Identity politics, youth engagement and ICTs in Sri Lanka

A study was conducted in Sri Lanka where in-depth interviews were used to collect empirical data. Interviewees included two groups of youth: The first group was made up by young people who actively used the Internet to engage in civic activities, including activists, NGO participants, and online opinion leaders; the second group involved youth who had a special interest in political engagement and do not have to be experienced Internet users. We started asking what youth is doing and which activities they consider as civic or political. After this general conversation on political and apolitical, we turned to the two factors that interested us, ICTs and political institutions. Interviews were ended with a brief survey about basic demographics such as age and family income.

We found that female activists are very low in numbers compared to males who are involved in political engagement and ICTs in Sri Lanka. Due to the ethnic conflict that prevailed in the country over the past two decades, certain youngsters belonging to the minority community were reluctant and hesitant to answer questions related to politics. We were able to observe that adolescents in Sri Lanka generally lacked knowledge concerning civic engagement in politics.  Political activism, in general sense is an intentional action to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change.  But youngsters under the age of 20 have a complete different picture about politics. They think that it has to do something with leadership, elections, public meetings etc.  As far as what we have observed so far from the interviewees we can say that identity politics, that is the focus upon the self interest and perspectives of social minorities, or self-identified social interest groups is creating major problems in Sri Lanka currently. Majority influence is a central component of identity politics in Sri Lanka.

When considering the usage of ICTs Sri Lankan Youth use all kind of devices like mobiles, laptops, internet phones etc. But our findings say that only people belonging to the high class and middle class level are able to afford internet access. The youth from lower class has less or no internet access at all in Sri Lanka.

Accepted abstract in Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) 2010