Social media, democracy and dissent in Sri Lanka

Meera Selva, Director of the Reuters Institute Journalism Fellowship Programme, addresses our closing seminar of the term with a presentation on the media situation in Sri Lanka. Attacks on journalists are – when they happen – shockingly brutal. News coverage tends not to cross socio-economic and ethnic/linguistic divides. Closing down social media in response to national crises invokes the law of unintended consequences.