Role of Social Media and User-generated Content in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

"Utilizing social media and user-generated content for post-conflict peacebuilding does not simply mean making a Facebook or Twitter account for your organization. Social media involves conversation, and listening as well."

This article proposes the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in post-conflict situations, focusing on its use in conflict prevention, post-conflict peacebuilding, and post-conflict recovery - including "[o]nline mapping, GIS [geographic information systems] technology, increasing mobile penetration, social networking and the growth of UGC [user-generated content]." Using free and open source software and web technology, both web-based platforms and crowdsourcing (i.e., Ushahidi), produces UGC and can be "looped" back to the community source, called "crowd feeding".

For example, FrontlineSMS "has been adapted to the needs of peacebuilding to provide election monitoring, to enhance local radio programming, and to continue to improve NGO [non-governmental organisation] peacebuilding efforts. For example, the African Great Lakes Initiative has used FrontlineSMS to monitor the elections in Burundi and prevent violence from breaking out."

However, infrastructure may be a barrier to use of ICT for peacebuilding, as in Somalia, wehre mobile phones are numerous, but cellular companies are not on compatible frequencies, demonstrating the need for post-conflict government regulation of new network infrastructure.

The document defines concepts of Web 2.0. social media, UGC, and aggregation and curation. For aggregated content, curation makes it accessible to audiences. "What it involves is humans and their skill and expertise in carefully sorting, regrouping and displaying content in a way that is appealing to the community it is designed for...", for example, the display website Pintrest. "Whereas curation of content used to be done by editors, web users can now easily curate content for example through Twitter and Facebook feeds, or with online curation tools such as paper.ly, scoop.it, Storify and Flipboard."

The author considers the Arab Spring through the lens of use of social media and UGC, giving both positive and negative examples - from user-posted videos witnessing the violence to "hacktivists" changing or removing shared content. Two phenomena that compound the problem of attribution to sources are sockpuppetry - using a fake identity online - and astroturfing, which is developing entire communities of fake identities made to simulate the appearance of grassroots movements on a large scale.

The document discusses extensive monitoring of SMS (text messaging) and online hate speech by authorities and NGOs, which, in Kenyan elections, helped focus attention on the strong desire for peace. Among "thinkers, talkers, and practitioners" about ICT,  opinions vary. There are those who are techno-optimists, who are accused by others of internet centrism or "solutionsim". And there are those who see a need to "properly interrogating the problems first (in our example the root causes of conflict)" before focusing on ICT-based solutions.  Cyber-pessimists, on the other extreme, look at ways that  ICT presents obstacles to achieving peace, i.e., "more avenues for surveillance, for new forms of control (e.g. Internet control through blocking and filtering), and for avenues for starting and stoking conflicts. Both sides of the debate, however, share a similar fallacy - that of technological determinism - that is the belief that the nature of the technologies determines its effect on society. This mode of thinking pays less attention to the social structures in which the technology operates, how they affect the technology themselves, and thus technologies effect on society."

The conclusions include recommendations for use of ICT in disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) programmes, such as:

• "DDR programmes can utilize SMS and mobile voice calls in such a manner that older generation mobile phones (without Internet access and multimedia) can be used to generate, aggregate, curate and disseminate UGC. UGC platforms can also be integrated with 'old' ICTs, such as radio and television. For UGC and social media to be successfully used in DDR technology 'blending' of old and new ICTs needs to be used."
• If deciding whether to create a platform or use an existing one, "it is always best to use technologies already in use in the local context."
• "DDR programmes need to have data protection and privacy policies."
• "...There needs to be further research into how conflictprevention tools can be used in peacebuilding, as well as how these tools can be deepened to as to address the root causes of conflict."
• "While protecting personal and security-sensitive information is important to organizations involved in DDR, certain information should be open, accessible and transparent, as well as shared among organizations and with the public in an efficient manner....DDR practitioners need to follow contemporary debates about big data in conflict prevention and try to understand how this can be applied in a post-conflict context."
• "Hate speech needs to be regulated in post-conflict societies, as well as in all societies in a manner that protects freedom of association, freedom of access to information and freedom of expression."
• "...Media literacy is essential for long-term peacebuilding, and should be a component of peace education programmes."