Another interesting development that we learned about in Nigeria is the use of cellphones and texting to create early warning systems in areas where there are threats of violence. While computer internet access is comparatively limited in Nigeria (although this could be changing quickly), cellphones are revolutionizing the way people communicate generally and also providing new tools to mitigate conflict.
The early warning systems can be informal phone trees. For example one person I talked with at a university served as a receiver of warning texts from a group of 20 people in the city of Jos. When his contacts in Jos heard of new or impending problem they would send him a short text message with information about the issue and location. This information can be forwarded to the police if deemed important, who can then take steps to intervene to lessen an outbreak of violence already happening or to prevent one from breaking out. If the 20 contacts in a community are also collecting news from say 50-100 people, that’s a network of 1000-2000 people who can provide actionable intelligence. If one organization at the top of the tree has several people each connected to 20 others on the ground, and their respective networks, one can see how a fairly basic early warning network can have a deep reach into a conflict area.
At the same time, this ability to scale quickly and easily can be used to the opposite effect by those seeking to stoke the flames of anger and violence through false rumors and reports. Here is an article discussing the destructive use of text messaging in Jos.
The good and bad challenge of technology, which unfortunately is historical and found in numerous conflicts, came up in conversation during our visit as well since we were presenting ideas for utilizing technology for increased dialogue and community building. One idea we would like to explore further is the use of centralized networks to provide a positive force against the malicious use of technology. For example, if all the text messaging activity went through a central network, that would provide the ability to provide some level of moderation of malicious content, either by flagging false rumors or by marginalizing the malicious information. The latter can be accomplished in two ways: the false rumors will likely stand out in relation to other, more valid information flowing through the network, or the rumors will be sent outside the network and thus may not have the same legitimacy. The system doesn’t have to be perfect, but the centralized network would provide a certain type of transparency that could lessen the impact of malicious texting.
A major assumption here is that the central site could be trusted by all sides of a conflict, which itself is a real challenge. But if the alternative is destruction there may be incentives for all parties to see the value of information validation and thus have a vested interest in centralizing modes of online and text-based communication. We would welcome any thoughts or suggestions and pointers to research that has been done in this area.
