PeaceTech News Roundup

 

PeaceTech Roundup Weekly News Highlights, August 7 - 13, 2014   Featured Story: On Israel's Defeat in Gaza by David Kothkopf Media and Social Media Italian Journalist Among Five Dead in Gaza Bomb-Disposal Accident (New York Times, 8/13/14) Social Media and Modern Warfare (Huffington Post, 8/11/14) How Twitter Has Changed Warfare Forever (Huffington Post, 8/11/14) Ukraine conflict: Turning Up the TV Heat (BBC, 8/10/14) Truth and Propaganda: The Other Two Foes in Gaza's War (Guardian, 8/10/14) Tweet Offensive: U.S. Announces Iraq Airstrikes on Twitter (NBC, 8/8/14) The War Photo No One Would Publish (The Atlantic, 8/8/14) Hashtag Diplomacy Won't Save Lives (USA Today, 8/7/14) Azerbaijan's President Threatens War with Armenia via Twitter (Guardian, 8/7/14) Israel, Gaza, War & Data: Social Networks and the Art of Personalizing Propaganda (Huffington Post, 8/7/14) The ISIS Online Campaign Luring Western Girls to Jihad (Daily Beast, 8/7/14) Technology and Science Five Police Investigated After Delhi Launches WhatsApp Anti-Bribery Campaign (BBC, 8/13/14) How Data Scientists Are Uncovering War Crimes in Syria (Mashable, 8/12/14) Meet the American Who Wants to Save Egypt's Bread (NBC News, 8/12/14) Middle East Tech News: All You Need to Know From the Last Three Months (Huffington Post, 8/12/14) Against All Odds: From Iraq to Silicon Valley (Huffington Post, 8/12/14) Diaspora Nigerians Return to Empower Youngsters in Technology (AllAfrica, 8/11/14) Should We Make Games about Israel/Palestine? (Guardian, 8/8/14) Media and Social Media Italian Journalist Among Five Dead in Gaza Bomb-Disposal Accident The bombs had stopped falling on the Gaza Strip, so a crew from The Associated Press set out Wednesday morning to do a story on the people who pick them up. Two of the journalists, an Italian videographer and a local Palestine helping him with arrangements and translation, were killed along with three members of Gaza's unexploded-ordnance squad as they were attempting to defuse what officials described as an Israeli bomb that detonated. See the full article (New York Times, Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram, 8/13/14)*NYT subscription may be required to access full story [Return to top] Social Media and Modern Warfare The advent of social media has however really changed the way wars are represented and news consumed - and by extension peoples' attitudes towards specific wars. No longer are citizens reliant on official transcripts or field reports of battles, rather information can be gleaned almost instantaneously. We have been inundated with blogs, tweets, status updates, comments on status updates and comments on news reports. See the full article (Huffington Post, Adam Fisch, 8/11/14) [Return to top] How Twitter Has Changed Warfare Forever If we saw Iraq through our TV screens, then we're seeing Gaza through our newsfeeds. Just as the Gulf War was known by media commentators as the "CNN war", due to the power of their live updates on Desert Storm, the ongoing conflict in Gaza looks set to be remembered as the first ever social media war. How has this come about and what will be the impact for governments, soldiers and civilians? Instant Twitter reporting circumvents any potential filters or editors, whether through government censorship or the policies of media outlets. See the full article (Huffington Post, Danny coleman-Cooke, 8/11/14) Click to read "Iraq: Islamic Militants, Breakup and Other Tough Questions on Twitter" an Olive Branch Post by Steven Ruder. [Return to top] Ukraine conflict: Turning Up the TV Heat Television channels in Russia and Ukraine are using emotive language in their coverage of the conflict in the east of Ukraine, with Moscow-based channels employing particularly strong terms to compare Ukrainian authorities with Nazism. Russian state TV's coverage of the crisis has been consistently sensationalist, using a wide repertoire of propaganda techniques to incite revulsion and hostility towards the authorities in Kiev. See the full article (BBC, 8/10/14) [Return to top] Truth and Propaganda: The Other Two Foes in Gaza's War My social networks followed me into the war and collided with others - a reminder that warfare has become newly alive with information. The basic suite of tools journalists use has only been around six or seven years - so Gaza is one of the earliest glimpses into how propaganda and truth might intersect in 21st-century warfare. See the full article (Guardian, Paul Mason, 8/10/14) [Return to top] Tweet Offensive: U.S. Announces Iraq Airstrikes on Twitter Rear Adm. John Kirby kept his major announcement about Iraq on Friday morning short - as in less than 140 characters. Instead of a news conference or TV announcement, the Pentagon's press secretary took to Twitter to break the news that U.S. forces would drop bombs on ISIS artillery in Iraq. See the full article (NBC, 8/8/14) [Return to top] The War Photo No One Would Publish On February 28, 1991, Kenneth Jarecke stood in front of the charred man, parked amid the carbonized bodies of his fellow soldiers, and photographed him. The image and its anonymous subject might have come to symbolize the Gulf War. Instead, it went unpublished in the United States, not because of military obstruction but because of editorial choices. It's hard to calculate the consequences of a photograph's absence. See the full article (The Atlantic, Torie Rose DeGhett, 8/8/14) [Return to top] Hashtag Diplomacy Won't Save Lives Do you remember #BringBackOurGirls, the social media campaign launched to help rescue 276 girls abducted from a secondary school in northeast Nigeria? Well it turns out that the online campaign has been no match for Boko Haram, a group of men willing to prey on the weak and defenseless and die for the cause of establishing an Islamic state. See the full article (USA Today, Gary Bauer, 8/7/14) [Return to top] Azerbaijan's President Threatens War with Armenia via Twitter The self-proclaimed Islamic State, formerly known by the acronym ISIS, is actively recruiting Western women and girls. And in the process this "caliphate" that now occupies large swathes of Syria and Iraq is showing, once again, that it's almost as shrewd with social media as it is ruthless on the battlefield. See the full article (Daily Beast, Jamie Dettmer, 8/7/14) [Return to top] Israel, Gaza, War & Data: Social Networks and the Art of Personalizing Propaganda While war rages on the ground in Gaza and across Israeli skies, there's an all-out information war unraveling in social networked spaces. As we construct our online profiles based on what we already know, what we're interested in, and what we're recommended, social networks are perfectly designed to reinforce our existing beliefs. Personalized spaces, optimized for engagement, prioritize content that is likely to generate more traffic; the more we click, share, like, the higher engagement tracked on the service. Content that makes us uncomfortable, is filtered out. See the full article (Huffington Post, Gilad Lotan, 8/7/14) [Return to top] The ISIS Online Campaign Luring Western Girls to Jihad The self-proclaimed Islamic State, formerly known by the acronym ISIS, is actively recruiting Western women and girls. And in the process this "caliphate" that now occupies large swathes of Syria and Iraq is showing, once again, that it's almost as shrewd with social media as it is ruthless on the battlefield. See the full article (Daily Beast, Jamie Dettmer, 8/7/14) [Return to top] Featured Story from the USIP Foreign Policy Peace Channel On Israel's Defeat in Gaza by David Kothkopf Whenever this most recent conflict is seen to be over, it will not be remembered for the security logic behind it or the speeches justifying it. Nor will it be remembered for the tactical gains that Israel may have achieved. No, the lasting image this war will leave the world is of four boys on a beach, playing soccer and then running for their lives, hurtled from a carefree moment of childhood to oblivion in the blink of an eye. There is no Iron Dome that can protect Israel from images like that. See the full article [Return to top] Technology and Science Five Police Investigated After Delhi Launches WhatsApp Anti-Bribery Campaign Five policemen in India are being investigated for alleged corruption after officials received complaints on a newly-launched helpline number. Since its launch on 6 August, the helpline has received more than 3,700 WhatsApp messages and 622 calls. Officials said they had received two video and three audio messages and were investigating the reported incidents. See the full article (BBC, 8/13/14) [Return to top] How Data Scientists Are Uncovering War Crimes in Syria For more than three years, Syria has been crippled by a bloody civil war that has laid waste to cities and exacted a heavy civilian toll. One group of researchers, though, is determined to document every single killing. Through painstaking data-gathering and assiduous verification, the group Syrian Tracker has tallied 111,915 deaths in the course of the conflict so far. Syria Tracker gets reports from eyewitnesses and volunteers on the ground. Researchers also cull data from news reports. See the full article (Mashable, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, 8/12/14) [Return to top] Meet the American Who Wants to Save Egypt's Bread The rising price of bread was one reason Hosni Mubarak lost power in Egypt. Food inflation is one reason his replacement, Mohammed Morsi, also lost the job. The emerging world is a market that frightens off a lot of-maybe the vast majority of-American investors. But Blumberg believes in his technology. His company designed a series of modular storage bins that deflect the sun's heat, keep grain dry and provide security measures against theft. See the full article (NBC News, Jane Wells, 8/12/14) [Return to top] Middle East Tech News: All You Need to Know From the Last Three Months The past few months have seen a raft of rich new research reports published about media and technology in the Middle East. From a study into media use by Northwestern University in Qatar, through to the Dubai School of Government's 6th Arab Social Media Report and ASDA'A Burson-Marsteller's annual Arab Youth Survey; these detailed studies provide a number of fresh insights into evolving attitudes and technology based behaviours in this fast changing region. See the full article (Huffington Post, Damian Radcliffe, 8/12/14) [Return to top] Against All Odds: From Iraq to Silicon Valley Martin Hermez, the 21 year-old founder and CEO of Tivvi; a soon to be launched social network mobile application company based in Silicon Valley and his team are among those few. Martin was born in Baghdadand spent more than half his life under the iron-fist rule of Sadaam Hussein. Martin and his immediate family escaped Baghdad via a perilous 12-hour road trip to Jordan, leaving the rest of their family behind. Months later, on July 4 2003, they arrived in Detroit with one month's rent at their disposal and unable to speak English. See the full article (Huffington Post, Kirk-Anthony Hamilton, 8/12/14) [Return to top] Diaspora Nigerians Return to Empower Youngsters in Technology Recently, a one-week computer programming and robotics mentorship programme took place at the Digital Bridge Institute, Abuja. Adebisi Oje is the convener and CEO of Africode, an initiative developed to help youngsters in Nigeria to learn the basics of coding. Young, energetic and passionate, she said Nigerian youth deserve better knowledge in information technology. See the full article (AllAfrica, Yunus Abdulhamid and Mulikatu Malika, 8/11/14) [Return to top] Should We Make Games about Israel/Palestine? Are some topics just too taboo to be tackled by gaming? This week, a controversial game called "Bomb Gaza" was pulled from the Google Play store after a public backlash. Designed for Androids and tablets, the game's stated aim was to "drop bombs and avoid killing civilans". Inevitably, the game drew a slew of negative reviews and negative commentary before it was eventually taken down by Google, who said it violated their policies. See the full article (Guardian, Elena Cresci, 8/8/14) [Return to top] Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend

 

PeaceTech News Roundup

 

PeaceTech Roundup Weekly News Highlights, July 31 - August 6, 2014   Featured Story: Negotiating the Next War by Rebecca Hamilton Media and Social Media Pakistani Taliban Threaten Media for 'Shameless,' 'Satanic' Role (Newsweek Pakistan, 8/6/14) Palestinians Decry Gaza Journalist Killings (Al Jazeera, 8/5/14) Will Social Media Activism #FreeGaza or #BringBackOurGirls? (Huffington Post, 8/5/14) Russian Journalist's Body Found After Disappearance (Guardian, 8/5/14) 5 Innovative Projects Show the Power of Citizen Collaboration (PBS, 8/5/14) Is Western Media Coverage of the Ukraine Crisis Anti-Russian? (Guardian, 8/4/14) Under the Cosh (Economist, 8/4/14) U.S. Media Coverage Of Israel-Gaza Conflict Gets An 'F' (Huffington Post, 8/4/14) A Russian Soldier's 'Ukraine Selfies' are Not Evidence, They're War Art (Guardian, 8/1/14) South Sudan: End Media Restrictions (Human Rights Watch, 7/31/14) Twitter Chat: Is Social Media a Weapon in Modern Warfare? (PBS, 7/31/14) Technology and Science Hackers Design Clandestine Aerials to Help North Koreans Watch Banned TV (Guardian, 8/6/14) Using Mobile Phones to Better Understand Refugees' Food Needs (Guardian, 8/6/14) Google Removes 'Bomb Gaza' Game from App Store (Telegraph, 8/5/14) Israel Spied on John Kerry's Phone During Middle East Peace Talks (Mashable, 8/4/14) Viber Says App Used by 5 Million Burmese (Irrawaddy, 7/31/14) Media and Social Media Pakistani Taliban Threaten Media for 'Shameless,' 'Satanic' Role The media wing of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan's Mohmand agency franchise has threatened the country's news organizations over coverage of the military operation in North Waziristan. On Monday, the Pakistani Taliban sent out an email addressed to "the heads and members of the organizations working for the rights of media members around the world," including Reporters without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists. The email [is entitled] "The Global War of Ideologies and the Behavior of Media." See the full article (Newsweek Pakistan, 8/6/14) [Return to top] Palestinians Decry Gaza Journalist Killings Hala Hamad first received the news of her husband Khaled's death in a television report. "My family were telling me, 'No, it's not him,' but I knew [from] his camera and his vest written Press on it," she told Al Jazeera, breaking down in tears. Since the war began, at least 11 Palestinian media workers have been killed: Three at different times in the Shujayea neighbourhood, a driver for Gaza news agency Media 24 in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, and another five were killed while not on duty. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is still investigating the cases of another three reported deaths of journalists. See the full article (Al Jazeera, Mohammed Omer and Dalia Hatuqa, 8/5/14) [Return to top] Will Social Media Activism #FreeGaza or #BringBackOurGirls? It has been over 7 weeks since three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped in the West Bank, the tragic preliminary to nearly 2 months of unrelenting violence, death and destruction in Gaza. Facebook and (perhaps even more prominently) Twitter have become the dominant tools for observing, disseminating and reacting to major global issues as they unfold, whilst online news sites use live blog updates that seek to harness live tweets and other sources of news to fully immerse online users with breaking news. See the full article (Huffington Post, Jack McSweeney, 8/5/14) [Return to top] Russian Journalist's Body Found After Disappearance The body of an independent Russian journalist was found in a wood the day after he had gone missing following threats from law enforcement authorities. Kuashev had written about alleged human rights abuses by the security forces in the course of anti-terrorism operations. He also criticised Russian policy in Ukraine. See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 8/5/14) [Return to top] 5 Innovative Projects Show the Power of Citizen Collaboration The reporting projects below do not use citizen content only as a last resort. Instead, they work with citizens as collaborators in sourcing, investigating and reporting stories. They curate citizen content by finding, verifying and presenting reports from the communities they cover and help their audience understand the larger story that they contribute to. They have resulted in consequential and award-winning coverage, and for journalism educators gathered at this week's annual AEJMC conference, as well as newsroom editors and entrepreneurs, they provide models of innovation worth paying attention to. See the full article (PBS, Madeleine Blair, 8/5/14) [Return to top] Is Western Media Coverage of the Ukraine Crisis Anti-Russian? In war, it is said, truth is the first casualty. That has certainly been the case with the conflict in Ukraine. The star for mendacity goes to Russian TV. This is not the entire Russian press - there are opposition newspapers and the relatively free internet which regularly challenge Russian official narratives. But more than 90% of Russians get their news from their unrelentingly propagandist state TV channels. See the full article (Guardian, 8/4/14) [Return to top] Under the Cosh For Jason Rezaian, the Iran correspondent of the Washington Post and his wife Yeganeh Saleh, herself a journalist, the knock on the door came on July 22nd. Security men took them away and, almost two weeks later, they and a photographer for the American newspaper are still in custody. Nobody knows what they are accused of and family members have received no information about their whereabouts. Iran has long been hostile to the media. See the full article (Economist, 8/4/14) [Return to top] U.S. Media Coverage Of Israel-Gaza Conflict Gets An 'F' Glenn Greenwald lambasted the U.S. government's approach to the Gaza conflict in an article published Monday by The Intercept, but his criticism extends to America's media practices -- for which he gives U.S. journalists a failing grade. "There's no question that the way that the American media covers this conflict is based on the principle that Israeli lives are just inherently more valuable than Palestinian lives," he told HuffPost Live's Marc Lamont Hill in an interview Monday. See the full article (Huffington Post, Emily Tess Katz, 8/4/14) [Return to top] A Russian Soldier's 'Ukraine Selfies' are Not Evidence, They're War Art Selfies are not about to become the new military intelligence. They may, however, be the new war art. It is claimed that self-portraits posted on a Russian soldier's Instagram account may "prove" the Russian army has been operating inside eastern Ukraine, raising the possibility that not only Russian technology but also Russian operators were involved in the destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. See the full article (Guardian, Jonathan Jones, 8/1/14) [Return to top] South Sudan: End Media Restrictions South Sudan's National Security Service (NSS) should stop seizing and shutting down newspapers as well as harassing, intimidating, and unlawfully detaining journalists. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said that against the backdrop of an internal armed conflict that has raged for seven months across much of the country, the moves are restricting freedom of expression and curtailing public debate about how to end the conflict. The groups called for an end to these abuses and for South Sudan's parliament to ensure proper oversight of the NSS. See the full article (Human Rights Watch, 7/31/14) Click to read "U.S.-Africa Summit: To Spur Growth, Address Violence and Governance" an Olive Branch Post by George E. Moose. [Return to top] Twitter Chat: Is Social Media a Weapon in Modern Warfare? The use of social media as a tool in times of war, uprising and military conflict is nothing new. Extremist groups such as the Islamic State group [in Iraq] have incorporated the use of social media into their broader military strategy. During the Arab Spring, Twitter was both a catalyst for social unrest, demonstrations and revolution, and a valuable resource for journalists reporting on the situation. See the full article (PBS, Nora Daly, 7/31/14) [Return to top] Featured Story from the USIP Foreign Policy Peace Channel Negotiating the Next War by Rebecca Hamilton For a moment last week, it looked as though the people of the Central African Republic (CAR) were getting some much-needed good news. Representatives from two rebel groups, the mainly Muslim Séléka and the mainly Christian anti-Balaka, whose fighting has displaced more than a quarter of the CAR's population since March of last year, signed a cease-fire agreement. See the full article [Return to top] Technology and Science Hackers Design Clandestine Aerials to Help North Koreans Watch Banned TV A group of budding young developers has won a competition to find new ways of spreading information inside North Korea, with their idea for small, flat, easily hidden aerials that could intercept South Korean TV programmes. Several teams spent the weekend working on ideas that would enable digital information to be concealed, hidden or otherwise transmitted without raising the suspicion of authorities. See the full article (Guardian, Martyn Williams, 7/6/14) [Return to top] Using Mobile Phones to Better Understand Refugees' Food Needs Before 2012, when the World Food Programme began exploring the use of mobile technology to help gather information, the organisation relied on face to face surveys and interviews with residents. Projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), for example, involved two strategies. In refugee camps around eastern DRC, the WFP gave out 300 basic phones and used a WFP-based live call centre to conduct surveys assessing what people were eating, how much and how often. See the full article (Guardian, Beth Hoffman, 8/6/14) [Return to top] Google Removes 'Bomb Gaza' Game from App Store Google has been forced to remove a game called Bomb Gaza after facing angry criticism from the public. The game's logo included an F16 fighter jet, as used by Israel's military, and the description told users that they must "drop bombs and avoid killing civilians". The Android game was added to the Play store on July 29 and had been downloaded between 500 and 1,000 times. But the software has now been removed from the store and is no longer available to download. See the full article (Telegraph, Matthew Sparkes, 8/5/14) [Return to top] Israel Spied on John Kerry's Phone During Middle East Peace Talks Israel reportedly eavesdropped on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's phone calls during last year's failed Middle East peace talks between Israel, Palestinian authorities and Arab states. The intelligence services of Israel, as well as those of at least one other country, intercepted phone calls made by Kerry using an insecure telephone, according to a report published on Sunday by the German news magazine Der Spiegel. See the full article (Mashable, Lorenzo Franceschi-Biccierai, 8/4/14) [Return to top] Viber Says App Used by 5 Million Burmese Mobile phone application Viber has announced that the use of its communications service in Burma has soared in recent months and reached 5 million users in July. The figure offers an indication of just how rapidly mobile internet usage is growing in the country, which was cut off from modern communications technology under the former military regime for many years. See the full article (Irrawaddy, Nyein Nyein, 7/31/14) [Return to top] Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend