PeaceTech News Roundup

 

 

PeaceTech Roundup Weekly News Highlights, January 30 - February 5, 2015   Featured Story: Is Ebola The New Powder Keg? by Thomas Leo Scherer Media and Social Media Tweeters Spread Kenji Goto Peace Message (BBC, 2/3/15) Calls For #ISISMediaBlackout To Stop Spread Of Horrific ISIS Images (Global News, 2/3/15) Why Western Media Overlooked A Massacre In Nigeria (Columbia Journalism Review, 2/2/15) Famine Babies And Crying War Widows: Unpicking The Cliches Of Conflict Photography (The Guardian, 2/2/15) War Reporters Know That Covering Conflict Can Come At A Price (Al Jazeera, 2/2/15) Conflict-zone Scribes Fear Fallout From Intrepid Journalist's Death (The Japan Times, 2/1/15) Rumors Of Wars: Under-reported Conflicts In World Leave Little Hope Of Change (Catholic Online, 1/30/15) Technology, Science and Data Pro-Assad Hackers Are Catfishing Syrian Rebel Forces (The Verge, 2/2/15) White House Wants More Reaper Drones To Fight ISIS (Defense One, 2/2/15) Nigeria: How Technology Can Enhance Transparency In Electoral Process (All Africa, 2/2/15) Hackers Use Old Lure On Web To Help Syrian Government (New York Times, 2/1/15) Why Is More Data On Afghanistan War Being Classified, Former US Commanders Ask (The Christian Science Monitor, 1/30/15) Media and Social Media Tweeters Spread Kenji Goto Peace Message A four-year old tweet written by Kenji Goto, the Japanese hostage apparently executed by Islamic State militants, has been shared more than 30,000 times. "Closing my eyes and holding still. It's the end if I get mad or scream. It's close to a prayer. Hate is not for humans. Judgment lies with God," Goto wrote. "That is what I learned from my Arabic brothers and sisters." See the full article (BBC, 2/3/15) [Return to top] Calls For #ISISMediaBlackout To Stop Spread Of Horrific ISIS Images Video footage and still images purportedly showing ISIS hostage Muath al-Kaseasbeh burning to death in a cage are circulating online, but social media users are urging others not to share the extremist propaganda. Twitter users are encouraging people to share other images. The argument is that sharing images of vicious murders of captives by ISIS, even in outrage or disgust, only plays into the terror group's hands and further spreads and glorifies their horrific acts. See the full article (Global News, 2/3/15, Nick Logan) [Return to top] Why Western Media Overlooked A Massacre In Nigeria The discussion about why the killings in Nigeria were ignored underscored an old problem: News from sub-Saharan Africa is underreported. Whatever the ultimate explanation for the coverage gap, the discussion of the lack of Baga killings coverage offers an opportunity to pivot resources toward Africa, starting with Nigeria. See the full article (Columbia Journalism Review, 2/2/15, Jared Malsin) [Return to top] Famine Babies And Crying War Widows: Unpicking The Cliches Of Conflict Photography Over two floors of the Photographers' Gallery in London the show displays a stream of often violent images of conflict and suffering, subjugation and struggle, from across the globe. The exhibition is curated by Mark Sealy, director of Autograph ABP. It is at times an overwhelming experience, and intentionally so. Sealy's aim is to disrupt the received narrative of conflict and revolution, to "unhinge our so-called definitive moments and set them in a wider, more relative framework." See the full article (The Guardian, 2/2/15, Sean O'Hagan) [Return to top] War Reporters Know That Covering Conflict Can Come At A Price The phenomenon of journalists being held hostage during war is not new. Before ISIL there was Hezbollah, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Kosovo Liberation Army and many other groups that used their captives to demand exorbitant sums of cash and changes in countries' foreign policies. But with the recent spike in deaths in the war in Syria, the spotlight once again is on war correspondents and the risks they take. See the full article (Al Jazeera, 2/2/15, Jamie Tarabay) Click to read "Truth in Reporting: Media and Communications in Conflict" an Olive Branch post by Anand Varghese. [Return to top] Conflict-zone Scribes Fear Fallout From Intrepid Journalist's Death The tragic death of Kenji Goto highlights a dilemma that the journalism community in Japan has long struggled with: how much of a risk reporters should take on when working in dangerous conflict zones. Goto, who was 47, set up a one-man news agency called Independent Press in 1996. He reported from far-flung conflict zones, and was one of the few journalists from Japan who defied repeated advisories from the Foreign Ministry to stay away from Syria, where a civil war erupted in 2011. See the full article (The Japan Times, 2/1/15, Tomoko Otake, Tomohiro Osaki, and Shusuke Murai) [Return to top] Rumors Of Wars: Under-reported Conflicts In World Leave Little Hope Of Change While wars in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine make headlines in the West, around 30 other conflicts receive little press coverage, and the resulting lack of pressure for change could have serious implications for millions of people, experts say. Researchers say it is not necessarily the size of the conflict that attracts greater media attention. The real reasons for the differences in the coverage are less related to what atrocities were perpetrated, and more related to where, and against whom, the atrocities were perpetrated. See the full article (Catholic Online, 1/30/15, Alex Whiting) [Return to top] Featured Story from the USIP Foreign Policy Peace Channel Is Ebola The New Powder Keg? by Thomas Leo Scherer In the war on Ebola, the tide may finally be turning. Its incidence continues to fall, Mali is officially Ebola free, and schools in Guinea and Sierra Leone, which closed as the epidemic spread rapidly, are finally reopening. Yet at the same time, schools in Liberia have delayed their plans to reopen by another month, suggesting that West Africa may not yet be out of the woods. The longer the epidemic persists, the greater the likelihood that the worst of Ebola's symptoms be yet to come. See the full article [Return to top] Technology, Science and Data Pro-Assad Hackers Are Catfishing Syrian Rebel Forces Pro-Assad forces have broken out a surprising new weapon in the Syrian civil war: catfishing. A new report from the security firm FireEye details an ongoing intelligence-gathering operation that targeted Syrian rebel forces in the months after November of 2013. While the situation was unusual, the tactics should be familiar to anyone who's spent time on the web. See the full article (The Verge, 2/2/15, Russell Brandom) [Return to top] White House Wants More Reaper Drones To Fight ISIS President Barack Obama requested a healthy increase in the number of MQ-9 Reaper drones that the Pentagon will purchase next year, further reversing the brief trend in fewer drone purchases. The numbers show that the Reaper is becoming the military's favorite weapon in its fight against ISIS. But some experts say that the modest bump won't be enough to fix the military's much bigger drone problem-a growing deficit of drone pilots. See the full article (Defense One, 2/2/15, Patrick Tucker) [Return to top] Nigeria: How Technology Can Enhance Transparency In Electoral Process Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Abdu Bulama and Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, Monday stressed how election technology could be better institutionalised to ensure integrity and enhance transparency in the electoral process. Bulama stressed that election administrators in advanced nations had long utilised technology to help address some of their most pressing challenges. See the full article (All Africa, 2/2/15, Emeka Anuforo) [Return to top] Hackers Use Old Lure On Web To Help Syrian Government The Syrian conflict has been marked by a very active, if only sporadically visible, cyberbattle that has engulfed all sides, one that is less dramatic than the barrel bombs, snipers and chemical weapons - but perhaps just as effective. The United States had deeply penetrated the web and phone systems in Syria a year before the Arab Spring uprisings spread throughout the country. And once it began, Mr. Assad's digital warriors have been out in force, looking for any advantage that could keep him in power. See the full article (New York Times, 2/1/15, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt) *Subscription may be required to read the full article Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Managing Conflict in a World Adrift" on Wednesday, February 11, 2015 at 2:30pm. [Return to top] Why Is More Data On Afghanistan War Being Classified, Former US Commanders Ask US military commanders have decided to classify some basic information about how the war in Afghanistan is going - from how much the United States spends on weapons for Afghan troops to their rate of desertion. Now former military commanders are speaking out against the move. They're concerned that it will prevent Americans interested in tracking the progress of the nation's longest conflict from accessing information that has been readily available for the past six years. See the full article (The Christian Science Monitor, 1/30/15, Anna Mulrine) [Return to top] Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend

PeaceTech News Roundup

 

PeaceTech Roundup Weekly News Highlights, January 23-29, 2015   Featured Story: Peace, Inc. by Sheldon Himelfarb and Anand Varghese Media and Social Media The News Website That's Keeping Press Freedom Alive In Egypt (The Guardian, 1/27/15) Feds Release New Guidelines To Bolster Social Media Security After CENTCOM Twitter Hack (Buzzfeed, 1/27/15) Hopes Raised For Release Of Japanese Journalist Held By Isis (The Guardian, 1/27/15) Violence Against Media In Hong Kong Is Seen As Tied To China (Epoch Times, 1/25/15) Hundreds Join Peaceful 'Je Suis Muslim' Rally In Sydney (The New Zealand Herald, 1/24/15) Social Media Must Curb Hate Speech, Says France (France 24, 1/23/15) Technology, Science and Data Map: How The Flow Of Foreign Fighters To Iraq And Syria Has Surged Since October (The Washington Post, 1/27/15) Virtual Games Try To Generate Real Empathy For Faraway Conflict (WKAR Public Media, 1/26/15) Tracking 125,000 Incidents Of Global Terrorism (FiveThirtyEight, 1/23/15) Nigeria Suffers Highest Number Of Civilian Deaths In African War Zones (The Guardian, 1/23/15) Revealed: How Ukraine Conflict Has Claimed 5,000 Lives (The Telegraph, 1/23/15) Media and Social Media The News Website That's Keeping Press Freedom Alive In Egypt Mada Masr was formed just before military coup of 2013. Amid growing censorship, its staff have risked their lives to continue reporting. Can they stay true to their mission? The unspoken question hanging over Mada is whether it will run into trouble with the authorities. The website runs pieces critical of the government and the military, and it receives funding from foreign organisations such as Denmark's International Media Support and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, based in Germany. See the full article (The Guardian, 1/27/15, Leslie T Chang) [Return to top] Feds Release New Guidelines To Bolster Social Media Security After CENTCOM Twitter Hack New government social media security guidelines call for federal agencies to develop "social media stakeholder teams" that can quickly identify and respond to a cyberattack and to strengthen social media passwords. The new guidelines, released Tuesday on the General Service Administration's DigitalGov portal were created in the wake of the embarrassing hack in early January of the U.S. Central Command's Twitter feed by ISIS sympathizers, which exposed basic security holes in the thousands of social media accounts run by the government. See the full article (Buzzfeed, 1/27/15, Evan McMorris-Santoro) [Return to top] Hopes Raised For Release Of Japanese Journalist Held By Isis Jordan may be willing to free a convicted suicide bomber in return for the release of a Japanese journalist and a Jordanian pilot being held by Islamic State (Isis), a Japanese news agency has reported. The claim, made in a Kyodo News interview with two members of the Jordanian parliament, raises hopes that Kenji Goto, a freelance journalist who has been under threat of execution by the Islamist terrorist group for almost a week, will be the beneficiary of a prisoner swap, despite opposition from the US. See the full article (The Guardian, 1/27/15, Justin McCurry) [Return to top] Violence Against Media In Hong Kong Is Seen As Tied To China The recent spate of violence against media companies in Hong Kong is being understood as a new round of raw intimidation by the Chinese regime, trying to suppress freedom of speech in the region. Most recently it was the firebombing of the offices of Next Media, which runs the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, and the home of its former proprietor, the outspoken Jimmy Lai, on Jan. 11, that triggered the wave of concern. See the full article (Epoch Times, 1/25/15, Lum Yee-heung) [Return to top] Hundreds Join Peaceful 'Je Suis Muslim' Rally In Sydney Hundreds of Muslims rallied in Sydney on Friday night to protest negative media coverage of Islam and the French magazine Charlie Hebdo's depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. Some of the 800-strong demonstrators in the Muslim enclave of Lakemba held placards with the slogan "Je suis Muslim," French for "I am Muslim." The slogan was a response to Charlie Hebdo's latest front cover that depicts a tearful Prophet Muhammad holding a sign saying "Je suis Charlie." See the full article (The New Zealand Herald, 1/24/15) [Return to top] Social Media Must Curb Hate Speech, Says France France is calling for the international regulation of social networks in order to crack down on "racist and anti-Semitic propaganda," a senior minister said on Thursday at the UN's first-ever summit on tackling anti-Semitism. "There are hate videos [online], calls for death, propaganda that have not been responded to, and we need to respond," Harlem Désir, France's State Secretary for European Affairs, told reporters. Désir lambasted social networks for what he described as a failure to take responsibility for "racist or anti-Semitic" content published on their platforms, citing Facebook and Twitter as examples. See the full article (France 24, 1/23/15, Sophie Pilgrim) [Return to top] Featured Story from the USIP Foreign Policy Peace Channel Peace, Inc. by Sheldon Himbelfarb and Anand Varghese Peacetech projects consistently struggle to achieve the scale and impact that could sustain them beyond the first good idea. To make their mark, the architects of peacebuilding's bleeding edge need to leave the government payroll and start their own industry. The message here isn't that government has no role to play in funding peacetech; it's that government can't be the only one funding peacetech. The products peaceteach generates don't just save lives; they also have commercial potential. In some cases, a lot of it. See the full article [Return to top] Technology, Science and Data Map: How The Flow Of Foreign Fighters To Iraq And Syria Has Surged Since October The number of foreign fighters traveling to Iraq and Syria, mostly to fight alongside the Islamic State, has grown to 20,000 - up more than 5,000 from previous estimates made in October, according to the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR). These new figures are alarming, inasmuch as they indicate that the conflict has attracted more foreign militants than the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980s. See the full article (The Washington Post, 1/27/15, Swati Sharma) [Return to top] Virtual Games Try To Generate Real Empathy For Faraway Conflict Video games are great for passing time or battling monsters with friends online. But the medium is also being used to explore complex stories and themes. It's even being used as form of journalistic storytelling, immersing people in places and events that can be hard to imagine. In a moment, University of Southern California student Allison Begalman is transported to a sunny street corner in Aleppo, Syria. See the full article (WKAR Public Media, 1/26/15) Click to read "Meet Syria's Rescue Workers: When War Becomes 'Daily Life'" an Olive Branch post by Aparna Ramanan. [Return to top] Tracking 125,000 Incidents Of Global Terrorism Soon after the terrorist attacks in Paris earlier this month, when three assailants massacred people in the office of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, a researcher at the University of Maryland at College Park carefully logged the details of the violence. The attacks became new entries in the Global Terrorism Database, a comprehensive clearinghouse of terrorist acts around the world. See the full article (FiveThirtyEight, 1/23/15, Amelia Thomson-Devaux) [Return to top] Nigeria Suffers Highest Number Of Civilian Deaths In African War Zones The campaign of terror by Nigeria's Islamist insurgency Boko Haram was responsible for nearly half of all civilian deaths in African war zones last year, according to research that highlights the group's tactic of targeting non-combatants. Fighting associated with Boko Haram killed 6,347 civilians in 2014, said the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled), an academic group that uses media reports to monitor violence in conflicts. See the full article (The Guardian, 1/23/15, Mark Anderson) Click to read, "Nigeria Attacks Flare, Highlighting Fragility Before Elections" an Olive Branch post by Viola Gienger. [Return to top] Revealed: How Ukraine Conflict Has Claimed 5,000 Lives Since the pro-Russian separatist rebellion broke out in eastern Ukraine around March last year, 5,000 people have died in the region. The UN had not yet begun collecting fatality data for the first few months of the conflict, but by mid-July, the death toll for the conflict had passed 1,000. What difference, if any, have the various ceasefires and truces had on those living in the region? See the full article (The Telegraph, 1/23/15, Andrew Marszal) [Return to top] Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend