Misinformation in Sri Lanka Archives — LIRNEasia


In today’s digital landscape, misinformation spreads rapidly across social media and messaging platforms, influencing public opinion and shaping conversations. Understanding how and why people encounter, verify, and share false information is critical to addressing these challenges.  To explore these human factors in information disorder, LIRNEasia conducted a nationally representative survey in Sri Lanka. The study spanned 150 Grama Niladhari divisions, the country’s smallest administrative units. A total of 2,610 respondents were surveyed, including 1,797 Sinhala news consumers and 813 Tamil news consumers, all aged over 18 and able to consume and comprehend news in their respective languages.
On the 1st of July 2025, LIRNEasia in collaboration with the University of Jaffna held an event titled Launch of the information disorder research in Sri Lanka and a forum on building digital resilience. The event centered around the launch of results from a LIRNEasia study assessing the ability of Tamil news readers in Sri Lanka to classify information as true/false, and measuring the effectiveness of popular countermeasures to misinformation, such as fact-checking and media literacy programs. The opening address was given by Prof. Sivakolundu Srisatkunarajah, Vice Chancellor of the University of Jaffna, talked about the digital revolution, the newer challenges arising due to the information disorder and the importance of information literacy as a counter measure. The chief guest at the event, the Hon.