Representations of humanitarian action in the media at the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War: a discourse analysis (Jan 2009- May 2009)

The reputation of Humanitarianism in Sri Lanka wavered tumultuously over the last half-century. Parties to the conflict perceived humanitarians to be helping during the tsunami but found them to be obstacles to peace in Sri Lanka when they were fraught with allegations corruption. Humanitarian in-terventions contributed positively to bring about limited peace between the LTTE and the government in 2002 but failed to sustain that peace. This paper argues that humanitarian action in Sri Lanka in the final stages of the war was ineffective because of its delegitimation in Sri Lankan society and also be-cause humanitarian aid became increasingly politicized in the final stages of the war. This research analyses legitimation strategies and the representation of social actors in the articles using the critical discourse analysis methodology of Theo van Leeuwen. The objective of this research is to answer the ques-tion: How does the social media in Sri Lanka represent the relationship hu-manitarianism has engineered with Sri Lankan society and what purpose is achieved for the authors by legitimizing or delegitimizing humanitarian action in Sri Lanka?