From protests to power cuts, Watchdog uses open source research to investigate Sri Lanka’s ongoing political and economic crisis.

In May 2022, in the midst of an economic and political crisis, I visited Sri Lanka to document how a fact-checking group was fighting state-backed misinformation. Despite threats from authorities, Watchdog was hunting hoaxes, investigating matters of public welfare, and building software to combat the latest in a string of crises Sri Lankans have had to contend with. But while the group worked to make sense of the crisis, it also had to contend with the effects itself, battling energy shortages, payment blocks, medicine shortages, and financing challenges, to keep the lights on.

The story was shortlisted for the True Story Award 2023. My reporting was discussed on HackerNews, MIT Technology Review's newsletter, and was cited in both English and Sinhala Wikipedia.

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