Opportunities, challenges, and power of media and information
ICT4Peace: Beyond the hype
1. ict4peace: beyond the hype
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Editor, Groundviews (www.groundviews.org)
Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo, Sri Lanka
4. systemic problems
• Inadequate vernacular content and rendering capabilities
• Uneven broadband connectivity / infrastructure
• Lack of skilled human resources
• Post-war violence and repression still high
• Legacy of 30 years of war: Communal distrust, no reconciliation, no political
settlement, continued militarisation, national security mindset, repressive
government, on-going censorship, poor rule of law, un-constitutional
governance
5. conflict transformation
• A process of engaging with and transforming relationships, interests,
discourses and, if necessary, the very constitution of society that supports the
continuation of violent conflict
• CT argues against giving primacy to settlements
• Conflict is never resolved, but transformed to the non-violent negotiation of
differences
6. my mantras
• ICT in peacebuilding needs to be self-effacing.
• ICT must build social capital, and invest in societal frameworks that empower
local communities to grapple with conflict in non-violent ways.
• Technology itself should not be the cynosure, but what is achieved through it.
7. real world challenges for ict4peace
• Is technology a guarantee of a better process?
• Is technology neutral?
• How does one determine trust online?
• How do you create inter-cultural dispute resolution systems?
• What are the problems of access and publishing content (the Great Wall of
China, the Middle East)?
• How can technology help peace processes?
9. facebook in egypt
• In most countries in the Arab world, Facebook is now one of the 10 most-
visited Web sites, and in Egypt it ranks third, after Google and Yahoo.
• About one in nine Egyptians has Internet access, and around 9 percent of
that group are on Facebook — a total of almost 800,000 members.
• April 6 Youth Movement, a group of 70,000 mostly young and educated
Egyptians, most of whom had never been involved with politics before joining
the group.
19. mobile ring tones for activism
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/trust/whatwedo/where/asia/india/2008/04/080806_india_gates_condomcondom_video.shtml
20. bearing witness to violence
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/08/090827_world_stories_new_media_kashmir.shtml
21. bearing witness to violence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ&feature=player_embedded
43. facebook and social networking
• More than 400 million active users
• More than 60 million status updates posted each day
• More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo
albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month
• More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
52. redefining trust models
• Privacy concerns over Facebook, Google Buzz in 2010.
• New technologies will redefine privacy, disclosure, confidentiality, “common
sense” and trust models.
• A combination of virtual and real-world ODR and peacebuilding processes
will redefine models of participation and representation.