If public opinion in Sri Lanka were a lake, it is local television channels, followed by radio, that are still capable of making the most prominent waves. In comparison, social media can only make ripples at the moment, but has the potential to muddy or poison the “water” of public psyche to an alarming extent. This is my summing up of the relative influences of mainstream media and social media as Sri Lanka heads to its eighth presidential election scheduled for 16 November 2019. Of course, there are many interesting nuances and dynamics in how both kinds of media are being used in the election campaigns now underway. Having been a journalist or media analyst for over a quarter-century, I find it intriguing to study what is currently unfolding in what promises to be a closely contested battle for the support of nearly 16 million registered voters. In the absence of regular, reliable, and publicly available opinion polls, we can only make “informed guesses” about how all the messaging – official and unofficial – are impacting. And since we cast our ballots in secret, even post-election analyses of what shaped the voter choice can’t be fully data-driven. Within these limitations, we can still try to understand the pathways through which political information, opinions, and disinformation spread, and with what impacts. So #PresPoll2019 – to use one of the popular hashtags online for the current electoral process – is generating massive volumes of fodder to be analysed for years to come. Look back at 2015 It is instructive to look back at the last presidential election held on 8 January 2015. Since that day, there have been various speculations on what caused that unexpected regime change. One says it was the result of an “international operation” (allegedly by a global and a regional superpower) that used social media to topple a government that had a tight control over almost all mainstream media. That conspiracy theory is highly insulting to the 12,264,377 Lankan citizens who voted that day, whose majority choice prevailed – for better or worse, we might add. It is also too simplistic to explain a process where multiple factors contributed to the outcome including anti-incumbency sentiments, as well as disillusionment among ethnic and religious minorities. To be sure, there were around one million youths in 2015 who had recently become eligible to vote. Those between 18 and 35 years are the most avid users of digital technologies in Sri Lanka, so it is plausible that some of them were influenced by what was circulating on social media. How many of President Maithripala Sirisena’s margin of 449,072 came from that demographic or were influenced by social media? We can only speculate. A week after that election, I wrote an essay titled “Was #PresPollSL 2015 Sri Lanka’s first Cyber Election?” published on Groundviews.org on 13 January 2019 (available at: http://bit.ly/PresPoll15). Here is an excerpt: “During weeks preceding the election, hundreds of thousands of Lankans from all walks of life used social media to vent their frustrations, lampoon politicians, demand clarity on election manifestos, or simply share hopes for a better future. “Beyond this, we have more questions than answers. Did inter-personal communications and myriads of open, public conversations raise the level of public awareness of key political and policy issues relevant to this election? How much of this citizen awakening can be attributed to the fast spread of smartphones and broadband? “More important, could such fleeting communications really have influenced how people voted? Even if so, did cyber-savvy Lankans – who now make up a quarter of the total population – play a decisive role in the peaceful regime change?” Online-offline nexus One key trend I commented on in that essay was the emergence of digitally savvy citizens who were politically conscious and charged, but not aligned with any political party or candidate. I identified myself among them. As I explained: “Our political ideologies were different or incongruent. We were united by a common desire for clarity, discussion, and debate. We didn’t wish to be mere recipients of large volumes of campaign-originated communications. Neither did we settle on just peddling weblinks from the mainstream media. “We asked inconvenient questions that ought to have been asked by the mainstream but were often left unasked – for example, on specific pledges in the manifestos, or on thorny issues like abuse of state media, government pressures exerted on telecom companies, and glaring self-contradictions of recent political turncoats.” When we did so on open, public social media platforms like Twitter, our fleeting messages became part of the common digital record that were automatically archived under #PresPollSL and a few other hashtags. Candidates and their campaign managers often chose not to respond to our queries, but in many instances, their silence itself was telling. In that essay, I also listed several key trends that I had observed during the campaign period that started in late November 2014. These included the widespread use of hashtags, web memes, and viral videos. Often, hastily and anonymously produced digital content trumped the more sleek and sophisticated campaign materials created by advertising agencies or PR companies engaged by official campaigns. The dynamics around the 2015 campaign were not purely digital or entirely web-based. In fact, it was the confluence of various online and offline factors that amplified social media’s outreach – and societal influence – beyond those directly using them. Digital campaigning 2019 Some of the same phenomena seen in 2014-15 are taking place this time around, but more pronounced and in some cases, evolved. At the end of 2014, one quarter of Sri Lanka’s population was online. By now, it has reached 34-35%. Social media use has grown substantially in the past four-and-a-half years. At least six million active Lankan users are on Facebook, followed by YouTube and Instagram, both of which have registered very fast growth in user numbers. Parallel to this, instant messaging services like WhatsApp, Viber, FB Messenger, and Imo have become spaces where private exchanges are taking place. Back in 2014, a few leading bloggers shaped public conversations when mainstream was heavily self-censoring or simply looking away. We now have social media influencers on key platforms, whose reach rivals or exceeds that of smaller newspapers and broadcast stations. Some Lankan administrators of popular Facebook pages, as well as popular Instagrammers and YouTubers are monetising their reach through advertising revenue-share arrangements with global platforms. A few of these have been engaged in current election campaigns (whether on payment or out of political conviction, only they would know). The other and more alarming trend in 2019 is the rise of negative content on social media that are linked in one way or another to divisive and corrosive party politics. Numerous attempts at spreading disinformation, vilification, and demonisation are increasing – and not just about some of the 35 candidates running for the presidency or their political parties. Entire religious faiths, ethnic groups, other minorities (such as the LGBT community), and even public policies are subjected to distortions, misinterpretations, malicious rumours, and outright hate speech. True, such abuses of facts and figures have been going on for years, and the mainstream media is not entirely innocent when it comes to originating or spreading fabrications, half-truths, and prejudices (just think of the mass sterilisation conspiracies that gained ground after the Easter Sunday attacks). But the intensification of lies and hatred in the run-up to a key election can pollute the public mind and mislead at least some voters. To come back to my opening premise, terrestrially distributed local TV channels are still the most dominant single source of news and current affairs for a majority of Lankan citizens and voters. Advertisers and political parties know this well (75% of total media advertising spending in 2018 was on local TV), which is why campaigns are still focusing a good deal of their messaging on TV (followed by radio and newspapers). Elections in 2019/20 may well be the last time the mainstream media holds that edge before digital floodgates fully burst open. For now, social media may not be making all the waves, but they can poison the waters with toxic content. How to contain these excesses while allowing freedom of expression is the big challenge faced by the Election Commission and all voters who want a free and fair election. (Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene has been chronicling and critiquing information society for over 25 years. He tweets from @NalakaG)