Participatory media and reconciliation

Broadcasting4peace – different approaches to community media in Nepal

Hamro Team Promo

  The growing impact of ICT and the new media has broadened conceptual scope of the notion of community from ethnic origins or geographical location to virtual communities and groups of common interest. Therefore, as Carpentier et al. (2002, p. 455) points out, the very concept of community media has become somehow vague and elusive. Community media, by definition should be "promoting the participation of this community" (Carpentier et al. 2002, p.457). The relation between the community [Read more...]

Bearing witness through citizen journalism

Truth and peace go hand in hand. For reconciliation to be successful the truth about past atrocities must be brought to light. It is only then that people, no matter which side they stood on during a conflict, can find a common narrative upon which they can build a common future after it. What happens when the evidence of atrocities is concealed though? Destroyed? History is written by the victors; the saying goes. With the help of ICTs these pieces of evidence can be captured, preserved, and [Read more...]

Presenting Parlio – A social media tool for reconciliation?

Wael Ghonim, face of the Arab Spring in 2010, founded the project Parlio in Silicon Valley, offering an alternative information portal to Facebook, which meanwhile is dominated by pussy-cat videos and selfies-in-bathroom-posts. Ghonim, who experienced hate and defamation through the internet, decided to create this platform for a civilized dialogue and profound exchange. But why did Facebook fail to be a democratic tool and broad information resource? I remember that until 2010 Facebook [Read more...]

Radioactive – Community radio in the reconciliation process

Radio remains one of the most accessible and used forms to communicate and disseminate information in sub-Saharan Africa. This is particularly true among many isolated communities that do not have the means to operate landlines or computers. “Radio [also] speaks the language known by the majority of the population, for an oral language is not simply the product of illiteracy,” Kivikuru explains further (2005, p.326). At the same time, the usage of another communication tool surges, mobile [Read more...]

New Media – Old Conflicts: overcoming “ethnic incompatibility” in the South Caucasus. Armenia-Azerbaijan

South Caucasus is an ethnic melting pot, with a rich cultural heritage on the one hand, and a long history of ethnical, religious and territorial conflicts on the other. The resolution of the USSR has been followed by the intense quest for economic and political independence of the new republics - Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, but also by re-emergence and often brutal escalation of older conflicts between the three countries and their internal entities. Many of them, such as the one over the [Read more...]

Participatory video for reconciliation: A case study of the Ivory Coast

You can’t forget but you can forgive someone, you can forgive someone. When I express myself, every time I speak, and talk about my story, it frees me a little bit, every time I do it, it frees me. I can tell you that after this interview I feel released.   The extract of the interview above comes from the participatory video Justice Transitionelle  made by a group of young people in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. It is a project supported by InsightShare, an NGO from Oxford that has been [Read more...]