protection rules that outlines regulations for businesses and organizations in how to process, collect and store individuals’ data and establishes rights for citizens and means for redress.61 Prevention also includes the policies and technical initiatives of tech companies that impact the prevalence of weaponization on social media platforms, such as the development of company community standards, product updates that promote feedback mechanisms or the improvement of practices to remove inauthentic accounts. Civil society-led advocacy activities to influence either regulations or technology company practices also contribute to prevention. Many of these activities and the relationships required to promote prevention are relatively novel for international humanitarian, development and peacebuilding organizations. Monitoring, detection, and assessment of threats A wide variety of stakeholders, from intelligence organizations to civil society activists, play a role in threat monitoring, detection and assessment. However, these activities have not traditionally been a central concern of most international humanitarian, development and peacebuilding organizations. Activities under this category include information and threat mapping, the development of open-source rumor monitoring and management systems, identification and analysis of online hate speech, and social network monitoring, analysis and reporting. An example of creating and facilitating a misinformation monitoring and management system is the Sentinel Project’s Una Hakika program in Kenya’s Tana Delta. The program was designed to counter rumors that contributed to inter-ethnic conflict by creating a platform for community members to report, verify and develop strategies to address misinformation.62 Using another strategy, PeaceTech Lab’s Hate Speech Lexicon workstream seeks to identify and analyze online hate speech in specific contexts.63 In South Sudan, for example, PeaceTech Lab worked with local citizens and experts over time to develop a series of monitoring reports that outlined hateful speech and provided predictions for future conflict based on online hate speech. Building resilience to threats Building resilience, or increasing the ability of societies to resist weaponized social media’s worst impacts, includes both online and offline responses and aligns with traditional aspects of peacebuilding and conflictsensitive development or humanitarian action. Strategies for building resilience to the impacts of social media include training in digital media literacy, general awareness-raising campaigns on the ways in which social media can be weaponized and general social cohesion building. The Digital Storytelling initiative in Sri Lanka is an example of a combined approach that seeks to build skills in citizen storytelling to balance some of the polarized online rhetoric, while also increasing digital literacy within communities to be more responsible consumers of online information.64 Peacebuilding organizations have developed a range of tools and strategies to build social cohesion within and between communities in or at risk of conflict, as well as between communities and government 61 EU Data Protection Rules. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/justice-and-fundamental-rights/data-protection/2018-reform-eu-data-protectionrules_en 62 “How It Works: Una Hakika.” Sentinel Project. https://thesentinelproject.org/2014/02/17/how-it-works-una-hakika/ 63 Combating Hate Speech. PeaceTech Lab. https://www.peacetechlab.org/combating-online-hate-speech-main 64 Digital Literacy Project. https://www.linkedin.com/school/digitalstorytelling/about/ MERCY CORPS The Weaponization of Social Media: How social media can spark violence and what can be done about it 21