ABSTRACT
The chapter outlines key snapshots of Sri Lanka’s social media landscape as it stood at the time of writing, in early August 2018, and offers some recommendations aimed at civil society’s use of social media for conflict transformation. The weaponisation of social media, the inevitable result of a zero-sum political culture, to exacerbate socio-political division is a (long-term) strategy that is anchored in underlying socio-economic, political, religious and identity-based tensions that have grown for decades in the country. Social media platforms provided a channel to incite hate and mob violence against Muslims in Digana, Kandy, in March 2018. The weaponisation of Twitter since at least 2015, and Facebook since around 2014, flag the significant power of social media to derail democratic dialogue and the negotiation of difference. Violent content on social media is often the digital manifestation of longer-standing communal fears, anxieties and concerns. These socio-political tensions have now metastasised into short-form video, memes and tweets produced by and for a young demographic. Almost entirely missing on social media during the violence in March 2018 was content from senior government leaders aimed at quelling the violence.
