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We’re excited to be a finalist on the InTheCapital “50 on Fire” list for 2014 in the Education category! For this year’s list, InTheCapital received over 1,500 top-notch nominations for rising DC-based businesses who are “innovators, disruptors and trailblazers” and making an impact on how business is done in Washington, D.C.

Congratulations to members of our TechChange alumni community from our mHealth: Mobiles for Public Health online course, Dr. Layla McCay and Joel Selanikio of Magpi! Also, congrats to our friends at MapBox and General Assembly for making the list as well.

We’re honored to be in great company of several of our friends and partners on this list and are proud to part of the DC tech and business community.

Check out the full list to be narrowed down to 50 on December 4 from InTheCapital here.

UPDATE: We didn’t win, but we did get some amazing photos from the event. Photo credit: InTheCapital/GRVTY

Frontline health workers in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are responding to the largest Ebola outbreak in history. To protect themselves and their communities, health workers responding to Ebola need clear, reliable, and timely information on how to detect the disease, prevent its spread, and care for patients.

To respond to this crisis, mPowering Frontline Health Workers and IntraHealth International approached TechChange to deliver a free online webinar series on “Training Health Workers for Ebola—Protection, Detection, and Response”. In these webinars, more than 15 international and in-country health organizations will share information with participants on how to support health workers responding to Ebola. The four one-hour webinars will air on October 21, 23, 28, and 30, each starting at 10:00 am EDT.

The webinars are open to all, and we welcome participation from as diverse an audience as possible. This includes Ministries of Health, health workers, community leaders, program implementers (in-country and international), policy makers, and others. Health professionals from over 15 countries have already signed up, and participants represent government, health care facilities, international NGOs, and civil society, and other sectors.

The presentations and discussions in the webinars will (1) describe how to leverage available resources to train, support, and communicate with frontline health workers and others involved in the direct Ebola response through mobile technology; (2) consider ways to connect implementers to resources, collaborators, and sources of information; and (3) explore how to improve opportunities to enable implementers and programmers to share efforts, collaborate, and avoid duplication.

Webinar schedule:
October 21: Learning and information needs for frontline health workers
October 23: Health system support for frontline health workers
October 28: Community mobilization and interactions with clients
October 30: Data to support effective response and case management

All live sessions will be held from 10.00-11.00am EDT. For those who cannot attend the webinar sessions live, all webinars will be recorded and available here after the air dates.

These webinars are being supported by a 4-week discussion in the Health Information for All (HIFA) forums and we invite you to join and add your views. In addition, IntraHealth and mPowering are launching an online Ebola Resource Center for participants and others to share messages, training content, guidance documents, and other information. This site will also be a place for programs to share information about their work and to connect to others for support, ideas and collaboration. The Ebola Resource Center will launch on October 21.

If you and/or your organization have content on Ebola that you would like to share in the Resource Center, please email Dave Potenziani at Intrahealth at dpotenziani [at] intrahealth [dot] org.

We look forward to meeting you in the webinars & invite you to participate in the conversations in the HIFA forum.

You can find the webinar page and registration information at https://www.techchange.org/live-events/training-health-workers-for-ebola/.

Please share this information on this webinar series information with anyone interested in responding to the Ebola outbreak.

Photo credit: BBC

At TechChange, we’re always looking for ways to make online learning more interactive, engaging, and relevant for busy, global professionals interested in technology and social change. One way we do this is by bringing together our online TechChange community offline with hybrid learning. Specifically, we try to overlap the schedule of some of our online courses with industry events such as the recent M&E Tech Conference and annual mHealth Summit. We also arrange in-person meet-ups in various cities across the world including happy hours in Washington, DC and other meet-ups including most recently in Lusaka, Zambia.

Last month, we launched our very first round of TC111: Technology for Monitoring & Evaluation with a class of over 100 participants. As one of the top guest experts of the online course, Christopher Robert, who is CEO of Dobility Inc. and a Harvard adjunct lecturer, joined us in the first week of the course while he was traveling in Zambia. To take full advantage of the course, some of our participants based in Zambia asked him if he would be willing to meet with them in Lusaka. So, three of these M&E tech course participants (Ladislas, William, and Mine) met Christopher and his colleagues on the same day to continue the technology for M&E discussions from the online course in-person.

Here’s what happened at the TechChange Tech for M&E meet-up in Lusaka:

Reuniting alumni from different communities
It turned out that Ladislas, William, and Mine had already known each other as alumni of the Global Health Corps (GHC) fellowship. According to Mine Metitiri, a Senior Research Associate at the Zambia Ministry of Health, “A number of Global Health Corps fellows are taking the TechChange Tech for M&E online class and we recommended Chris to be a speaker at our annual training at Yale. Hopefully it works out because he had a lot of great things to say that are relevant to our fields of work.“

Strengthening online connections and learning offline
TechChange alumni such as William Ngosa who works at the Ministry of Health in Zambia appreciated the chance to reunite with his GHC colleagues and to meet Christopher and his team members, Faizan and Meletis. “It was a privilege to meet one of the speakers in the online course to provide a meaningful and enriching learning experience,” said William.
Christopher Robert and his team really enjoyed meeting the Zambia-based course participants as well. “It was lucky that we had the chance to meet!” said Christopher. “These Tech for M&E course participants are doing some wonderful things with ICT for social good there in Zambia. It’s always inspiring to meet people doing good work!”

Sharing good news of a job offer for M&E consulting
One of the participants, Ladislas Hibusu, received a M&E consultant job offer after interviewing with Jhpiego while taking the M&E online course.

“At this M&E meetup in Lusaka, I mentioned that during the M&E course, I interviewed for a position at Jhpiego. I am happy to announce that I have been offered an M&E Consultant role and thanks to the valuable insights to this course, as I was able to apply the knowledge I learned in the course. Although I have had limited experience in applying much of my M&E theoretical work in the field, I am happy to say this Tech for M&E online course is addressing most of challenges that I anticipate in my new role.” – Ladislas Hibusu

Everyone congratulated Ladislas and Christopher Robert joined us for another live event the following week wanting to continue the discussions with other participants in our course.

Several of TechChange’s online courses are designed to facilitate interactions like the one in Lusaka. Participants from all over the world are able to connect with like-minded professionals in the international development sector and continue discussions on specific topics. Watching live and recorded videos, completing different activities, and participating in ongoing discussions on an online forum combined with offline, in-person learning is really what enriches e-learning.

Interested in technology for M&E and want to connect with other M&E practitioners across the world? Register now to lock in early bird rates for our next round of our Technology for Monitoring & Evaluation online course which runs January 29 – February 20, 2015.

On September 25 and 26, over 200 development practitioners and technologists filled FHI 360’s conference rooms and hallways in Washington D.C. to discuss the intersection between technology and monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Some of the conference attendees included participants and guest experts in TechChange’s ongoing online course on Tech for M&E and it was great meeting so many these online course participants in person and offline.

Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, GSMA, and FHI 360, the M&E Tech Conference was a two-day conference held in D.C. (followed by another one event in New York) to discuss the emerging role of technology in M&E and its implications to everyone involved in the international development industry. The release of the discussion paper, Emerging Opportunities: Monitoring and Evaluation in a Tech-Enabled World kicked off the first panel, followed by two days of great panel discussions and engaging break-out sessions. The event also featured a panel facilitated by TechChange online course facilitator, Kendra Keith on “What’s Next in Visualizing Data for Better Decision Making?” and a lightning talk on ‘How to Use APIs for Real-Time M&E’ that I presented.

In case you didn’t make it to the D.C. M&E Tech conference, here are a few key takeaways from the event.

1. Technology is not a substitute for good M&E methodologies

One of the panelists perfectly summed up the current state of technology in M&E from a technology perspective: it is not always clear why the M [monitoring] is associated with the E [evaluation]. While technology has made data collection and reporting easy, making sense of the data and how it affects programming still requires newer tools and M&E methodologies.

Good M&E requires capturing and analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data. While there are emerging M&E tools (e.g., SenseMaker) and techniques (e.g., natural language processing), cost and expertise continue to make capturing and analyzing qualitative data difficult. As mixed methods–using both qualitative and quantitative data — are discussed more in an M&E setting, practitioners still have a great deal of work to do.

Kenneth M. Chomitz, Kerry Bruce (a guest speaker for TechChange’s Tech for M&E course), and Maliha Khan discuss the current state of Tech for M&E

Mobile phones have been a hot topic in development, but one of the lightning talks revealed a surprising fact: Mobile surveys are not as effective as we think they are. The average response rate for surveys conducted in-person was 77% compared to 1% for mobile phone surveys. While the comparison may not be fair, it is worth noting that the introduction of any technology also requires M&E.

2. Technology introduces new data issues to M&E regarding responsibility, security, and selectivity biases

During the first panel, one of the panelists mentioned that the next “scandal” in development will be about revealing sensitive data. While not a new topic in development, data responsibility becomes increasingly important with the introduction of technology. Unfortunately, data security was primarily relegated as a panel (Whose Data? Whose Privacy?) and a shout out as one of the 9 Principles for Digital Development. This panel also marked the release of the Responsible Development Data Guide, a resource I co-authored, that focuses on protecting digital data and beneficiary privacy in international development.

Linda Raftree (a regular TechChange guest expert) and Michael Bamberger lead a break-out session discussing the emerging opportunities and challenges of using ICTs for M&E

Another common problem that arises with introducing technology to M&E is selectivity bias. Digital surveys tend to be limited to digitally literate populations with access to technology. Yet, even digital literacy and access to technology doesn’t guarantee a truthful response. For example, the panel on data privacy shared that women often didn’t respond truthfully to mobile surveys because their husbands or family members often monitored their personal phones.

Technology also biases researchers and evaluators towards quantitative methods and data. Qualitative data collection, analysis, and visualization software has not kept pace with tools for quantitative data.

3. Data matters more than ever in development

Recognizing the challenges and opportunities technology brings to M&E, the event included many conversations on data. There were break-out sessions on topics like data visualization, leveraging big data, how mobile phones can help in M&E, data security issues, and more.

Data visualization

The data visualization panel showed that there are a lot of new techniques to visualize data. Network visualization is a fantastic way to view a system (e.g., an organization or a program). It’s a simpler way to see where multiple links connect and understand where they need to be strengthened. Mapping allows for easier analysis of aid efficacy. Development Gateway presented their Aid Management Platform with its mapping feature that is aimed at governments in countries with development programs. In particular, they highlighted the success in Malawi and their public facing site with an interactive map. Excel–the tool that most people have and use to create pie charts–can be used to create some outstanding visualizations.

Neal Lesh of Dimagi presents trends in mHealth systems from over 175 CommCare projects

Open data

Most importantly, we are all looking forward to the day when open data is the standard. Many organizations spend a lot of time and money collecting the same data. If open data was the standard, available data can be used as baselines and potentially show impact after a project. Open data can also push for data structure standards (e.g., IATI) and allow data to be decentralized with application programming interfaces (APIs) connecting the data sources.

The challenges technology introduces to monitoring and evaluation, like data security and access, are topics we are also currently discussing in our Tech for M&E online course with a class of 100 students from all over the world. Due to popular demand, we are offering the next Tech for M&E course in January 2015. If you are interested in joining the discussion, apply before November 1 to get $100 off the full price of the course during this early bird discount period for the next Tech for M&E course.

If you did attend the event, what did you take away from the conference? Did you attend the conference in New York? Share some of your highlights and insights!

By Timo Luege, TC103: Tech Tools and Skills for Emergency Management facilitator

As Ebola continues to ravage Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, people from all around the world are working together to stop the disease. In addition to the life saving work of medical staff, logisticians and community organizers, information and communication technology (ICT) is also playing a vital part in supporting their work.

After consulting the TechChange Alumni community and other experts in international development and humanitarian assistance, I pulled together a list of different technologies being applied to manage Ebola. Below are six examples showing how ICT is already making a difference in the current crisis.

1. Tracing outbreaks with mapping and geolocation
Aside from isolating patients in a safe environment, one of the biggest challenges in the Ebola response is tracing all contacts that an infected person has been in touch with. While that is difficult enough in developed countries, imagine how much more difficult it is in countries where you don’t know the names of many of the villages. It’s not very helpful if someone tells you “I come from Bendou” if you don’t know how many villages with that name exist nor where they are. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has helped this process through creating maps since the beginning of the response.

See: West Africa Ebola Outbreak – Six months of sustained efforts by the OpenStreetMap community.

Map of Monrovia in OpenStreetMap before and after volunteers mapped the city in response to the Ebola crisis. (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap)

In addition, the Standby Task Force is supporting the response by helping to collect, clean and verify data about health facilities in the affected countries. The information will then be published on UN OCHA’s new platform for sharing of humanitarian data.

2. Gathering Ebola information with digital data collection forms
Contact tracing involves interviewing a lot of people and in most cases that means writing information down on paper which then has to be entered into a computer. That process is both slow and prone to errors. According to this Forbes article, US based Magpi, who just won a Kopernik award, is helping organizations working in the Ebola response to replace their paper forms with digital forms that enumerators can fill out using their phones.

Digital forms not only save time and prevent errors when transcribing information, well designed digital forms also contain simple error checking routines such as “you can’t be older than 100 years”.

If you are interested in digital forms, check out the free and open source Kobo Toolbox.

3. Connecting the sick with their relatives using local Wi-Fi networks
Elaine Burroughs, a Save the Children staff member who is also TechChange alumna of Mobiles for International Development, shared that they are using their local Wi-Fi network to connect patients in the isolation ward with the relatives through video calls. Both computers have to be within the same network because local internet connections are too slow. In situations where video calls are not possible, they provide patients with cheap mobile phones so that they can talk with their relatives that way. Elaine added: “Several survivors have told us that what kept them going was being able to speak with their family and not feel so isolated when surrounded by people in hazmat suits.”

4. Sharing and receiving Ebola information via SMS text messages
I have heard about a number of different SMS systems that are currently being set up. Some are mainly to share information, others also to receive information.

mHero is an SMS system specifically designed to share information with health workers. It works with UNICEF’s RapidPro system, a white label version of Kigali-based TextIt which is one of the best SMS communication systems I know. RapidPro is also at the heart of a two-way communication system that is currently being set up by UNICEF, Plan International, and the Scouts.

The IFRC is of course using TERA to share SMS, a system that was developed in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and already used in Sierra Leone during a recent cholera outbreak.

5. Mythbusting for diaspora communities via social media
Social media also has a place, though not as much as some people think. With internet penetration at less than 5 per cent in Liberia and less than 2 per cent in Sierra Leone and Guinea, it is simply not relevant for most people – unlike radio for example. However, all of these countries have huge diasporas. The Liberian diaspora in the US alone is thought to be as many as 450,000 people strong – and they all have access to social media. Experiences from Haiti and the Philippines show that the diaspora is an important information channel for the people living in affected countries. Very often they assume that their relatives in the US or Europe will know more, not least because many don’t trust their own governments to tell the truth.
Social media can play an important role in correcting misinformation and indeed, both the WHO and the CDC are using their social media channels in this way.

6. Supporting translations of Ebola information remotely online
Last but not least, Translators Without Borders is helping NGOs remotely from all over the world to translate posters into local languages.

Low tech does it
As a final word, I’d like to add that while technology can make a real difference we must not forget that very often low tech solutions will be more efficient than high tech solutions – it depends on what is more appropriate for the context. So don’t start an SMS campaign or launch a drone just because you can. It’s not about what you want to do. It’s not about technology. It’s about what’s best for the people we are there to help.

A Summary Infographic

We will be discussing these technology tools, Ebola, and many similar issues in TC103: Tech Tools and Skills for Emergency Management and TC103: mHealth – Mobiles for Public Health. Register by October 31 and save $50 off each of these courses.

Do you have additional examples of how ICT is helping in the Ebola response? Please share them in the comments!

This post originally appeared in Social Media for Good.

About the TC103 facilitator: Timo Luege

After nearly ten years of working as a journalist (online, print and radio), Timo worked four years as a Senior Communications Officer for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva and Haiti. During this time he also launched the IFRC’s social media activities and wrote the IFRC social media staff guidelines. He then worked as Protection Delegate for International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Liberia before starting to work as a consultant. His clients include UN agencies and NGOs. Among other things, he wrote the UNICEF “Social Media in Emergency Guidelines” and contributed to UNOCHA’s “Humanitarianism in the Network Age”. Over the last year, Timo advised UNHCR- and IFRC-led Shelter Clusters in Myanmar, Mali and most recently the Philippines on Communication and Advocacy. He blogs at Social Media for Good and is the facilitator for the TechChange online course, “Tech Tools & Skills for Emergency Management“.

It’s the event that all DC edtech enthusiasts have been waiting for: TechChange is teaming up with General Assembly DC to host this month’s ICT4Drinks happy hour event!

All are welcome to attend. Free drinks will be provided for those that register and come early. We’ll also be giving away some TechChange cubebots and GA stickers!

TECHCHANGE + GENERAL ASSEMBLY D.C. HAPPY HOUR
Friday, October 17, 20145:30 PM – 7:00 PM
General Assembly Washington D.C. (1776 8th Floor)
1133 15th Street NW, 8th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Register now for the chance to celebrate the end of the work week with your pals at GA. Drinks are on us, so stop by for mingling, beverages, & great conversation with the movers & shakers of DC.

In remembrance of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, today marks the International Day of Non-Violence. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2007 to mark October 2nd as the day to reaffirm “ ‘the universal relevance of the principle of non-violence’ and the desire ‘to secure a culture of peace, tolerance, understanding and non-violence.’ ”

This year’s Non-Violence Day is being celebrated in light of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. The birthplace of Gandhi, India is celebrating the day with Prime Minister Modi’s ‘Clean India’ campaign. At TechChange, we are celebrating the Day of Non-Violence by offering a $50 discount for our Technology for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding online course that begins Monday!

Apply today with the coupon code ‘NonViolenceDay’ to get $50 off our course!

We’re very excited to welcome Michael Kleinman as one of our expert guest speakers in TC109: Tech for Conflict Management & Peacebuilding online course which starts this Monday, October 6. Michael Bear Kleinman is a Director on the Investments Team at Humanity United, where he oversees the grant portfolio on technology and human rights. Previously, he worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, east and central Africa, and Iraq.

During his session in TC109, Michael will focus primarily on the recent Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention competition. In this 2013 competition, Humanity United and USAID partnered together to reward prize money of up to $12,000 to innovators who offered tech solutions to prevent atrocities such as genocide and mass rape.

The five sub-challenges were:

Enablers: Develop technologies to better identify, spotlight, and deter intentional or unintentional third-party enablers of atrocities (e.g. non-state actors such as multinational corporations, financial institutions or those who provide logistical support)
Capture: Develop technologies that can enable the documentation of relevant evidence that may be used to deter or hold perpetrators accountable, while minimizing the risk posed to those collecting this information
Model: Create a model to help identify community-level risk factors that make communities more or less likely to experience acts of violence, leveraging existing public datasets on national and subnational violence
Communicate: Improve secure communications with and between conflict-affected communities or those at imminent risk
Alert: Develop affordable, trainable and scalable technologies to allow NGOs and human rights activists to gather more information – and / or verify existing information – form hard to access areas (i.e. areas where governments intentionally try to prohibit access

Overall, the joint Humanity United-USAID Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention competition attracted over 982 submissions across the five sub-challenges, resulting in 24 winners. The competition’s all-star panel of judges included Samantha Power – current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Abramowicz – Director of the Committee on Conscience at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Alec Ross, Patrick Meier, and several other leaders in human rights, technology, and government.

Some of the top winners included the Serval Project, IVR Junction, People’s Intelligence, MediCapt, and Xiaoshi Liu of China in the “Model” sub-challenge who developed an algorithm that used socio-political data to predict future atrocity occurrences.

To learn more from Michael about this Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention and more about technology for peacebuilding, enroll now in our Technology for Conflict Management online course which runs October 6 – 31, 2014.

Dozens of peacebuilders, conflict mediators, and diplomats have applied for this course representing organizations including World Peace Institute, IBM Japan, Brandeis University, USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, Management Strategies for Development, Pact, UNDP, U.S. Department of State, UN Electoral Assistance Division, Oxfam, Society for International Education, Business and Human Rights, Dangote, Imagination for People, Tetra Tech, Radio Tulsipur (Nepal), Forward Action for Conservation of Indigenous Species, Innovations in Peacemaking and more! Participants Romania, USA, Turkey, Denmark , Japan, Netherlands, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Panama, Burundi, Mexico, Nigeria, Spain, Canada, Nepal, Liberia, Austria, Haiti, Cameroon, Burundi, and the U.K.

The field of digital data collection is constantly and rapidly changing, and as we’ve seen in the many iterations of our online courses on Mobiles for International Development and mHealth, Magpi has been a leading innovator in mobile data collection.

That’s why we were not surprised to learn that Magpi has been ranked “Top Digital Data Collection App” by Kopernik, a Rockefeller Foundation and Asia Community Ventures non-profit that ranks technology for development tools in their “Impact Tracker Technology” program.

Rankings for this category were based on scoring for criteria including affordability, usability, rapidity – the “ability to send and receive large volumes of data on a real-time basis”, scalability, and transferability – “flexibility in using the services for different purposes, sectors, and contexts”. This is first time Magpi has appeared on this Kopernik list where the judges tested the tools in the field.

For those who might not yet be familiar with Magpi, it is a user-friendly mobile data collection application that works on various mobile devices. Magpi uses SMS and audio messaging, and is built specifically for organizations with limited IT and financial resources. The company formally known as DataDyne is now Magpi and they have retired the DataDyne name as well as updated their website here, which lists some of the new comprehensive features they’ve recently added. Magpi is led by Joel Selanikio, who is also an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s Department of Pediatrics

Congratulations to the Magpi team! We look forward to having you guys join us again in our upcoming online courses!

One of the challenges of using social media in peacebuilding and conflict resolution is that while it can draw together like-minded people advocating for peace, it can also be used to organize violence just as effectively. Groups like the Islamic State (also known by acronyms including IS, ISIS, or ISIL, and currently dominates large portions of Iraq and Syria) are demonstrating that social media can be used to sow fear and promote their political agenda. Not only are they demonstrating how to do this effectively, they’re also demonstrating how hard it is to intervene when a violent actor has control of the information space.

Once violence has started, the information space — including social media — becomes a proxy for conflict. Ideas are being shared and are competing for a legitimacy among the population. In the case of IS, legitimacy could include instilling a sense of fear, or notions that they can or will play the role of the state. The State Department has made an effort to try to combat IS’s messaging in the Twittersphere, but this is difficult for an institution that has long standing communication protocols and is still adapting to the fluidity of social media messaging.

So, at what level does social media help peacebuilders in an information environment?

Civil society as a powerful source for peace

Traditional conflict management institutions may not yet be flexible enough to fully engage in the social media space, but this doesn’t mean that civil society can’t be a powerful force for peace. The Active Change Foundation, a London-based non-profit, set up the social media campaign for British Muslims called #notinmyname. The project uses Twitter to share videos and photos of Muslims, particularly youth, sharing reasons why IS does not speak for them as muslims. The project has gotten over 14,000 tweets using the #notinmyname hashtag, and is flexible in a way that a large institution’s use of social media cannot be. This isn’t to say that organizations like the State Department don’t play a role in social media, but in a highly fluid environment something grassroots like #notinmyname can catch on and respond to IS’s tweets in volume and tone. Winning the information war on something like Twitter depends on both of these and it’s impossible for a single user, even a user as big as the Department of State, to match the size of a social media network like IS’s.

Civil society response with mockery and humour

Another way Muslim civil society is responding is with mockery and humor. What’s important is that these videos and Twitter campaigns are coming from within Muslim communities. Humor has played an important role in protests and movements against dictators and repressive regimes previously, and it can take on a life of its own once it has percolated out into a space like Twitter. Again, this is something that large institutions are going to have trouble instigating. The messages have to be organic and come from within the communities that face the threat of a dictator or a group like IS. Indeed, something like a humor or ridicule protest could lose its legitimacy if larger institutions like the Department of State is involved.

Social media’s power to create grassroots movements across geographies

When we look at the role of social media in peacebuilding or conflict, we have to look beyond just the nature of the message. Social media is just a broadcast tool – it pushes out whatever message the user wants. The important question becomes the strategy employed by the peacebuilding community to engage against the violent messaging of an organization like IS. The power of social media is maximized when civil society bands together across geography, developing a large networked community. How traditional peacebuilding and governance institutions engage with these organic civil society networks is important. Large institutions can help give grassroots movements increased legitimacy and the backing of a recognized institution, but they must also be careful not to undermine the community’s legitimacy when organizing a message of peace in the face of violence.

Interested in learning more about using social media for peacebuilding? Register now for our upcoming Technology for Conflict Management & Peacebuilding online course that runs October 6 – 31, 2014.