USIP's Media, Conflict & Peacebuilding Roundup

 

Center of Innovation: Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding Weekly News Roundup, July 7 - 13, 2011 Media and Journalism RFE/RL Reporter Fined Over Belarus Protest (RFE/RL, 7/11/11) Vietnam Detains Anti-China Protesters and Journalists from US, Japan News Agencies (AP, 7/10/11) Sudan Split was 'Over-simplified' by Media (Al Jazeera, 7/10/11) Internet and Social Media Kenya Opens its Books in Revolutionary Transparency Drive (Guardian, 7/13/11) Social Media: A Double-edged Sword in Syria (Reuters, 7/13/11) Facebook and Other Social Media 'Used for Cyber-jihad' (BBC, 7/12/11) While Obama Hedges, U.S. Flames Syria Thugs on Facebook (Wired, 7/11/11) Diplomacy in the Age of Facebook (CBS, 7/11/11) What's New from PeaceMedia Screening: La Ola Verde - Margarita Martínez **Click here to subscribe to USIP's Science, Technology and Peacebuilding News Roundup.** Media and Journalism RFE/RL Reporter Fined Over Belarus Protest An RFE/RL correspondent in western Belarus has been found guilty of taking part in an illegal protest and fined the equivalent of around $200, RFE/RL's Belarus Service reports. Mikhail Karnevich was sentenced by a court in the city of Hrodna over a protest on July 3, the country's Independence Day. See the full article (RFE/RL, 7/11/11) [Return to top] Vietnam Detains Anti-China Protesters and Journalists from US, Japan News Agencies Security forces in Vietnam quashed an anti-China rally in the capital by detaining protesters along with journalists covering the event for foreign news agencies, including The Associated Press. More than a dozen demonstrators who gathered near the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi were herded onto buses by police when they tried to assemble for the sixth straight Sunday to express outrage over an ongoing spat with China involving disputed territory in the South China Sea. See the full article (AP, 7/10/11) [Return to top] Sudan Split was 'Over-simplified' by Media For many directly affected by the world's longest-running civil war, the Sudanese conflict has been over-simplified in the Western press as inter-religious or inter-ethnic strife. "The media tried to make us look like Jafar in Aladdin," says Khalid Albaih, a Sudanese political cartoonist. "Everyone looks alike [in Sudan], the Arabs and the Africans," he adds. See the full article (Al Jazeera, Ali M. Latifi, 7/10/11) [Return to top]   Internet and Social Media Kenya Opens its Books in Revolutionary Transparency Drive When violence erupted after the 2007 Kenyan elections, a team of activists produced Ushahidi - a digital open-source platform to monitor crises in near real-time. Around the same time, a partnership between Vodafone and Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile operator, produced M-PESA, the mobile banking system that has revolutionised the way many Kenyans manage their money. Projects from Ushahidi to M-PESA have put Kenya firmly on the map of ICT innovation in international development - a position and a trend the Kenyan government now seems eager to promote. See the full article (Guardian, Claire Provost, 7/13/11) [Return to top] Social Media: A Double-edged Sword in Syria Social media played a pivotal role in the ousting of Arab leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, but activists in an uprising in Syria fear the government is keeping tabs on them by scanning websites such as Facebook and Twitter. "I am too scared to speak about my political activity on Facebook," said a 21-year-old activist, who asked to be referred to as Rana. "I'm not going to open a Twitter account," she said. See the full article (Reuters, 7/13/11) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Rock the Casbah" on July 18 at 10:00am. [Return to top] Facebook and Other Social Media 'Used for Cyber-jihad' Al-Qaeda is using online technology to plan attacks in pursuit of a "cyber-jihad", the government has warned. The UK's updated counter-terrorism strategy suggests terrorists' use of social media to disseminate information and radicalise people is "commonplace". It said there was evidence of extremist groups seeking "to invade Facebook." See the full article (BBC, 7/12/11) [Return to top] While Obama Hedges, U.S. Flames Syria Thugs on Facebook Loyalists of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad vandalized the U.S. embassy in Damascus on Monday, pelting it with eggs, rocks and tomatoes and scrawling anti-American graffiti on the facade. The attack was as audacious as it was misdirected. The center of U.S. criticism of Assad isn't inside the embassy anymore, it's on the embassy's Facebook page. Case in point: U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford posted a decidedly undiplomatic condemnation on his Wall yesterday in response to a precursor demonstration. See the full article (Wired, Spencer Ackerman, 7/11/11) [Return to top] Diplomacy in the age of Facebook Today's demonstrations outside the U.S. and French Embassies in Damascus may have been prompted by anger over the respective ambassadors' trips to a city that is a center of anti-government unrest. But they've been ticked up by social media. In simultaneous but uncoordinated visits to the Syrian city of Hama last week, American Ambassador Robert Ford and French ambassador Eric Chevallier gave tacit support to forces opposed to President Bashar Assad. See the full article (CBS, David Morgan, 7/11/11) [Return to top]   What's New from PeaceMedia Screening: La Ola Verde - Margarita Martínez La Ola Verde or "Antanas' Way" is a film funded by Open Society Foundations which tells the dramatic story of Antanas Mockus' campaign for President. Mockus' unique political campaign focused on transparency and rule of law, defying all typical stereotypes on Latin American politics. Though bested by the establishment candidate Juan Manuel Santos, Antanas' success presents hope for a new way of doing politics in a nation burdened by crime. Visit PeaceMedia [Return to top] Click here to subscribe to USIP's Science, Technology and Peacebuilding News Roundup. Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend

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USIP's Science, Technology & Peacebuilding Roundup

Center of Innovation: Science, Technology and Peacebuilding Weekly News Roundup, July 7 - 13, 2011 Table of Contents Kenya Opens its Books in Revolutionary Transparency Drive (Guardian, 7/13/11) Popularity of Drones Takes Off for Many Countries (NPR, 7/11/11) How TileMill Improved Ushahidi Maps to Protect Children in Africa (PBS, 7/11/11) How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History (Wired, 7/11/11) The Globe's Not Only Getting Hotter, It's More Unjust and Unstable Too (Huffington Post, 7/11/11) Army Uses Radar to Spot Suicide Bombers from 100 Yards (Wired, 7/8/11) **Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup, which includes a special section on Internet and social media.** Kenya Opens its Books in Revolutionary Transparency Drive When violence erupted after the 2007 Kenyan elections, a team of activists produced Ushahidi - a digital open-source platform to monitor crises in near real-time. Around the same time, a partnership between Vodafone and Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile operator, produced M-PESA, the mobile banking system that has revolutionised the way many Kenyans manage their money. Projects from Ushahidi to M-PESA have put Kenya firmly on the map of ICT innovation in international development - a position and a trend the Kenyan government now seems eager to promote. See the full article (Guardian, Claire Provost, 7/13/11) [Return to top] Popularity of Drones Takes Off for Many Countries As the U.S. begins withdrawing ground troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, it is increasingly depending on unmanned aerial vehicles to track and kill suspected terrorists and other enemies. That has pushed production of the weaponized drones to new levels. But remotely controlled aircraft, especially the type used for surveillance, are becoming ubiquitous throughout the world, says Peter Singer, author of Wired for War. See the full article (NPR, Jackie Northam, 7/11/11) [Return to top] How TileMill Improved Ushahidi Maps to Protect Children in Africa In May I worked with Plan Benin to improve its Violence Against Children (VAC) reporting system. The system uses FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi to collect and visualize reports of violence against children. While these mapping services are great for places rich in geographic data, many places -- like Benin and other countries in the developing world -- are poorly represented by the major mapping services. In an effort to create a custom map with more local data, I tested out TileMill, Development Seed's open-source map design studio, with successful results. See the full article (PBS, Paul Goodman, 7/11/11) [Return to top] How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History It was January 2010, and investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency had just completed an inspection at the uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran , when they realized that something was off. What the inspectors didn't know was that the answer they were seeking was hidden all around them, buried in the disk space and memory of Natanz's computers. Months earlier, in June 2009, someone had silently unleashed a sophisticated and destructive digital worm that had been slithering its way through computers in Iran with just one aim - to sabotage the country's uranium enrichment program and prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from building a nuclear weapon. See the full article (Wired, Kim Zetter, 7/11/11) [Return to top] The Globe's Not Only Getting Hotter, It's More Unjust and Unstable Too Over the next few decades, tens of millions of people will be driven from their homes. Unlike other refugees, though, their plight won't be blamed simply on the familiar horrors of war or persecution; they'll blame the weather. An ongoing drought crisis in East Africa has created massive hunger and aggravated conflict between groups vying for dwindling resources in an increasingly barren terrain. The United Nations estimated that in 2009, conflicts over cattle grazing and water resources led to several hundred deaths. See the full article (Huffington Post, Michelle Chen, 7/11/11) [Return to top] Army Uses Radar to Spot Suicide Bombers from 100 Yards The security at Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel wasn't nearly enough to stop nine suicide bombers from setting the place ablaze and killing 12 people last month. But the U.S. military thinks it can do better - by spotting treacherous individuals before they get close enough to cause serious harm. Meet the CounterBomber. The Army just awarded Science, Engineering and Technology Corporation (SET) an up to $48.2 million contract for a machine that could spot bomb-toting individuals from afar. See the full article (Wired, Lena Groeger, 7/8/11) [Return to top] Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup, which includes a special section on Internet and social media. Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend

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