Groundviews is Sri Lanka’s first and only award winning citizens journalism website and features an unparalleled range of ideas, opinions and analyses on humanitarian issues, media freedom, human rights, peace, democratic governance and constitutional reform.
Groundviews was set up under the Voices of Reconciliation Project, conducted in Sri Lanka through the leadership of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) from 2005 - 2006 and funded by CIDA and AusAID. The VOR Project was also instrumental in setting up VOR Radio - which complements the content on this site through podcasts on peace, democracy and reconciliation. Groundviews complements content primarily in Sinhala and Tamil on Vikalpa and also the videos on Vikalpa Video.
Since February 2007, Groundviews has not received any funding from local or international sources.
Our reach
Groundviews got over 144,280 page views and close to a million hits in 2007. In December 2007 the site was awarded an Award of Excellence in New Communications from the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) based in Boston. “Groundviews exemplifies the mission of this awards program: the successful and innovative use of new communications solutions and social media practices to enhance communications and relationships” commented Mike Manuel, SNCR Best Practices committee chairman.
At the time of writing Groundviews is currently referenced on 71 other blogs globally and has a Technorati rank of 136,439 out of the over 70 million blogs the blog aggregation engine indexes. Further, Groundviews is the only civil society and citizen journalism website in Sri Lanka to be directly indexed on Google News and ranked Number 1 on Google itself by keyword.
Content from Groundviews is regularly featured on InfoLanka News, Tamilcanadian News, Tamilnet and other news aggregation sites.
“For ongoing analysis of the conflict, the citizen journalism site groundviews.org provides interesting and often tragic reporting” says the renowned press freedom organisation Freedom House of Groundviews on its blog.
58% of our readership comes from South Asia, with 32% from Sri Lanka. The next highest readership, 29%, is from the US East Coast. A further 20% of readers are from Australia with the rest spread globally.
We now get on average over 700 page views a day and around 100 readers a day on our mobile site.
Awards
In December 2007, Groundviews was awarded an Award of Excellence in New Communications from the Society for New Communications Research. It is the first and to date only civil society and media web initiative in Sri Lanka to have won a competitive international award for excellence in journalism and media.
Why did we set Groundviews up?
In response to requests from local civil society organisations, NGOs, humanitarian aid organisations including sections of the UN, local and international journalists as well as members from the diaspora to have a better idea of conditions on the ground in Sri Lanka, the Voices of Reconciliation project decided to launch this website to strengthen, inter alia, the voices of those in favour of a just and lasting peace in Sri Lanka through a negotiated settlement.
Called citizens journalism, this site was the first attempt in Sri Lanka to create a means through which citizens in civil society could pen their own perspectives of life in conflict zones, call attention to humanitarian emergencies, give information on security / ground conditions and present alternatives to the status quo. The site is also a forum for critical debate, including academic commentary anchored in ground reality that would or could not find expression in traditional / mainstream media in Sri Lanka today.
Click here for more information.
Disclaimer
Please note that the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) or any of its members of staff, InfoShare or any of its members of staff, CIDA and AusAID do not take responsibility for the content herein.
Guiding principles
Our idea of citizen journalism and content herein adheres to that which is outlined here.
Our vision
To lead, by example, the creation of citizen journalism in English, Sinhala and Tamil languages to enable civil, progressive and inclusive discussions on the future of peace, reconciliation, social justice, fundamental rights and equality in Sri Lanka.
Sustainability and relevance
The Groundviews website is registered for five years with unlimited storage. The basic user interface and backend database of the website is powerful enough to handle an exponential increase in content and commentary.
We utilise existing and planned projects for internet infrastructure to populate the website with content – such as utilising the hundreds of cyber cafés set up around the country by the Information and Communications Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka. As such, the website is not burdened with the maintenance of a physical network access infrastructure.
Content will be produced by CSO / NGO / CBO networks and individual authors around the island on an on-going basis.
Future plans
We hope to make this website one that users can post photos from their mobile phones, enabling near real time coverage of events as they occur. Groundviews is an on-going experiment and we welcome you to partake in this award winning and groundbreaking initiative to help establish mechanisms where the voices of citizens are promoted and strengthened.
Related content
For content in Sinhala and Tamil related to the issues highlighted on Groundviews, please visit Vikalpa.
For short videos on pressing needs and vital issues in Sri Lanka, visit the Vikalpa YouTube Channel.
