Social Media and Conflict: How to mitigate online hate speech that fuels violence?

Stephen Kovats, Theo Dolan, Achol Jok Mach, Jaiksana Amarüda José,
Annette Weber Focussing on incitement to violence as a catalyst for
conflict, the session will discuss the ways in which online and
offline groups interact to fuel a war in which most of the victims
have little or no access to media or technology. How can research
(such as the 'Lexicon of Hate Speech Terms') and social media
monitoring of groups active globally, in concert with action on the
ground in a conflict region be leveraged to create an early
warning/early response scenario to prevent violent conflict? If
predictive analytics could be used, for example, to identify a term
like MTN months before Dinka citizens were targeted on major
roadways for violence (which Peace Tech Lab did) AND there actually
had been a mechanism in place to feed this information to
organizations that could do something about it, could lives have
been saved? After claiming that they want to tackle the problem,
are international organisations such as the UN or AU in a position
to take operative action on the ground? Working on improving the
climate for constructive discourse and collaboration between
affected parties, including displaced citizens, refugees and the
international diaspora, teams of local social media correspondents,
curators and activists are beginning to play a pioneering role in
such an effort, charting new territory in social media
peace-building. Are there lessons to be learned that can be adopted
from the political interaction with social media hate speech and
incitement from other conflicts in Africa, Europe and beyond? At a
time when there is no political space for dialogue in countries
such as South Sudan, the session seeks a lively interaction that
can come up with new ideas and strategies on what people can
actually do to curb the virulence of hate rhetoric, both locally on
the ground and online.