Lisa Schirch
25 Spheres of Digital Peacebuilding and PeaceTech
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13. Modeling Digital Communication Skills
14. Facilitating Intergroup Digital Dialogue
15. Digital Peace Education through Gaming
16. Digital Violence Prevention
17. Digital Diplomacy, Negotiation and Mediation
18. Digital Inclusion in Peace Processes
19. Digital Upstanding
20. Digital Social Movements
21. Digital Hackathons and PeaceTech Startups
22. Peace Engineering
23. The Hague Peace Data Standard
24. Digital Media Literacy
25. Digital Public Safety
1. Digital Citizen Journalism and Cyber Witnessing
Before digital technologies became widespread, publishing was expensive, difficult to
distribute, and was predominantly run by professional “legacy media." Journalists, editors,
and news owners in legacy media act as “gatekeepers”, deciding what news they will publish,
and what, in their view, is not newsworthy. Digital technology democratised the publishing
process. Digital technology enables any individual with an internet connection to become a
“citizen journalist” by uploading a news story, a photo, a video, or other digital content and
sharing it via the internet.
Digital technologies give anyone with access (and access is often missing) the tools to voice
their complaint, their vision, their request to others around the world. A refugee can write
directly to the head of humanitarian relief agencies and ask for more food. A bystander
filming an instance of police brutality can instantly send out the video to anyone around the
world. A child can file a report of abuse without the help of a parent.
Martin Luther King wrote about the need to reveal hidden injustices. Digital technologies
are bringing to the surface narratives, photos, and videos that might have stayed invisible.
Atalia Omer describes cyber witnessing technologies as “witnessing tools in generating
ethical outrage and commitments through knowledge production and raw images of
suffering, martyrdom, and protest” that “accelerates and emboldens the involvement of
third parties in developing nonviolent peacebuilding efforts.”35 Digital technologies enable
individuals to tell their stories, offering agency, and empowering tools for people to
communicate their identity and their story. In 2011, the website 18daysinEgypt.com
created a portal where anyone could upload a photo or story about their reason for
35
Firchow, et al. p. 9.