In 2011 and 2012, USIP held a Priority Grant Competition entitled “Communication for Peacebuilding” to support research and practitioner projects on the ways that communication flows and communication technologies can contribute to the prevention and resolution of conflict. Internews, a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening independent media worldwide, received funding in 2011 for a grant project in the Central African Republic and also agreed to serve as the lead ‘learning organization’ for the group of three 2011 grantees.
At the conclusion of the three projects, Internews convened a learning group meeting in which the three project directors discussed lessons learned from their projects. Lauren Kogen and Nina Sheth of Internews prepared a detailed report on this meeting, and in the Q&A below, USIP’s Elizabeth Murray discusses the main findings of the report.
Why is it important to focus on communication flows in conflict-affected or conflict-prone countries?
Communication – whether verbal, nonverbal, written, visual, or technologically mediated – is the core of human interaction, allowing individuals to express their opinions, organize themselves, share knowledge, and sustain meaningful relationships. Communication flows are thus a central element in conflict as well as in its prevention and its resolution.
At the beginning of a conflict, inflammatory declarations from rival leaders can stoke tensions and promote violence. Similarly, carefully worded statements can steer the public towards peaceable behavior. During negotiations, balanced journalism can keep the public informed and ensure that leaders are aware of their constituents’ concerns, just as biased reporting risks derailing peace processes. Peace media productions can teach children tolerance and understanding, and social media can be used just as easily to educate and empower as it can be used to incite violence. In sum, all forms of communication can be used destructively or constructively, and at each point in a conflict, individuals face decisions about what messages they want to transmit and how they want to transmit them.
In 2011 and 2012, USIP held a Priority Grant Competition on the theme ‘Communication for Peacebuilding.’ The goal of the competition was to support innovative research and practice around the myriad ways that communication flows and communication technologies impact upon conflict and peacebuilding. In 2011, a call for proposals entitled ‘Violence, Information, and Peacebuilding’ resulted in three grants: (1) a World Policy Institute project to research, define, and prevent inflammatory speech in Kenya; (2) an Internews project to facilitate communication between communities and humanitarian actors in the Central African Republic (CAR) through the strengthening of a community radio network and a daily e-bulletin on events around the country; and (3) a Radio La Benevolencija initiative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to reduce the spread of hate speech and propaganda through radio.
In 2012, through the call for proposals ‘Participatory Digital Mapping, Local Engagement, and Community Media,’ USIP made four additional grants: (1) to Map Kibera Trust for a digital mapping project to educate communities in Nairobi about the upcoming elections and monitor election day incidents; (4) to Sudia for a project to map resource related conflict and corresponding peace initiatives along three seasonal migratory routes in Blue Nile State, (3) to Search for Common Ground for a project to increase the capacity of local peacemakers to use mobile technology to collect information on threats of violence in Plateau State, Nigeria, and (4) to Stakeholder Democracy Network to use mobile and mapping technologies to promote dialogue between residents and the local government over a controversial redevelopment plan in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
At the inception of the ‘Violence, Information, and Peacebuilding’ grant projects, Internews agreed to serve as the lead ‘learning organization’ that would be responsible for facilitating communication between the grantees about implementation challenges, possible areas of collaboration, impact evaluation, and best practices. Following a Washington, DC meeting of the project directors from the three grants, Lauren Kogen and Nina Sheth of Internews prepared a learning group report that highlights some of the lessons learned from the three grant projects and the project directors’ broader discussion about communication and peacebuilding.
What are the main findings of the learning group report?
Together with the three project directors (Susan Benesch of World Policy Institute, Sylvain Richard of Radio la Benevolencija, and Jeroen Corduwener of Internews), the authors of the report developed a framework for understanding the various points of intervention for media peacebuilding projects. The report also discussed when peacebuilding media projects are most likely to be successful, and shared important insights on the challenges of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) in peacebuilding and development programs.
The framework identified the three levels of the media where peacebuilding interventions can take place: policy, production, and audience. In terms of policy, the peacebuilding potential of the media is strengthened when efforts are taken to discourage dangerous speech without curbing freedom of expression. Through her USIP-funded project, Susan Benesch of World Policy Institute has advised the Kenyan government on how to put in place policies that discourage the harmful rhetoric that contributed to post-election violence in Kenya in 2007 and 2008.
At the media production level, journalism training projects can build the capacity of local media outlets to produce balanced, professional reporting and valuable educational content. In the eastern DRC, the Radio la Benevolencija project trained radio producers to create easy-to-understand broadcasts that transmitted important messages about the upcoming elections.
At the audience level, media interventions can counteract hate speech in two ways: by dispelling false rumors or by sensitizing the public about the dangers of incitement and how to react when confronted with it. Through two radio sketches, the Radio la Benevolencija project taught the public about how to respond when faced with hate speech. Another useful category of interventions at the audience level are projects that seek to connect media producers with media consumers who can put the information to good use. By networking a group of community radio stations in Central African Republic and producing a daily e-bulletin for the humanitarian community, the Internews project was able to provide much-needed information to organizations that could provide valuable assistance to rural communities.
This above model can be useful to practitioners as they plan future interventions and consider how best to achieve their objectives. In addition to making choices about which societal entry point is most appropriate for a peacebuilding intervention, practitioners must also make complicated choices about which means of communication will be used to transmit messages. Increasingly, newer information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as mobile phone technology and crowdsourcing platforms are being used to quickly and cheaply send messages to and receive information from target populations. While these technologies show great potential, there are a number of potential, and the learning group shared the group’s thoughts on the possibilities and limitations of these tools.
Through Susan Benesch’s research in Kenya, she noted that although ICTs can be used to transmit constructive messages, they are also frequently used to spread dangerous and hateful speech. While these negative messages before may have been heard by only a select group of people, the rapidity of mobile and internet communication now allows them to go ‘viral’ and reach untold numbers of people. This is in large part harmful, in that such hateful and intolerant messages can often lead to violence. At the same time, the fact that hateful speech can potentially be transcribed and transmitted can have the effect of encouraging leaders to use restraint in their discourse.
Jeroen Corduwener highlighted some challenges that the Internews project team in CAR encountered as they encouraged rural populations to send SMS message with news items to their local radio stations. Although the initial pilot of the SMS crowdsourcing system was successful, ultimately the usage rate of the SMS system was significantly lower than what was hoped. Conversations with rural residents revealed that wide illiteracy, the cost of sending messages, and a general distrust of mobile phones all contributed to less than expected usage.
Drawing on their personal experiences, the project directors brainstormed several tips for using ICTs in peacebuilding projects:
When planning a project that uses mobile phones or SMS, understand the availability of the technology and the population’s willingness to use this technology. This includes understanding the extent of mobile coverage, the percentage of ownership, the costs of the technology, the literacy rate, and any cultural biases or fears regarding the technology.
When using a crowdsourcing platform, verify that the platform is appropriate for the population and coordinated with other crowdsourcing platforms. When several crowdsourcing platforms are in effect, this can result in the information becoming diluted as different people send their contributions to different platforms, resulting in all platforms having incomplete information. Also, crowdsourcing platforms can be more effective as a way for internet-enabled actors to send information to one another, rather than a way for discrete mobile phone users to send information to these groups.
Positive speech can be used to counter hate speech. It is important to try to prevent hate speech, but spreading positive messages can be just as powerful.
A strong local partner is an important component to a successful project. A local partner can provide important information about the local context and other related work that is currently underway or may have already been undertaken in a certain region or sector.
Speaking more broadly, the group also concluded that the most empowering variety of media peacebuilding are programs that provide people with information that allows them to make decisions for the good of their communities. All three project directors agreed that when individuals have access to accurate and timely information, they are less likely to engage in violence.
What was accomplished by convening a learning group? How can learning groups be helpful to peacebuilding practitioners?
By forming a learning group, organizations or individuals working on similar regions or themes can share with one another resources, best practices, and results of impact evaluations. In sharing information about initiatives that for one reason or another did not succeed, an organization can help ensure that its peer organizations avoid making similar mistakes. Likewise, sharing success stories can help point peer organizations towards promising areas of work. In the case of USIP’s Communication for Peacebuilding learning group, the three project directors began communicating at the inception of their projects, and this led to some collaboration between Susan Benesch of World Policy Institute and Sylvain Ricard of Radio La Benevolencija on their respective projects to identify and counteract dangerous and hateful speech. Learning groups can meet in person or connect virtually. This particular learning group met in person at the end of the project periods, which allowed for sharing of lessons learned, but the group did agree that an earlier meeting would have facilitated greater collaboration on the three projects. In addition to facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing on specific projects, learning groups can allow practitioners to take a broader look at their field. By discussing their related initiatives, practitioners are often able to identify trends that are not apparent in examining individual projects. For example, the USIP Communication for Peacebuilding learning group compiled several considerations for using ICTs in peacebuilding projects, which came together as the group discussed their own projects and reflected on the field more broadly.
Learning groups’ insights can be valuable to donor organizations as well. This learning group spent a significant portion of the meeting discussing the challenges of monitoring and evaluating their interventions. The three project directors strongly recommended that USIP and other funders consider instating pre-implementation assessment periods during which grantees can do a more thorough on-the-ground assessment before finalizing an exact project plan. All three organizations faced implementation challenges that they believe could have been avoided with a more thorough pre-project assessment. Most donors’ current funding practices do not allow for this, but it is worth considering whether it may be feasible to include these more in-depth assessments in funding cycles.
Kenya, the DRC, and CAR are all experiencing some degree of conflict. What other peacebuilding work is USIP doing in these countries?
USIP currently has six active grant projects in Kenya: 1) FLT Films’ religious peacebuilding and documentary film project, described here on USIP’s website; 2) the Center for Creative Leadership’s youth leadership project in the city of Nakuru; 3) McGill University’s Kirsten Johnson’s research project on sexual violence in the 2007-2008 post-election crisis; 4) Map Kibera Trust’s initiative to use digital tools to educate voters and monitor election violence; and 5) as described above, World Policy Institute’s Susan Benesch’s project to investigate and where possible prevent dangerous speech in the lead-up to the next Kenyan elections, which are scheduled for March of 2013. In addition to the grant projects in Kenya, USIP Senior Program Officer Jacki Wilson recently traveled to Kenya, where she helped facilitate two workshops on electoral violence prevention with the Institute for Defense Analyses and local partner EISA. Upon her return, Wilson prepared a report on the current situation in Kenya.
In the DRC, USIP is currently funding both War Child Canada and Catholic Relief Services for projects to prevent sexual violence and work with victims in the eastern part of the DRC. As described above, USIP has also supported Radio La Benevolencija’s project to train radio producers to educate people in the eastern DRC about how to react when confronted with hate speech. On February 22, USIP’s Raymond Gilpin, Director of the Sustainable Economies Center of Innovation, moderated a public event entitled “Eastern Congo: Changing Dynamics and Implications for Peace.” USIP Senior Fellow Carla Ferstman wrote a recent blog post about the challenges of reparations for Congolese victims of violence, and Raymond Gilpin and Brett Boor also prepared a Q&A on last August’s flare-up of instability in the eastern DRC.
USIP’s grant to Internews was its only recent project in the Central African Republic. This grant project was highlighted in a brief piece on USIP’s website.
To read the full Communication for Peacebuilding Learning Group Report, please visit Internews’ website.