| dc.description.abstract | It has been argued that “... the digital text, with
its democratic architecture, allows for the possibility of
constructing a citizen’s history that is inclusive and diverse,
where a multiplicity of viewpoints becomes relevant” (Anon.,
cited in Perera, 2015, P.1). This suggests that cyberspace
with its potential to enable multiple stories from various
subjectivities has become a site of cultural agency and
citizenship (Goode, 2010), radical collaboration,
convergence and a tool of democratizing the construction
of knowledge. Thus, the digital becomes a new political
space which in turn politically charges the ‘real’ practices
and spaces that become the subject of digital narratives. In
the light of these observations, this paper critically analyses
the construction and content of a Wikipedia entry on 2014
anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka. A critical reading of the
content indicates that user-generated content of a platform
such as Wikipedia which is known for community
participation and radical collaboration indicates the
possibility of web-based texts being rather hegemonic
‘citizen’s’ histories/ stories rather than democratic and that
of ‘citizens’’. Therefore, with a view to elucidating the
intersections between various ideologies, power, strategies
of storytelling and the digital in its fluidity as well as rigidity,
this paper also discusses possible tools and strategies to
produce alternative digital texts that interrupt existing
hegemonic narratives in an attempt to harness the
strengths of cyberspace for the purpose of activism and
consciousness-raising. | en_US |
