With the events unfolded during the recent past, we all agree that social media has had a profound impact on our culture, society, country and the world-at-large.
Armed with tools of Social media, people are taking communications and interactions to a whole new level. Social media web sites have been rapidly adopted by many across the globe.
As at February 2, 2017 Facebook sers. To put this number in perspective, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world tailing behind only China and India.
Sri Lanka with a population of 20.86 million has an active social media penetration of 23 percent and this is expected increase dramatically with government funded programs such as ‘Internet Connectivity, a citizen’s right’. This will be a very significant milestone for Sri Lanka, as a 10 percent increase in broadband household penetration delivers a boost to a country‘s GDP that ranges from 0.1 percent to 1.4 percent.
Responsible use
There has been lot of debate in Sri Lanka about responsible usage of Social media during early 2014 arising from two school children committing suicide involving Facebook related incidents.
In one incident, a 16-year-old schoolgirl committed suicide after being severely reprimanded for uploading pictures on Facebook that, according to her Principal, was damaging to the image of the school.
The governments are also keen on knowing and understanding what is happening on social media. Academics and social-media advocates say Twitter played a pivotal role in the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, helping activists to unite, win and gather followers and spread the news of their grievances and demonstrations.
With the Arab Spring and other pro-democracy movements similar to ‘#occupy’, governments are aggressively evaluating means of restricting, controlling and monitoring social media. Recently reported cases involved - Saudi Prince Alwaleed buying a stake in Twitter, Pakistan’s 8-hour Twitter censorship, and Sri Lanka’s opposition challenging that the government is blocking/hacking websites which are unfavourable to them.
Mass digital tools
The pivotal role played by the Social Media in 2015 Sri Lankan Presidential elections to defeat the incumbent president has been highlighted by researchers and they point out how the information society played a prominent role by enabling citizens to engage in discussions of national importance and overcoming government placed restrictions and bans on traditional media.
Researchers further refer to people with mass digital tools as ‘multipliers’ as these people have an audience of their own which further propagates the discussions happening on social media.
The defeat of the former president at the 2015 Presidential Elections has been loosely attributed to his social media campaign which lacked a focused strategy.
It is estimated that Sri Lanka has an estimated three million mobile smart phone users.
With the unexpected defeat of the former president and social media’s contribution to this would keep Sri Lankan corporates thinking differently about social media and how it could impact their bottom line.
Parakum Pathirana
Assistant Treasurer,
Computer Society of Sri Lanka