As everybody realises by now, technology is neutral when it comes to issues of war and peace. A lot of the positive stories around the use of sms to mobilise activists need to be balanced out by a recognition that in many cases, the government and private sector are in a position to challenge that use - and of course to use the same technology to promote their own messages. The Eldis community board picks up the story in Kenya:

As tensions and violence began to spill into the streets in Kenya in late 2007, the government decided to ban local live broadcast. Whilst this is obviously controversial, there were fears that radio, in particular, could be used, as it had done in Rwanda, to incite violence. The ban of live reporting meant that SMS began to be utilised as an update method and thus ‘mobile reporters’ were born.

The Government realised that they couldn’t control the internet or the text messages which were being sent to incite hostility, so they countered them with their own blanket text messages stating that the violence was illegal and that Kenyans should be concentrating on peace.

The role of radio broadcasts in supporting the genocide in Rwanda is well-documented (see the Nahimana and Barayagwiza cases at ICTR) and is a valuable cautionary tale. However few people have stopped to think much about how SMS could be an even more powerful tool for those inclined to mass violence. Radio broadcasts can incite the mob, but they are a weak tool for co-ordinating the mob; SMS, on the other hand, has the capability to be much more dangerous in the wrong hands. But when I say “the wrong hands”, what do I mean?

The Kenyan government were acting benevolently in attempting to curtail the bloodshed but others could use it for their own means… It demonstrates how the same information can be used for very different ends and poses questions about safeguards: can and should they be put in place to ensure that ICT tools are used for empowering and not repressive purposes?

The Kenyan government may have been acting benevolently - although it’s worth pointing out that it was in their interests to prevent violence simply because they hold the monopoly of violence. In most countries in the world, if not all, governments are not naturally inclined to empower their citizens. Communications technology should be available as widely as possible, and I don’t want anybody - least of all the government - legislating about who should have access to it on the basis of their ideology.

I think it’s dangerous to talk about “safeguards” to ensure that ICT tools are used for empowering and not repressive purposes; there’s no such thing as the wrong hands. The short version: technology can be used for good or ill, and preventing people using it for ill can only be achieved if you also prevent people using it for good. I’m happy to be challenged on this one - are there cases where I might be wrong?

The White African faces a quandary:

Global tools that have real time read/write access are extremely powerful. Depending on ones motives, your impact can be good or bad. Even if your motives are good, your tool can be used for bad. How’s that for a quandry?

It’s certainly a quandary, but not a new one. It’s the same question that’s been asked about humanitarian aid since at least the 1970s, and has been one of the motors behind the humanitarian reform process. What’s more interesting is the assumption behind that question, an assumption that he describes quite clearly:

Just decades ago those who were not in close enough proximity to an event were unable to do much, if anything about it. Today, we can successfully effect change through digital tools and be thousands of miles away.

As I wrote in the comments, neither of these statements is quite true. Decades ago you could have joined Amnesty International campaign, or given money to a relief agency, or written to your MP; these options are still available, and will make a difference. The problem we have today is that many people feel that such actions don’t make enough of a difference - that they don’t have a big enough impact, or they don’t bring change quickly enough.

We have to start being honest, though; just because the internet works reliably and at high speeds, it doesn’t mean that humans work at similarly high speeds or with similar reliability. The impact of our actions will almost never be immediate, and will frequently lead to outcomes that we didn’t predict. Our expectations have been raised by the relentless cheerleading for the information revolution, and we need to lower those expectations or risk alienating people who want to get involved.

The real questions are the same ones that I ask myself in my own work whenever I approach a new project. What decision or action will this information inform, and who is responsible for making that decision or taking that action? The answers to those questions determine a) whether it’s worth collecting the information in the first place, and b) what we will do with the information once we’ve collected it. Unless we answer those questions clearly, and build our systems around them, we’re unlikely to effect any significant change, no matter how powerful our tools are.

(For a bit more on Ushaidi, Sanjana has a great interview with Ory Okollah, in which she explains clearly that the site has been used as an information-gathering tool, rather than a resource for conflict mitigation or resolution. Just to be clear, I think Ushaidi is absolutely worthwhile - but I’m looking forward to what comes next.)

Because Paul’s claiming to be too confused to write up some lessons learned from Ushahidi.com, I’ll have a go:

What’s cool?

• It’s timely: the number of people who actually get these kind of things off the ground, as opposed to jibber-jabber about them, is very small. Getting preliminary, lead information as close as possible to the time the incident happened is extremely valuable in every possible scenario and not just the “document now, prosecute later” one.
• It challenges the conventional view by providing an opportunity for people to read first hand accounts un-editorialised by the MSM, who seem intent on warping the events into the template of Generic Violence in Africa.
• It’s quite easy to use: the system focussed on getting raw information in the form of sit-rep narratives online without overburdening the person submitting the information.
• It links in with current monitoring processes: although I’ve noticed a few irrelevant submissions up there, it seems they’re making an effort to ask NGOS on the ground to verify the basic thrust of an incident. I am sure that the information from Ushahidi will find its way into other, formal efforts to document what is going on.

What could be cooler?

• Clarify the purpose of the system: Paul raised this in his earlier post - what exactly is this system for? Some of the published material is very general situation narrative unrelated to specific incidence of violence. Some of the incidents are also based on news reports from the international media, but this is a system that aspires to give the raw groundview and not information that’s been twice around the world first.
• Get just a little more structured information from people submitting reports: With all that narrative, I wouldn’t like to be the analyst for the raw info Ushahidi holds at this point. Whilst the whole “Who Did What To Whom” model for documenting violent acts might frighten the general public from actually using the online submission system, separating out the recording of information about the nature of the incident (deaths, theft, destruction of property) from the perpetrators and victims would be a step enabling a useful dimension of analysis. It’s not exactly clear what “names of the involved” really means. They could usefully take a browse through the HURIDOCS Events Standard Formats and Microthesauri for some inspiration.
• More transparent verification could increase its credibility: A clearer indication of how incidents are verified, and who is doing the verification, preferably with some kind of attribution. At present, a cross or a tick next to the incident isn’t going to satisfy anyone that the incident wasn’t fabricated.
• Build follow up into the system: you want people to continue using the site as an information resource. What will prompt them to return is features will give them updates: perhaps a daily email or sms digest. Not sure quite how this could work, but there you go.

Where’s everyone else at with this?

Ushaidi goes from strength to strength, it seems, while Mashada closes down, which is an interesting trend path. As a Web2.0 social mash-up affair takes off, an old-school bulletin board project collapses - and for exactly the same reasons, the increase in violence in Kenya. The need for security-related information sharing has increased, leading to more support for something like Ushaida; but as the social divisions within Kenya increase discussions on the bulletin boards became more fractious and unmanageable.

What does this tell us? The virtual world isn’t resistant to real-world pressures, and it doesn’t necessarily overcome social divisions - hence the problems with the bulletin board. These pressures can be managed, but it’s no easy thing - but would Ushaidi be any less resistant to hijacking by people intent on promoting social divisions? I guess not - but people are using Ushaidi far less than bulletin boards, so it’s less of a target.

I was hoping to draw some lessons from this, but I can’t remember what they were. I like Ushaidi, though, and I think the call for a global version of Ushaidi is well worth pursuing - but raises lots of issues around what you’d actually do with it. Is it for advocacy? Security? Monitoring? I guess that these are my usual questions, since I had exactly the same feeling about BrightEarth when it started, and I’m still no further along the path of working out what my answers are.

• Following the collapse of the political process in Kenya, bloggers White African and Kenyan Pundit - both of whom are worth reading, by the way - have developed a Google Maps mash-up which deals with electoral violence in the country.  Called Ushaidi (’witness’ in Swahili, I think?), it enables people to report events either online or via SMS.  It’s not the first time something like this has been tried, but this an interesting organic attempt to pin down exactly what’s happening in the country.  As anybody working in human rights knows, gathering this sort of information is extremely difficult - particularly later on when it might be needed.  More explanation from White African in this blog post, coverage at Global Voices (with an interesting article on cyber activism in Africa) and the BBC.

• There’s been a fair amount of discussion about how the media and responders can work more effectively together in the last couple of years, and of course a whole heap of blogs and similar about how the new technology is going to change the face of disaster response, etc, etc.  So far, not much has happened, but TVE Asia and the UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok have just published a free resource called Communicating Disasters.  It’s an interesting but disjointed read - I’m not exactly sure who it’s targeted at, to be honest…

• There was a brief flurry of blogging around Nathan Eagle’s article, The Mobile Web is NOT helping the Developing World - and what we can do about it, mainly because it burst the bubble of optimism around bringing the internet to the poorest through the Miracle of Mobile Telephony (TM).  Of course, Nathan’s position is not that it isn’t possible, just that we’re not doing it right at the moment.  Personally, I’m still waiting for some hard evidence that these efforts benefit the poor rather than the relatively well-off - but that might just be splitting hairs.

• Witness have launched The Hub, their online platform for human rights-related videos and media, after a long incubation period. Cutting through the bumf, it’s intended to connect individuals and organizations who are working on human rights around the world. It’s an interesting lunge at building global connectivity in a sector (human rights) that is notoriously factional, and the focus on media is potentially powerful - particularly new media forms, such as mobile phone content, which are incredibly powerful tools for mobilizing support. You can register at http://hub.witness.org/login.