4 Policy Brief No. 93 Toda Peace Institute time role-play technology.5 Other online simulation and “peace games” also began to create opportunities for gamification of learning core peacebuilding skills and values. One of the earliest intergroup digital dialogue efforts using these basic tools took place on the divided island of Cyprus starting in 1995. Technology for Peace (Tech4Peace) enabled inter-communal communication between geographically isolated Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities. Cypriots from both communities contributed to digitally created shared strategies and visions for peaceful coexistence. The Tech4Peace portal was used for “cybercafé” dialogues and exchanges.6 Second generation: Crowd Sourcing Journalism, Data Collection, People Power By the 2000s, ordinary people could participate in digital peacebuilding through collecting information, documenting their experiences, contributing data, mobilising social movements online, and participating in hackathons to generate new “peace tech.” Citizen journalists began analysing their own context, sharing texts, photos, and eventually videos of events. Technology was seen as democratising media by enabling normal people to report on their context without gatekeeping by legacy media. Nonviolent social movements began to use texting to organise street protests in the Philippines in 2001. By 2011, Twitter and Facebook became the organising sites for mobilising people power during the Arab Spring. Activists married online organising with street-based power to press for human rights and democratic changes. Digital tools like cell phones with cameras and video capacities enabled local peacebuilders to document peace activities. The ability of local people to produce digital video storytelling amplified their voice to the world. Peacebuilding groups also began using data collection, management, and visualisation to give voice to local people’s experiences. In Kenya’s 2008 contested election, local bloggers and software designers conceptualised and developed a low-cost platform called Ushahidi (the Swahili word for “witness) in just a few days. Ushahidi enables the public to email or text the location of an act of violence in real-time with data mapping and mobile surveys. By mapping the outbreaks of violence, this technology enables local peace teams and police to respond to defuse the conflict as rapidly as possible.7 In South Africa and other countries, mobile surveys enabled anyone with a cell phone to provide information to researchers on their lives. These surveys helped to develop “everyday peace indicators” measured by local people according to community indicators of peace.8 In the early 2000s, “peace hackathons” began to bring together peacebuilders, technology experts, community members, and the business community to identify key challenges and For more information on the ICONS project at University of Maryland see their website at https://www.icons.umd.edu 6 Yiannis Laouris Information Technology in the Service of Peacebuilding: The Case of Cyprus. World Futures 60(1). December 2003. 67-79. 7 For more information see the Ushahidi website at https://www.ushahidi.com 8 Pamina Firchow, Charles Martin-Shields, Atalia Omer, and Roger Mac Ginty. “PeaceTech: The Liminal Spaces of Digital Technology in Peacebuilding.” International Studies Perspectives, Volume 18, Issue 1, February 2017, P.29. 5