Digital Peacebuilding: How To Contribute to Peace Online

Advocacy and awareness

Social media and blog sites can become useful tools for supporting a cause, raising awareness regarding an issue or highlight the impostando to address a certain problem, even in a small scale, because they allow you to get in touch with a variety of people who are quite extensive, among ordinary people, other activists and even policy-makers.

Advocacy and awareness for peacebuilding: support and underline the importance of negotiation, share relevant info on armed conflict resolution processes, push for opening dialogues.

Dissemination

Through digital platforms, it’s possible to disseminate relevance information to clarify the dynamics and implications of an armed conflict, but also to spread tools and modes of support for the civilian population affected by the war and indicating shelters and humanitarian hubs.

Monitoring the armed conflict

How to monitore armed conflicts in remote? By following the social channels of civilians and of organisations, press releases, think tanks’ reports (such as the Council on Foreign Relations, which owns a platform welcoming updates on armed conflicts), databases, such as the Uppsala Data Conflict Program and ACLED, but also through gps and GIS, like apps similar to Google Earth.

Support the local population

It’s possible to donate to local NGOs and humanitarian agencies to support the civilian population, to share their social contents and share their missions.

Foster reconciliation

Digital spaces can become place where people belonging to opposing factions meet each other, share ideas and opinions in a safe and original ways. By doing this, it’s possible to starts rehumanisation and reconciliation processes, especially if these tools become a mean for reparative justice and psycho-social rehabilitation, where combatants confess what they did and suffered.

Promote the peace programmes of civilians society

Peace processes, to be sustained, must be inclusive and participative. Every level of society should contribute to peacebuilding. Indeed, it’s not rare that many programmes and initiatives for conflict resolution come from the civil society, but they’re often ignored by diplomacy, since the top-down, liberal and formal approach are dominant in peace processes.

There are digital platforms where activists meet to find new solution and methods for peacebuilding, write proposals and recommendations for policy makers. You can contribute directly or supporting these projects by sharing them online.

Monitor and report war crimes

It’s possible to monitor and report war crimes, crimes against humanities and mass atrocities also via social media: follow the channels of the civilian affected by the conflict, humanitarian operators, reporters and activists. Useful can be the new IG function “Map” or geolocation.

Educational content

If you’re a teacher, an expert or a researcher, you can contribute to build peace by educating citizens, and not only in schools and universities, but also online, via social media, blogs, or by collaborating with organisation and think tanks, but also arranging workshops and webinars.

“Not A Traditional War Story” was founded for this goal.