Over the last five years, there has been a visible awakening of the citizenry in Sri Lanka, with more people now interested in how governance works. There has been a clear uptick in the consumption of content on political literacy and economic literacy amongst Sri Lankan’s both young and old. This trend is a positive sign for a functional democracy. Sri Lanka’s decline over the last 50 or so years has partially been a result of the lack of participatory democracy which we see is increasingly gaining traction, today. For too long, the Sri Lankan public, plagued by its many fault lines, prejudices and polarisation, allowed the polity to do as they please, once elected. Not anymore, it seems.

However, participatory democracy and good governance needs a robust and responsible media landscape to keep the public informed accurately and efficiently. The debate about how well the traditional Sri Lankan media landscape performed, that duty is ongoing and there is much to be argued. Over the last decade, the media landscape in Sri Lanka has truly evolved to the ‘new age’ – digital spectrum, with many crediting it for providing a broader canvas for wider public discourse. Many observers have pointed out that Sri Lanka’s political upheaval of 2015, 2019 and 2021-2023 periods were enabled by the media landscape on social media. While this may be fact, the social media landscape and that of some segments of the digital media spectrum, can be a double-edged sword for democracy. Social media is the Wild West of the media landscape, and that has its good side and bad side. The negative is that it is highly susceptible to be used and mis-used to push dangerous narratives, spread fake news and mislead the public. And on social media, it is very difficult to establish ownership of news sources and their impartiality. 

While the digital media landscape, including social media, may be the future of ‘media’, it is not without its shortcomings and vulnerabilities. The public will have to be ‘equipped’ to process news and messaging they find or are bombarded with on the social media highway, which is omnipresent, and on one’s person, through smart phones, watches and an increasing range of ‘devices’, most of which also collect meta data to personalise content for you, and build an ‘digital profile’ of the user.

Traditional print media in Sri Lanka has been in decline for some time. The industry never recovered from the Covid pandemic restrictions on movement and social access. The economic crisis and its impact on print cost – newsprint, and the drain on newsrooms has dealt a significant blow. With traditional advertising budgets shrinking, and migrating, and generational changes affecting the ownership of print establishment, the readership shrinking, newspapers in Sri Lanka are transiting a dark period. If the decline continues, the most impacted are the elderly, who find themselves with less connection to their community and at risk of misinformation in an online world that is largely unfamiliar to them. The second impact is that there is increasingly less in-depth news and analysis, which is seldom found in the digital domain of media. The world and Sri Lanka is dealing with complex issues, and events, all of which needs to be framed within context and anchored properly with history when communicated as news and features to an increasingly distracted audience. Sri Lanka can’t afford a nation which is ‘barely informed’ and with a vague understanding of what’s going on, in a world which is so fast moving in terms of news, and narratives. Such diminished capacity to comprehend one’s environment and the complexity of the issues that are of national importance may lead to poor participation, and a weaker form of democracy and governance. Both outcomes are dangerous.

Failures within the industry to properly grasp the trends and forecast effectively, have many long-standing publications struggling to adjust to the ‘new reality’. The fact is that the younger generation is seeking something different, and an evolution is needed. History will judge how well the industry adapts. There are also challenges in the industry, where styles of management, managing revenue streams and navigating the uncertainty over the horizon is done in a haphazard manner. 

The world is ‘ever-changing’ as such, the newspaper industry must evolve and do so in a manner that keeps the public best informed and equipped. Failure to do so may herald serious consequences.