CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Hemachandra, Samal Vimukthi |
|---|---|
| Title | Butterflies Taking Down Giants: The Impact of Social Media on the Regime Transformation in Sri Lanka |
| Summary | This study examines the impact of social media on the regime transformation in Sri Lanka that happened in the 2015 presidential election with the defeat of President Rajapaksa. In order to study it, the research revolves around the question, how individuals who belong to different social strata collectively used the idea of dystopia in social media as a positive tool to overthrow the Rajapaksa regime. In this regard, this research aims to combine three main fields in political science: radical politics, social media as a political tool and dystopia. No such effort has been made in a field of social sciences so far. I used Foucauldian discourse analysis to analyze the anti-Rajapaksa discourse on Facebook, examining posts, videos, pictures and comments. As the study points out, people who had no power under the Rajapaksa regime understood the Rajapaksa regime as a dystopia. They expressed their frustration of living in a dystopia on Facebook, and used Facebook as a tool to escape from that dystopia by urging and convincing people to vote against President Rajapaksa in the 2015 presidential election. Therefore, this is a story of butterflies who took down giants by using Facebook. |
| Supervisor | Bozóki, András |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/hemachandra_samal.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University