Presentation / lecture delivered to Crisis Mappers Webinar on 9th March 2011.

1. ict4peace: beyond crisis mapping
Sanjana Hattotuwa
TED Fellow
Senior Advisor, ICT4Peace Foundation

2. sri lanka

3. systemic problems
• Systemic violence still present two years after end of war
• Critical dissent still not tolerated. Self-censorship of MSM high.
• No real reconciliation. No real political settlement for legitimate grievances.
• Legacy of 30 years of war: Communal distrust, continued militarisation,
national security mindset, repressive government, poor rule of law,
democratic deficit
• Not those easily visible or explained

4. my work

5. one text peace negotiations platform
2003 - 2004

6. monitoring election violence
http://cmev.wordpress.com | Covered every election since 2008

7. human rights monitoring
Screenshot of first system ~2007

8. mainstream media monitoring
http://www.cpalanka.org/mediamonitoring | From the late 90’s
• Recording how language frames bias and reporting

9. helping rural communities leverage new media
http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/from-community-radio-to-internet-radio-mobiles-and-narrow-
casting-new-models-for-enduring-needs

10. groundviews: citizen journalism redefining media

11. groundviews: citizen journalism redefining media
• Over 6 million words of original content - articles plus
commentary, photos and video not included
• Special edition a year after the end of war resulted in book
• Covered stories and issues not a single other media has
during and after war on IDPs, war crimes, democratic
deficit, corruption, election violence
• First to introduce satire and poetry and
• First to launch YouTube Video channel, Twitter account,
curated Twitter feeds, Facebook fan page, mobile friendly
site
• First to use web visualisations, Google Maps, Google
Moderator
• First to introduce long form journalism in Sri Lanka

12. groundviews: first civility code
2006

13. bearing witness: not regime change
• Curation, participation, collaboration
• Use of mobile technologies
• Leveraging text, photos, videos, cartoons, satire,
animation, visualisation
• Change rare, richer narratives, fuller history

14. Online security: posters and training
Under the radar for key HR and media freedom defenders for 3+ years

15. recording history: archiving vital websites
http://sitesatrisksl.wordpress.com

16. ict4peace
writing on technology for peace and democracy since 2006

17. ict4peace
writing on disasters and tech since Boxing Day tsunami, 2004
http://sites.google.com/site/sanjanah/articlesandpublications
http://sites.google.com/site/sanjanah/thoughtsonictandpeacebuilding

18. ict4peace foundation
crisis information wikis

19. ict4peace foundation
crisis information wikis
• Wikis created in 2010 for Haiti earthquake, Chile earthquake, Gulf Oil Spill, Kyrgyzstan humanitarian crisis,
Pakistan floods
• In March 2011, at the request of Standby Volunteer Task Force, wiki created for Libya Uprising.
• In general all the wikis contain,
• Comprehensive curated list of crisis information
• UN OCHA situation reports, comprehensive briefing kits from Reliefweb, ETC sit reps and other vital
information
• Key background documents
• Curated links to Twitter feeds, Facebook groups, Flickr photos and other social media sites
• Comprehensive list of mapping resources from Google and other sources
• Google Translate based translations of key vernacular resources including media
• Converting Office 2011 docs to Google Docs (e.g. 3W information)

20. challenges for crisis mapping
from bitter experience
• How does information visualisation really contribute to a stronger democracy?
• Do telegenics of recent revolutions take into account systemic violence? Do technologies that underpin
revolutions endure?
• Open standards still lacking - collaboration is not the same as information exchange
• Context, content, creator and consumer dynamics absent from most crowd sourcing discussions. How
to integrate into global volunteer base?
• Lessons from Pakistan flooding - some disasters are sexier than others
• Denouement of war in Sri Lanka was without witness - can crisis mapping help bear witness (a process)
as opposed to mapping (which is event based)
• Failing forward still absent - everyone has success stories, everyone is saving the world a map at a time
• Ground realities like PTSD, fear, anxiety, censorship that affect ICTs in war time and post-war
peacebuilding still under studied

21. thank you
sanjanahattotuwa@ict4peace.org