Over the last few years there have been unprecedented efforts to extend the reach of the Internet to the world’s most challenging regions. These efforts largely build on a conception of the Internet and social media as ‘liberation technologies’ that can help people realize human rights, improve access to services or reduce corruption. However, there has been far less discussion about the impact of extending Internet access to conflict-affected regions where the state is weak or has limited reach. The ConflictNET team was able to ask difficult questions that are often overlooked including the role of social media platforms, and increasingly AI, in conflict in Africa.
The project blended online research investigating how the technical, ideational, and legal frameworks being created to encourage certain uses while discouraging others, with the offline implications of social media and new technologies, grounding their use in the everyday politics and practices in conflict-affected societies. Several objectives included
1. Tactics and Strategies to Shape the Information Environment: We examined the role of different actors (e.g. companies, governments, international organizations) in conflict settings as they use and respond to the increasing importance of social media, and how they attempted to extend or restrict their use.
2. Conflict and Peace Online: We analyzed the online dimensions of conflict, its calls for offline actions (such as violence, encouraging peace or promoting political agendas) and how social media are changing (either empowering or disempowering) who has a voice in conflict.
3. Local Governance: We sought to identify patterns and changes in how different actors are innovating to use social media to extend power and influence and affect violence, governance, security and justice in areas of conflict.
4. Migration: We focused on how social media impacts migratory routes, particularly those coming from the Horn of Africa, with an emphasis on intra-African migration and we examined how new technology has a role for providing justice and security for marginalized migrant communities in areas where the state is weak or does not offer protection.
ConflictNet addressed many critical issues that societies around the world are grappling with, including how to address online hate speech that might lead to violence and how social media is changing the ways people migrate, particularly from the Horn of Africa. It also focused on contemporary issues such as the growing trend of internet shutdowns and AI policy. In many respects the future of the internet is being fought and debated at the peripheries- in Africa- and this project engaged with some of the most critical issues that are arising there with implications for all citizens across Europe.
