3 princes. dream of the arab world. there are 4 power and boundless ambition of the middle east and to a great crisis. the life principles of the cold starts nov 27th on t w. this is the top there is a shaft coming up and. shaped by its media. headed to the polls on saturday but ahead of the elections they are facing different formations on media platforms a lot of it untrue where in colombo where the os is this could determine the windows plus one i used to in hong kong need up to me to the mainland chinese who

joined the protest ranks and others will say the city has nothing to fear from beijing. welcome to the news asia it's good to have you with us wonderful now should be of the polls to elect their 7th president and they have a choice of 35 candidates this time around a record for the island nation of around $22000000.00 people it's an election that comes months after more than $200.00 people were killed in seat of bombings on easter sunday the campaigning has been vigorous but its tone has oftentimes been decided by video media platforms. the presidential election is here and part of our social media timeline is flooded with political content most of which she says is negative nor online campaigning is permitted in the

period before the vote and election day but proxy just about part of customs does not pink that the government should monitor let alone shut down foolishly media. channels or so when the websites are restored after a shutdown all the content and accounts are available again not everything can be reported or taken down so what's the point people need to be discerning enough on their own but to be safe she has already downloaded an app that to let her access the websites even if they're blocked. she longshots election commission is aware of the challenges. the votes come in the shadow of this year's deadly easter sunday blast but it isn't just focusing on the physical security or border the commission is also keeping a close eye on provocative social media content. what we find and complain about hateful or fake content to facebook and google we've told them to immediately take it down. but its reach and other limited. social media is

far from the only source of mis information here prominent newspapers and channels in sri lanka have sides and are willing to go to shocking lengths to back their candidates to the media and the list not longer going to bar than a house plenty of dangerous examples of this people declared that a prominent almost politician was asking the ethnic minority to back sodje premadasa one of the frontrunners major t.v. john has picked this up but the politician never said that in another incident a major deal reached on the show with a muslim politician saying that goes. the other top candidate should be killed he said his soundbite had been doctored the politician had said rajapaksa should be defeated both politicians filed defamation cases but neither news outlet apologized the government's hands were tired since it contractor late private media. if

something goes out on television and radio then it covers practically did entire population broadcasts never actually respects the right of reply deniers are very often completely ignored or the nyos are carried with strong rebuttal from the station which makes it worse. she loves a sea of propaganda and false reports navigating their way to the ports with the correct information certainly won't be easy. so i'm going to have to tell lies from the center for policy alternatives in colombo and i've been looking at the media coverage around the election so i do not welcome now we're talking out of about 16000000 people who are eligible to vote but they are faced with a tsunami of misinformation on their well they're faced with a tsunami of information and can't get

a lot of it actually is with information but not all of it in the elections that we have seen in the past and the region relevance of social media this election 18 to the election day on the 16th of november is kept arise by meetings but it's kind of the you know what you need and influence of social media on public perceptions of all the candidates. in this election you don't want the public perception based on what is there on a source of media has there been any attempt by authorities maybe the election commission to try and step in and try and ensure that correct information is disseminated. well. this commission is the mind of bishop korea has repeatedly warned social media users and facebook page administrators and all those on social

media to be very mindful of the guidelines that have been put out by the elections commission and elections department which explicitly state that social media should not play a role in disseminating or producing misinformation the issue is that social media reflects in large part the content that is broadcast on television in the country so rotten cosco on. google trends and are engaged with in due to the do not millions of times and millions of years of use accumulated over a period of time but its content which you know in previous years would have only been seen at the time of the broadcast and subsequently maybe even forgotten but right now they have an added life in a sense a longer shelf life on social media and that is very problematic because the chief . one of the problems for decades in this country is not facebook is not social

media but the deeply partisan bias nature of traditional media and that traditional media content print and broadcast now on the likes of platforms like this is creating an even bigger headache for what the elections commission and for civil society and for those of us concerned with the electoral integrity right now that all these elections come in the shadow of the easter sunday attacks in this city how crucial for the role of media being in determining the winner. extremely of course in any election the media is crucial so this is this election is no exception to it whether or not they. need in this country have any and every single election. last couple of years and throughout history to determine. a fundamentally important role in determining who

the reno will be and it is also long before when i keep saying before the advent of the introduction of social media the point. is that there are millions each and in ways that are very different to the kind of models and the kinds of engagement that we've just screened or television as broadcast and that's that's an added complexity does it change we have to leave it there for the timing but thank you so much for joining us on how to throw i. think. it's been more than 5 months since hong kong became unrecognizable for the cultural melting pot it actually is it's changed so much that if you are from mainland china or overtly appear connected to it you fear for your safety chinese banks and businesses tied to the mainland have been vandalized and some people have even been abused for speaking mandarin on the streets this in a city that is officially

a part of china and their own 1500000 mainland chinese have moved since 1970 and since the violence began mainland those living in hong kong suddenly find themselves on opposing sides of the debate the neighborhood forum on hong kong's political crisis one of many such events that hong kong's vibrant civil society has organized so she all a g. lecture a mini leader is happy to speak out publicly something she would have never considered 11 years ago when she 1st moved to hong kong from the chinese mainland. 2 rounds into it i had all but home i suddenly heard so many different opinions when i arrived and some of them felt completely unacceptable even just talking about on this team much i had a feeling of danger which i felt they were foreign forces trying to change me or even brainwash me yes. then i became curious on the edge of the house today minutely ardently supports free speech when the pro-democracy movement took

to the streets in june she joined them and when the government ignored their demands she even went on a hunger strike. since then the protests have escalated massively with police using tear gas and rubber bullets and protesters hurling petrol bombs and ric's almost daily and things just keep getting worse many people in hong kong are shocked by the violence. victim is one of them he also arrived in hong kong more than a decade ago he works in the financial sector and proudly identifies as a hong kong. boley all hong kong people must condemn the violence and the illegal acts no matter where we are from including our friends from germany the us japan we only to stand up and say no to this so this must stop order for sure true.

but he's not concerned about the city's freedoms to those who say they fear that hong kong might become more and more like the mainland he responds so what question i'm saying that 90 or so what i'm from lunging but i know very well would. be i often go to shanghai and to beijing and. i don't know hong kong very well so much a joke i think there's nothing to fear. i think the source of this fear is that people don't understand the mainland. we nearly however is afraid of losing her freedom there's videos she publicly defends the democracy movement are circulating online when her father recently texted her from the mainland warning that what she said was inappropriate she knew who was behind it obama supporter if i might have a doesn't know how to pass the great firewall there's no way he came across my

speeches on the sense of chinese internet i didn't tell him. so the only way he could have known is that state security told him so i asked him whether agents had visited him he didn't reply that way was. merely hasn't been intimidated by the threats so far she is still speaking out hoping to preserve her hard won freedoms. and you can of course follow more of our correspondence coverage of the hong kong protests on our website dot com. and that is also where you can get this show on demand and of course check us out of facebook. that's our show for today we leave you now with pictures from the lead up for the should lincoln presidential election set for this saturday and don't forget you can watch up to the minute coverage about 3 elections

on saturday on did up a new. start for. letting . you know we were. the 1st americans at some point in our lives will experience hardship listening.

we will. travel now amazing thailand's. hong kong has entered its 1st recession in a decade what's the economic slowdown mean for business in the region we talked to a market. analyst in kuala lumpur also coming up how air pollution drives people in india capital into a special pass for a breath of fresh air. and imagine

a 19 hour flight crammed in economy quantize completes a double sunrise test flight from london to sydney. monica jones and this is a business asia well it is official of now hong kong has entered its 1st recession in a decade the economy shrank 3.2 percent in the 3rd quarter of violent clashes between pro-democracy protesters and police are taking their toll on the financial and trading hop tourists are canceling bookings retailers are reeling from a shop a drop in sales on the stock market just faltering it's hong kong's worst crisis since it reverted from british to chinese rule in 1997 here's what hong kong government economist said at a press conference today. as if in terms of foreign violence in the past few months i've. taken

a heavy toll on consumption demand and. investment sentiment. the latest surveys also.