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About Me

See FastCompany profile of my work - http://www.fastcompany.com/1711352/2011-ted-fellow-cuts-through-wartime-censorship-in-sri-lanka

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Educated at S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, Sanjana read English at the University of Delhi, India and as a Rotary World Peace Fellow, was awarded an Advanced Masters in Conflict Resolution and International Relations from the University of Queensland, Brisbane with a Dean’s Commendation for High Achievement.

He is currently a Senior Researcher and Head of the Media Unit at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. He is a frequent commentator on journalism and new media in domestic and international fora. In addition to hosting a talk show on public television, Sanjana lectures at the Sri Lanka College of Journalism (SLCJ), engaging journalists from state, private, alternative media on how to use web, Internet and mobile technologies to strengthen professional, independent and investigative journalism.

Sanjana is a Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland. Through the Foundation, Sanjana works to further the use of ICTs in crisis information management and peacekeeping initiatives at the United Nations. As a Fellow of the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Sanjana writes and speaks on the evolution of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), with a special focus on mobile telephony.

Sanjana is the founding editor of Groundviews (www.groundviews.org), an award-winning web based citizen journalism initiative that has won critical acclaim internationally as one of the most vital websites for dissent in Sri Lanka.

In 2010, Sanjana was the first Sri Lankan to be awarded a prestigious TED Fellowship, two years after he was awarded a News & Knowledge Entrepreneur Fellowship from the Ashoka Foundation. Both awards recognise Sanjana’s pioneering efforts to leverage web based citizen journalism and new media to bear witness and strengthen democracy, human rights and a just peace.

With a significant body writing, research and on the ground experience, Sanjana is globally recognised as an expert in the design and implementation of ICTs and new media in peacebuilding and crisis response.

Location:
Sri Lanka, Colombo
Current organization:
ICT4Peace Foundation
Past organizations:
Centre for Policy Alternatives
Current role:
Editor and Curator
Gender:
Male
Areas of expertise:
peacebuilding, New Media, Citizen Journalism
I am:
Activist, Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Consultant, Parent, Producer, Single, Social entrepreneur, Technologist, Writer/Editor
Languages:
English, Sinhala
My website links:
Groundviews, ICT4Peace, Sites at Risk in Sri Lanka
Universities:
University of Queensland - Australia, University of Delhi india
TED conferences attended:
TED2011
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TEDCRED 50+ TED FellowAssociate

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Using Information and Communications Technologies, new media and mobiles for peacebuilding and human rights. Travelling and reading compete for attention.

An idea worth spreading

I was asked in late 2011 what, if I could design and create any one product or service, it would be and why? I observed that the ubiquity of SMS on mobile phones wasn’t yet fully utilised in feedback loops that strengthen governance and basic service delivery. I said that State and privately managed places of public interaction (e.g. a service counter, a government office, a website, an information kiosk) can prominently display an SMS number (with telco buy-in, this could be a short-code and free to send a message to) that people are encouraged to provide, on a scale of 1-5, a rating of how they felt after their transaction or inquiry was completed. This crowd-sourced information could feed into databases that are also open to the public via the web, providing geo-spatial and temporal visualisations of how citizens in our country feel about service delivery and governance.

Talk to me about

1. Peacebuilding, which is not always achieved through non-violence and negotiations. 2. English literature. 3. New media literacy, which is more than IT literacy.

People don't know that I'm good at

Singing karaoke very badly. I also know far more than someone at my age should about teen pop.

My TED Story

What you take back from TED is a sense of wonder, but also an abiding sadness, that the world is perhaps not listening as much as it can, and should, to the thoughts expressed by Fellows and Speakers at TED.

Comments

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  • +1

    A reply on Conversation: Technology doesn't kill the magic

    Mar 29 2012: Actually Asha I don't propose it takes away the 'magic' as you see it. I am merely suggesting that greater access and the better clarity afforded by technology is no guarantee of engagement, learning and debate. The potential is there and indeed growing, the choice remains deeply personal. No argument from me against technology's greater use, adoption and adaptation, but just a caution against a heady optimism that - to use your example - sharing on FB, tweeting, blogging and uploading video on Cameron's dive - just by that fact, and over the longer term, strengthens our understanding and engagement with the wonders of deep sea science, and indeed, life on earth. Questions to consider, for me, are how we sustain interest, how we further real learning, how we nurture critical engagement, and how the magic you see, and want to share, can be best channeled through appropriate technology.
  • +1

    A comment on Conversation: Technology doesn't kill the magic

    Mar 29 2012: Great question Asha, and maybe you can post the video of your response once it's available on the web. What I was interested in, more broadly, is in the contest between - as you say - technology making the what's outside our immediate experience and imagination that much more accessible, and the risk, as I see it, of making the unknown somehow ordinary. The first compels us to engage. The ordinary makes us disengage. Technology at its best fuels curiosity and learning. Yet how many of us have visited the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive, seen the Google Gigapixel images of the world's rarest art, traversed the most scenic route on Swiss railways through our browser and gone on to read more, check out a book from the library, download content off the web, speak with our children about it, and beyond our social networks, spoken about it? My submission is that technology doesn't necessarily take away the magic of discovery, but that there is always the risk of assuming that access and consumption is the same as engagement and learning?

  • A comment on Conversation: It's about time for civility to make a comeback. Not just in the current political mayhem, but everywhere.

    Feb 26 2011: Good to see this initiative. I've written specifically about the challenge of fostering and maintaining online civility particularly in emotionally charged contexts of violent conflict. See Beyond O’Reilly’s online civility dictum: Fostering healthy debate on the web and internet (http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/beyond-oreillys-online-civility-dictum-fostering-healthy-debate-on-the-web-and-internet/) and Blogging Code of Conduct: Does one size fit all? (http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/blogging-code-of-conduct-does-one-size-fit-all/)

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