Using technology in new ways is key to mass atrocity prevention: panelists
Using technology in new ways to challenge the status quo and hold bad governance accountable is the best way for the media to be a part of mass atrocity prevention, according to roundtable panelists.
Panelists said technology including radio, social media and satellite imaging can be used by the media to report on the root causes and warning signs of an atrocity.
“Radio works in most parts of Africa,” said David Smith of Okapi Radio, saying that its low cost and low tech make it accessible to most people. “Radio is king.”
His organization creates local radio stations in local languages to report on bad governance in the area.
“My job is to make sure the people on the ground have a voice,” said Smith. “It’s a sort of guerilla journalism at a local level.”
The power or radio was illustrated by Professor Bert Ingelaere, who told the roundtable about how a radio program was used to mitigate and reconcile after the Rwandan genocide.
Ingelaere said that Urunana, a Rwandan soap opera, was the most popular radio program following the genocide. Its themes of hatred, violence and reconciliation was one of the most drawing factors, he said, and the show provided advice and solutions for listeners. Ingelaere also said that it was an influence in Rwandans coming back after fleeing the country.
“It is clear that the radio is one of the most important sources of information for them,” he said. “That information is instrumental to return home.”
Rafal Rohozinski, co-founder of the data-centric risk consultancy The SecDev Group, said that social media is empowering those in developing countries to speak out against bad governance in ways they may not have been able to before.
“We are living through the largest empowerment of an individual in human history,” said Rohozinski. “The internet (is) going to disrupt in ways we could not have anticipated.”
Professor Steven Livingston of George Washington University pointed to satellite images and their use in discovering Burundi mass graves, a 2015 Boko Haram attack in Baga and Russian forces in Ukraine.
“New technology will help us use improved satellite images to go where human journalists can’t,” Livingston told the roundtable.
The efficacy of journalism reporting on atrocities and their causes, however, was the subject of debate.
“Can media put on policy-makers agendas issues that would normally not be there?” Livingston asked at the beginning of his presentation.
Livingston said there is little evidence that “the CNN effect,” or the ability for media coverage to push policymakers to action, works, something journalist Paul Watson disagreed with, pointing to send U.S. troops to Somalia in 1992 to deliver relief supplies after much reporting on the famine occurring there.
“Why would the president have sent the troops without journalism?” asked Watson.
Livingston said that the decision to put boots on the ground anywhere is a complex and lengthy decision, and that the empirical evidence that he has gathered indicates that there is not necessarily a direct correlation between media coverage and political action.
