ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace)

Moju, billed as “a collaborative blog and community space for Sri Lanka’s civil society” started off as an interesting experiment - to see whether the civil exchange of ideas and opinion on contentious, complex and emotional issues could lead to a better understanding of those issues. The conversation was in English. The contributors, some writing under their names (such as myself) others under pseudonyms, came from civil society, donors and expats and on occasions, the diaspora. What started off as a really small group grew exponentially. Early content was some of the best content on conflict, peace, democracy, governance, gender, rights I’ve read anywhere on the web. Intelligent, engaging writing and equally interesting comments made visiting and writing for Moju a singularly enjoyable experience.

Moju claimed a few firsts - amongst them, the first review of David Blacker’s book A Cause Untrue and the first interview with him - both of which were posted on Moju before they appeared anywhere else in the media. I followed up with interviews with Delon Weerasinghe, Winner of the Gratiaen Prize 2005. There was, in those early days, posts such as The gentle radicalism of opening space (the copy here is from Google Cache) by J. Bask, generated a lot of interest and discussion. In Servings of Kottu with a taste of Moju, I explored some of this content more in depth.

Steadily, however, Moju became what I called the spittoon of the deranged. Comments full of hate, badly written, with spurious logic, that sought not to engage with the issue, but to instead deride, in the most juvenile and insulting manner, the person who posted the article became increasingly frequent. Original writing soon dried up - posts were often copy and paste jobs of articles posted elsewhere on the web. Authors who didn’t want to suffer flaming and online insults, simply did not write. The conversation became stilted and usurped by those who didn’t have a point to make, but did so anyway.

Moju’s editorial policy, or lack thereof, was partly to blame. Moju was never moderated - InfoShare simply did not have the interest, or the human resources to devote to the task. As Vajra noted, “Our policy of intervention is as minimal as we can make it, and is not designed to favour any group over another.” As the blog grew in popularity, so did comment spam in particular, and comments in general. Akismet took care of most of the former, but the latter required human intervention, which was not forthcoming. The resulting situation was one in which any comment, from anyone, saying anything, had a place on Moju.

It was clearly unsustainable and was the anti-thesis of Prof. Samarajiva’s experience with Lirneasia’s blog up until July 2006.

Moju shut down today.

The problem with any website that attracts a wide spectrum of visitors is that it is going to have to deal with the same trolls and undesirables that Moju attracted. Dissent, surely, needs to be celebrated, but not at the expense of civility and online etiquette.

David Pogue’s interesting post in this regard has this to say:

The real shame, though, is that the kneejerk “everyone else is an idiot” tenor is poisoning the potential the Internet once had. People used to dream of a global village, where maybe we can work out our differences, where direct communication might make us realize that we have a lot in common after all, no matter where we live or what our beliefs.

But instead of finding common ground, we’re finding new ways to spit on the other guy, to push them away. The Internet is making it easier to attack, not to embrace.

It’s this etiquette that I wanted to govern Groundviews, to which Moju now redirects visitors to.

Hopefully, Groundviews picks up from where Moju left off, and those desirous of engaging conversations on contemporary issues have a new home to visit, and contribute to, in the growing Sri Lankan blogosphere.

I should have said Part 1 in the title. As we ended our conversation, we both agreed that there was much that we wanted to, but didn’t cover - and that in any case, the issues that we talked about would continue to evolve, necessitating at least one other conversation in the future.

Paul Currion is someone I have admired the writings of ever since I became a student of technology for peacebuilding and conflict transformation.

We spoke for a tad over 45 minutes.

Paul reflected on his experience in using technology for humanitarian work, his interactions with big corporations, the assumptions and the attitudes of the West in developing solutions for community empowerment in the Global South. I reflected briefly on my work in Sri Lanka, but was really more interested in hearing Paul’s critique of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, that of late has generated so much interest and media coverage, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos.

This conversation would be interesting for anyone interested in using technology for social change, peacebuilding, humanitarian work, conflict transformation or any related area.

Thanks again Paul - and I hope that this conversation inspires a broader discussion on just how, and indeed, if, technology can be used for transforming some of the most vexed social, political and economic conflict in the world today.

Listen to the podcast streamed over the web, or download it on to your PC or mobile device from here (hosted on VOR Radio).

Groundviews - http://www.groundviews.org - Sri Lanka’s groundbreaking citizens journalism website, currently features a wide range of articles focussing on issues of humanitarian issues, media, human rights, peace, democracy, constitutional reform and governance.

Here’s just a small sample of new content added to the website recently:

Points of view
If this is not war, what is?
Crossing over into chaos
The Death of a Priest
Sam the inimitable
Conflict on Canvas

Academic Analysis
The promise of Citizen Journalism
Some thoughts on the Second Chamber

From the field
42 People surrender at Jaffna Human Rights Commission
Batticaloa CHA facilitating IDPs

Groundviews Community Poll
Is the International Community partial to the LTTE?

In a lighter vein
Terrafic

System upgrades
Groundviews now makes it easier to search for content by individual authors.

We will also feature a regular fortnightly poll, the first of which is already online - please share with us your opinion by voting !

Visit Groundviews today for a fuller range of articles!

Kier Olsen DeVries, Senior Editor of The Communication Initiative, with whom I’ve been occasionally in touch with for several years regarding my work in media, peacebuilding and ICT4Peace, wrote in to say that this blog well be featured for the next week on The Communication Initiative’s homepage!

The Communication Initiative (The CI) network is an online space for sharing the experiences of, and building bridges between, the people and organisations engaged in or supporting communication as a fundamental strategy for economic and social development and change. It does this through a process of initiating dialogue and debate and giving the network a stronger, more representative and informed voice with which to advance the use and improve the impact of communication for development. This process is supported by a web-based resource of summarised information and several electronic publications, as well as online research, review and discussion platforms providing insight into communication for development experiences.

From a time a couple of years ago when people scoffed at the very word ICT4Peace, I’ve demonstrated by example how ICT can secure & strengthen peace processes, peace negotiations, democracy, reconciliation and governance. Through the innovation of InfoShare and the experience garnered through years at the Centre for Policy Alternatives working with media and peacebuilding, the work we’ve engendered in Sri Lanka in ICT4Peace is ripe for scaling up and applying in other conflict zones as well.

Please get in touch - I’d love to hear about your own experiences in this new and exciting field of theory and practice.

Dealing with pointed criticism in a manner that does not exacerbate conflict is the art of crisis communications, and indeed, is part and parcel of what one should expect when dealing with a process as fraught with tension as a peacebuilding and peace negotiations.

Accordingly, the 9 point list that IMPACS put together on crisis communications is instructive in this regard, and is precisely that which the Norwegian Foreign Ministry could have found useful in dealing with the NAT report on LTTE financing.

As this news report published after the NAT report was made public alleges:

The detailed payment list was accidentally released on the internet by the MFA webmaster. After NAT exposed the payments the detailed list was removed and replaced with a new list with only a summary of the paments with details. The old and the new list have the same web address.

While the news report now includes a table of payments of Norwegian funding to various organisations, it is also the case that the allegation of the deletion of the original webpage on the Norwegian Foreign Ministry site can be verified by visiting Google Cache.

This page clearly indicates that up until the 16th of January, the information that the NAT report refers to was on the Norwegian Foreign Ministry site. That it was taken down, we can only imagine on account of the NAT report, was a supremely ill considered decision, especially when in this Google / information age, nothing of what is uploaded once can ever be taken off easily.

Several lessons for organisations result:

Never respond to criticism by taking down material that is quoted in an article or report which critiques initiatives or actions of one’s organisation. If the criticism is accurate, posting updated information stating clearly that it is new content that replaces errors in previous content is advisable. If inaccurate, keeping the information online helps rebut effectively any false allegations. If the allegations expose what Gore may call an inconvenient truth, it’s still far better to keep the information online and proceed to best explain why things were done in the manner in which they were.

As the IMPACS document notes, do the right thing. Deleting information is daft, and gives fuel to detractors. Answering allegations made against initiatives in support of peace and conflict transformation is, like it or not, an inextricable part of being part of a conflict resolution process. Once information is deleted, an organisation is immediately in defensive mode - and that’s bad PR from the start.

Learn more about Google and the web! Today, it’s not always easy to erase digital footprints on the web, and technologies like Google Cache and the Wayback Machine make it virtually impossible to hide content that was once online but taken off in a hurry.

Finally, be honest & transparent. When under fire, an organisation needs to ensure that its responses are engaging, non-inflammatory and firm.

There’s no simple formulaic approach to crisis communications in our information age, but episodes such as this remind us that even high profile government agencies run the risk of grossly underestimating the power of the web to archive content, and that in peacemaking, all of us need to be adept at handling allegations in a manner that secures the perception of our actions as those which were conducted with the best intentions for the good of all.

The “war on terror” – that diplomatic, political and military offensive after the 9/11 attacks – is a war that has been silently waged in Sri Lanka for over 27 years. Generations are woven into the spiral of violence. Citizens across the island, particularly in its north and east, have suffered the twin effects of terrorism and the equally reprehensible counterterrorist strategies of successive governments that have trampled on fundamental rights and humanitarian norms.

Human dignity and respect for human life have eroded so dramatically in two decades of bloody conflict that the killings of a few dozen are now no longer exceptional. Days in which there are only a few killings are now considered “good” days, given the striking rise in violence on the ground in 2006.

Sri Lanka’s own “war on terror” over the past two decades, looked at from the perspective of a citizen, is a multi-faceted and complex series of struggles to secure human rights, basic human needs and above all, the hope for a just and sustainable peace.

Madrid11 features an article on Groundviews that I wrote highlighting the potential of citizen journalism for peacebuilding and conflict transformation.

An AP news story on Wired on how, as I’ve prophesised last year, games with overt (progressive) political messages are growing in variety and influence:

Ian Bogost takes some of the fun out of video games - and replaces it with opinion. The Georgia Institute of Technology professor creates games - or “playable editorial cartoons,” as he calls them - that are packed with political messages.

Came across a fascinating paper titled Deception and Design: The Impact of Communication Technology on Lying Behavior that’s a must read for anyone interested in Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) and the design of applications in support of internet / web mediated conflict resolution processes.

Social psychology has demonstrated that lying is an important, and frequent, part of everyday social interactions. As communication technologies become more ubiquitous in our daily interactions, an important question for developers is to determine how the design of these technologies affects lying behavior. The present research reports the results of a diary study, in which participants recorded all of their social interactions and lies for seven days. The data reveal that participants lied most on the telephone and least in email, and that lying rates in face-to-face and instant messaging interactions were approximately equal. This pattern of results suggests that the design features of communication technologies (e.g., synchronicity, recordability, and copresence) affect lying behavior in important ways, and that these features must be considered by both designers and users when issues of deception and trust arise. The implications for designing applications that increase, decrease or detect deception are discussed.

No sooner that I had posted Avatars and Politics: Using Second Life for political activism? comes news of Le Pen’s National Front opening up an office on Second Life - the first political party in Europe to do so.

And, not entirely unexpected, there were riots to boot:

“The first night I arrived at the protest … it was ringed on all sides by protesters with signs to wave and statements to distribute,” wrote James Au, whose website, New World Notes, reports on events in Second Life. “By the second night I came … the conflict had become more literal, for many residents had armed themselves. Multi-coloured explosions and constant gunfire shredded the air of Porcupine.” Some activists threw exploding pigs.”

There are some photos of the virtual political office posted here (with some interesting comments by visitors as well.)

I wonder when the first Second Life political assassination will take place, and how we will deal with it?

Also see:

Online Violence : Take 2

Corroborating what I’ve written on this blog on using mobiles for peacebuilding, C|Net News has this story on how New York intends to use mobile phones to combat crime. What interested me more than the ability to send photos to 911 calls was this:

The technology will also eventually be extended to 311, a hotline established during the mayor’s first term in office to deal with nonemergency, quality-of-life concerns. Bloomberg said the new video and picture capability would hold “city agencies accountable for correcting (issues) quickly and efficiently.”

There’s huge potential for the replication of such services in cities worldwide - a mashup of Google Maps coupled with posts from subscribers highlighting the failings of local government authorities, say in the clearing up of garbage, can be a powerful visual message to strengthen good governance and effective service delivery for citizens.

Also see Strong Angel III - SMS, MMS, Google Maps mashups for thoughts of & concrete ideas for developing such SMS / MMS services based on stuff in development that I saw at Strong Angel III last year.