Browsing by Author "Niles, J.S."

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Immortal Online: A Study of Digital Storytelling on Deceased Subjects
(International Postgraduate Research Conference 2019, Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Meegaswatta, T.N.K.; Willarachchi, L.; Chamba, Z.N.; Niles, J.S.
Langellier (2011) has argued that the telling of a story is a performance. Such emphasis on storytelling as performance conceptualizes the “narrative as act, event and discourse-a site for understanding and intervening in the ways culture produces, maintains and transforms relations of identity and difference” (p.3). When the digital sphere is brought into the equation, the possibility of multiple and contesting narratives with varying relations to structures of power and visibility are inevitable. The digital space enables the production and dissemination of individualized alternative narratives from multiple subject positions that may challenge dominant narratives. Further, the personal and the ordinary may metamorphose in digital spaces, challenging and changing the ways in which individuals interact with and respond to lived reality. Drawing on the premise that the digital is an agentive space and the interactions on the digital sphere involve intervention and transformation, this paper critically reads the multiple narratives surrounding the tragic death of a young Sri Lankan woman as represented in multiple digital platforms. The paper attempts to explore the subject positions of storytelling and consumption, ethics of storytelling, structure and interaction of users with the deceased subject’s social media presence, and concepts of virtual body, digital remains, and grieving through drawing on intersecting theoretical readings on discourse (Foucault, in Hall, 1997), liminality (Lister et al, 2009), gaze (Mulvey,1999), storytelling and power (Plummer, 1995; Cohen-Cruz, 2006) in the digital platform. A critical content analysis of meta-narratives and numerous alternative narratives made viable on digital spaces suggests that the liminality of digital spaces allows multiple subject positions and subversive ‘truths’ that blur the boundaries between seeming binaries; in this particular instance, those of life and death and public and private
(Trans)formations in Wikipedia: A Critical Review of “2014 Anti-Muslim Riots in Sri Lanka
(International Postgraduate Research Conference 2019, Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Niles, J.S.
Wurth, Espi & van de Ven (2013) commenting on the material structure of the book Only Revolutions by Mark Danielewski (2006), suggest that the text should be approached as a “road novel” that “must be steered, manually navigated” and “thus performed” which “makes the reader an integral element of the functioning of the text” (p. 978). The approach to the study is informed by this engagement of the user or editor with the site and its content, a “mutually constitutive process” (Lister et al., 2009 p. 24) that is enabled by the structure or form of Wikipedia. The core concept of the study, “(trans)formations”, centralises the “radically open architecture” (Goode, 2010, p. 533), structure or form of Wikipedia which is “the world’s largest most used repository of user-generated content” (Graham, Straumann & Hogan, 2015, p.1). In order to assess this phenomenon, the research critically reviews the processes of writing and editing material in Wikipedia through a study of the article “2014 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka”. The research thus engages with a politically contentious issue that has garnered national and global interest over the past few years, especially with the escalation of anti-Muslim sentiments following the recent incidents related to the Easter Attacks in 2019. As such, the selected Wikipedia article is set against dominant narratives of post–war Sri Lanka in which “there emerged several Sinhala Buddhist nationalist groups who saw the favoured “other” no longer primarily as Tamil, but as Muslim as well” (Hannifa, Amarasuriya, Wijenayake, & Gunatilleke, 2014, p. 1). This study then utilises an intersection of postcolonial, national and digital theoretical frameworks to assess areas related to selective censorship and self-censorship, modifying of “editor behaviour” (Goldpsink, 2010, p. 652) through self-regulatory and self-reflexive practices, silences and gaps in the representation of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka, shaping national memory on the digital sphere and the potential for cyber-activism through the democratisation and decentralisation of power. Accordingly, the study focuses on how the structure of the Wikipedia site and the engagement of users with this digital space not only makes provision for changes in the text, but extends to transforming traditional definitions of concepts from non-violent activism to communal engagement