Radio “Dambana”: A new experiment of Community radio in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka is the first country which started the Community Radio station in Asia, as Mahawali Community Radio (MCR).But many researchers points out that it was not a proper way of establishing a community radio.(Jayaratne,2008).The rationale behind is that its name as ―community‖ but functioned as ―state owned‖. In 2010 the main MCR station Giradurukotte Community Radio, launched as Radio Dambana. It was transformed as community radio for Sri Lankan Vadda community mainly located in the area of Dambana. In this research we are trying to analyze the main functions of the radio dambana as a community radio. While doing this we are searching the sustainability of the station and its scope. We have used mix methods to collect data such as interviews field visits, content analysis of the programmes as primary data. To analyze the data we deployed the SWOT analysis as a tool. The findings suggest the format of radio dambana would need a shift of its functions to achieve the aims and objectives of the station.