Aren’t we all journalists?- Citizen journalism, disinformation and the weaponization of social media in conflict torn Mali (original) (raw)

Political Agency and Citizen Journalism: Twitter as a Tool of Evaluation

Technology and the globalization of communication have significantly altered the spatial–temporal scale at which information is disseminated, and tools like Twitter have made control over information more decentralized and democratic. Many have debated the precise relationship and networks of power and influence between the media and policy, but few have analyzed the role of citizen journalism and its implications for the social landscape. An analysis of tweets about United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in Haiti and Cote d’Ivoire revealed the usefulness of Twitter, as a medium for citizen journalism, in evaluating phenomena like peacekeeping missions.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICAL CONFLICT

isara solutions, 2019

Information is power and this power can impact the public discourse. In today’s connected world, news is reported instantaneously. Apart from mainstream news outlets, social media has become another important mechanism that people use to stay informed. With live tweeting and live streaming on Facebook, the world’s pressing issues are at our fingertips. While average citizens do not have the opportunity to attend UN summits, US or New Delhi’s conferences, live media coverage has enabled people to follow the details of these events and feel connected to them. Social media in particular has played a central role in keeping people connected in situations of earthquakes, floods, Tsunamis and other natural disasters. Considering situations like Arab uprisings, Philistine, Syria and Kashmir conflict, social media has also played a critical role in bringing people face to face with the real situation on ground. All this wouldn’t have been possible given the biased approach of the mainstream news outlets towards such highly sensitive political issues. However do social media platforms generally circulate bias content produced by certain political or social organizations in order push their own beliefs and ideas or have these platforms democratized the flow of information in its real sense remains serious question. Though the use of social media by certain organizations to construct and perpetuate conflict can’t be denied at any cost, however how ethical is it to deny people with their right to free speech and its propagation through social media--particularly in situations of politically motivated conflicts--is a question that this research paper would through some light upon. Apart from it, the role that social media can play in creating and retaining peace and stability in conflict ridden areas would be on focus.

Citizen Journalism and Conflict Transformation

Matatu, 2017

The ubiquitous Internet platform in Africa has given rise to a new set of non-state actors responding to protracted conflicts through the use of new media technology. As a departure from a state-centric approach to addressing conflict in Africa, this interdisciplinary study explores the contribution of the public in responding to armed conflicts through citizen journalism. To unearth non-violent African digital innovations, this research explored the Ushahidi platform, which emerged as a response to Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence. Using a qualitative method, data was gathered through unstructured in-depth interviews. The data was analysed using thematic analysis. The data showed the transformative role the Ushahidi platform played during Kenya’s electoral violence through crisis-mapping, the early warning multi-agent consortium, a constitutional referendum, and election monitoring. Evidence also emerged regarding the pioneer work of Ushahidi in other non-violent technological i...

Exploring the impact of an evolving war and terror blogosphere on traditional media coverage of conflict

This article analyses the evolution of a war and terror blogosphere between 2001 and 2011. It identifies seven areas where blogs and related online genres could provide ‘alternative’ accounts to traditional media narratives of conflict. The article also assesses the challenges and opportunities of blogs in each area from the perspective of the working journalist in order to deepen our understanding of the changing influence of blogs on traditional media narratives of conflict. Parallel accounts and interpretations of conflict will collaborate and compete in a war and terror blogosphere in the future, but it has been significantly influenced by the adoption of blogging by military actors since 2008. The war and terror blogosphere is no longer a relatively unmonitored online space which is having an impact on both the production of ‘alternative’ accounts of conflict and the incorporation of these accounts into traditional journalism.

Peace journalism strategy for covering online political discourses in a multipolar society and the new public sphere

Information Development, 2020

The relationship between political competition and social polarization has been studied extensively while overlooking the divisive rhetoric in online political discourses and how media’s coverage creates the social-psychological barriers to peace and a unified sense of national identity/unity. Adapting Galtung’s peace-journalism model through the qualitative content and news frame analyses of contenders’ tweeting activities and news coverage during Nigeria’s 2019 presidential contests, this study reveals the prevalence of othering discourses in contenders’ tweets and the attributes of conflict-escalatory coverage by Nigerian newspapers. Implementing peace-journalism strategy become essential to create shared values for improving political communication amidst the new public sphere in multipolar Nigeria.

Social Media in Conflict

Cultural Politics, 2014

There are important differences in how information technology is used in military and social-movement cultures. Militaries use social media in the Human Terrain model and security-police mode for quantifying and controlling social space, in order to meet low-intensity, counterinsurgency, and regime-maintenance goals (or for recruitment and public relations). For social-movement cultures, such as secular Egyptian revolutionaries, 15M (Los Indignados), and Idle No More, social media is an integral part of life; it is context. Unlike these horizontalist movements, military institutions are based on a hierarchical structure that precludes social media from becoming part of their organizational and decision-making culture. For them, social media constitute part of civil society, a commons both virtual and physical. The synergy between computer networks and decentralized social movements is clear when military, social-movement, and network theories and practices are compared. These differ...

Building Peace through Journalism in the Social/Alternate Media

Media and Communication, 2016

Social media networks are rapidly rewriting the traditional principles and protocols of war and conflict reporting. This paper endorses the argument that with the help of new media technologies, journalists can enhance the peacebuilding efforts in societies and communities. Their writings in the alternate media can provide ‘compelling form of engagement’ between the audiences and the people affected in the areas of violent conflict. But, the paper further argues, this requires a broadening of the orthodox model of journalistic objectivity that has so far been in place. It examines the possibilities of new models in the light of the existing journalism paradigms as argued by scholars including Galtung and Ruge (1965), Lynch and McGoldrick (2005), Shinar (2007), Hackett (2011) and Shaw (2011). It concludes on the need to have a model that is ‘a more natural fit’ for the 21st century by giving journalists the ‘flexibility’ to enable people to make their own judgments as to where the tr...

BLOGS AND BULLETS III: SYRIA'S SOCIALLY MEDIATED CIVIL WAR

2014

In this report from the USIP PeaceTech Initiative, a team of scholars from George Washington University and American University analyze the role of social media in Syria’s civil war. The report focuses primarily on group dynamics, activist organizations’ use of online media, and the relationship between new and traditional media. It draws on a public conference held in Washington, D.C., in September 2012 with Syrian activists, Western journalists, and policy analysts, as well as on a private workshop held in April 2013 at Stanford University with academic researchers and leading research scientists from top technology firms. It presents novel empirical research on Twitter conversations about Syria that demonstrates important new findings about differences across Arabic and English users, and about the emergence of distinct, insular clusters of discourse. This report is part of the ongoing Blogs and Bullets project led by USIP’s PeaceTech Initiative, in partnership with George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. It builds on two other reports, published in 2010 and 2012: “Blogs and Bullets: New Media in Contentious Politics” and “Blogs and Bullets II: New Media and Conflict After the Arab Spring."