwined into popular revolt, Frugal Dad emailed me a link to this interesting infographic on the iPhone’s camera. Original post here. Filed under: ICT for PeacebuildingBased on my presentation on how digital photography...

Are Chinese Telecoms acting as the ears for the Sri Lankan government?

Sanjana Hattotuwa
February 16, 2012 18:08

At a time when China’s portfolio in Sri Lanka’s economy is growing exponentially, questions over the bona fides of its massive investments in our national communications networks won’t go down well with the Chinese or Sri Lankan governments. ZTE and Huawei have themselves...