Social Computing Technology and Genocide Prevention
By Tom Glaisyer

“So can a Yahoogroup save the world?” recently asked Nancy White,an information systems expert who works with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), on a web log, or “blog,” devoted to online interaction.[1]“Naw,” she concluded lightheartedly.“But it might be a step in the right direction.”[2]This comment suggests that a widely used and very straightforward software service that is free to any literate user who can connect to the internet might just have an important impact. That it might have a positive impact on genocide prevention is this sentiment that lies behind this paper. It seeks to provide a deeper analysis of the role that can be played by social computing technology in the development of a genocide prevention system -- a system that, despite the passage of The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide almost 60 years ago, barely has a functional infrastructure.

First, I review the level of communication within and between societies in both the build-up to genocidal periods in Armenia, Germany, and Rwanda and the genocidal periods themselves. I draw conclusions about the baseline level of communication about these atrocities as it is important to understand what was and wasn’t known about past events. Following this, I outline in detail a definition of social computing technology and analyze how the dialogue and relationships facilitated by them might alter the nature of the various stages of a genocidal process. I then look at the support this technology provides for people to play roles that might prevent, resolve or contain such processes as well as analyze how it could enable specific institutions in society seeking to prevent their re-occurrence.Finally, I articulate the necessary steps that need to emerge in the functionality of these tools before they are likely to have significant impact, and develop an example how a combination of existing tools might be used as part of a genocide prevention system.

1.Genocidal Periods in Armenia, Germany, and Rwanda

For the purposes of this paper, in analyzing the periods of genocide in Armenia, Germany, and Rwanda, it is important to understand the level of public information as well as private information available to governments about the states and societies under threat that existed both prior to and during the genocidal periods studied. Such an understanding demonstrates that more than simple knowledge of genocidal potential or acts is insufficient to provoke people to act.

The Armenian case at the beginning of the twentieth century and the Holocaust twenty-five years later both took place in a time before extensive real-time public international communication was commonplace. Much debate has occurred about how well the events could have been predicted and how broadly the knowledge about the events was disseminated.Yet it is clear that enough information about the genocides was available to have allowed intervention, had the political will been there.In the Armenian case, for example, two pre-Genocide reports, one of which was even commissioned by George Hepworth, a sympathizer of the Turkish position, with the belief that it would clear the Turks of the earlier 1894-96 massacres, and a second from William Ramsey, a British ethnographer, both forecasted the later genocide.[3]Moreover, reports of attacks were provided by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, to President Woodrow Wilson saying that “a campaign of race extermination is in progress.”[4]Other reports contemporaneous with actual events were recorded by American missionaries who found themselves under threat in Van, in what is now eastern Turkey, which also provide records of the events of 1915.[5] These records and publication of the events in the American press further support the fact that information about the Armenian genocide was to be freely found and yet no action was taken.[6]

In the case of the Holocaust, the intention of Hitler’s regime to destroy the Jews reached the British Foreign Office in November of 1938.[7] Further reports of the implementation of Hitler’s final solution were picked up by British Intelligence though they weren’t always believed, and later reports were often omitted from some British intelligence summaries since they were so common that it was considered overly repetitive to include them.[8]That said, it is clear that these reports were not widely shared and those with power to act were unable to generate the political will to accept refugees in large numbers. Those who were saved were assisted in many cases as a result of the acts of individuals with personal connections, such as Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler and the like.[9]

The Rwandan case, occurring as it did after the shackles of the Cold War had been thrown off the West, tested the West’s ability to intervene to prevent genocide unconstrained by East vs. West superpower considerations and in the shadow of what was considered a New World Order. Here the modern television age permitted images to be filmed and broadcast worldwide on the same day.[10] Seemingly this should have constituted adequate evidence and enable leaders to generate the political will to intervene. .Unfortunately for Tutsi citizens of Rwanda, any optimism they may have had as a result of the availability of this footage was misplaced, notwithstanding also the significant investment that had been made by aid agencies that at the time considered Rwanda as a model for the development aid system.[11]Despite the wide dissemination of this information, much was made at the time of inconsistencies in reporting by journalists who ill understood the ethnic background of the country. Furthermore, there was no clear picture regarding the reality on the ground. The US government in particular had few intelligence assets and only one of the US intelligence agencies made accurate estimates of those killed.[12] This enabled even the United States State Department spokesperson to equivocate on whether genocide was really happening or whether it was just “acts of genocide.”[13] Ironically, it is possible that The White House exerted more effort locating and ensuring the safety a single person, Monique Mujawarmariya, who, by chance, had only four months before met President Clinton than in directly intervening to prevent the atrocities.[14] As one White House official remembers, “Sometimes it felt as though she was the only Rwandan in danger.”[15]

This short review of these cases demonstrates that information forecasting the genocide and of the genocide itself existed in all three situations. Much information existed that could have been used to justify courses of preventive actions or later responses that could have significantly ameliorated the size of the genocidal acts. In the case of the Rwandan genocide it is also clear that the personal connection that existed between a Rwandan human rights activist that made a deep impression on President Clinton was only able to stir the US administration to follow-up on her whereabouts and little more. Her subsequent lobbying of the White House -- lobbying that might have been considered to have the highest credibility, given her recent escape -- was insufficient to generate intervention from the United States.

It is the recognition that once Monique was saved and the personal connection honored and action ended that is at the heart of this paper. It is a personal relationship and an ability to take an action that has been at the center of many cases of personal bravery taken to ameliorate genocides in history. Information about genocides has existed during their execution and yet genocides have not been prevented This paper acknowledges that these tools can provide much unfiltered information but it is because they can support the development of enduring personal bonds between individuals and enable actions to be taken that they may play a significant role in the prevention of future genocides.

2.Social Computing Technology

Before I go any further it is necessary to understand more of the emerging social computing technologies (“SCTs”) that I am arguing may transform the field of genocide prevention. The term “social software” was first coined by Clary Shirky, a Professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, who first used it in 2002 at a conference and defined it as “software that supports group interaction.”[16] Though this definition only emerged recently and partly as a response to the development of specific tools, the idea that technology could provide support for communities by storing knowledge has been around for a much longer time. The so-called “memex,” a theoretical analogue computer for storing information accessible by many, was conceived before computers actually existed in the 1940’s, and the early 1990’s saw the advent of what were called “groupware tools” that emerged earlier and integrated work by several people in a single shared computing space.[17] Social software is now commonly said to encompass instant messaging, internet relay chat (IRC), internet discussion boards, weblogs, wikis, social network services, other software tools augmented by a social or collaborative element such as social-search engines, and social-bookmarking tools.[18] In the paragraphs below I provide more detailed explanations of the SCTs, some of which have been available even prior to the definition of the term.

Weblogs, or “blogs”.These are web pages that operate like book journals, where the latest entry is placed at the top of the page and earlier entries scroll to the bottom of the page. From one viewpoint they are merely simple web pages that can be maintained by anyone who has the technical skills to operate email. This definition, although true, fails to articulate their impact in that weblogs effectively provide to every internet user a printing press that can be accessed by every other literate internet user. This ability to share information combined with typical functionality that permits easy monitoring of posts via RSS feeds (explained below) and the ability for readers to comment on posts creates opportunity for dialogue on a massive scale. The number of weblogs is estimated to double every six months and totalled approximately 14 million in July 2005.[19]The impact of blogs cannot be understated. The sheer volume suggests that many are the modern day equivalent of the teenage diary, but others are permitting individuals and groups to share ideas, find like-minded people, and also communicate with others un-intermediated by a book, TV, or newspaper editor in ways that would have previously been too costly to consider. An example of a blog in the arena of action on genocide is http://coalitionfordarfur.blogspot.com, which is being used to communicated and discuss ideas within an NGO coalition that is lobbying around the events in Sudan.

Wikis.These are computer applications that provide a blank webpage to any user who views it to which can be added content either on that page or through the creation of an additional page. The beauty of the tool is that any other person can go into the web page and edit what has been added and thus collaboratively improve the content. This has been most successful in the development of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia contributed to and edited by thousands of people, found at http://www.wikipedia.org.

Internet relay chat (IRC)/ Instant messaging.IRC is an old technology, relatively speaking, that has been around since 1988, and permits many users to communicate using text that is instantaneously reproduced for all users logged on to a service to read what is written as it is submitted. Instant messaging is a modern incarnation of this that provides similar functionality to communicate, usually on a small group or one-to-one basis using a sophisticated client that often indicates the presence of the computer user (by monitoring if keys are being pressed) permits sharing of files, voice-communication and in some cases video communication. For a further definition, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC.Good examples of these tools are available at www.skype.com and http://messenger.yahoo.com.

Internet discussion forums, groups, bulletin boards. Many of these exist, providing at the very least a bulletin board for participants on which to post ideas and respond to others. Of late this technology has developed further, and many of these tools distribute the content of discussions via email. In addition to this development, others have worked to include incentives into the groups in order to focus discussion and reward useful contributions if only by rewarding users with what is in the abstract a meaningless feedback score.For example, an internet discussion forum available at http://www.omidyar.net/home rewards those who provide feedback on the contributions of others and with points and allows the user to “spend” those points on creating new discussions.

Social network services. These tools have multiplied in the last 2 or so years providing opportunities to showcase a user’s profile either for professional or personal reasons and invite others the user knows to record their relationship with the user. This has the benefit of permitting the user to search the resulting network of relationships for a valuable contact. Good examples of these tools are www.myspace.com, www.friendster.com, www.linkedin.com, www.tribe.net, and www.ryze.com.

Social-search engines / bookmarking. These tools are based on participants sharing bookmarks or sites they find interesting and identifying via a one- or two-word tag a title by which they would categorize a web page. It is a very recent phenomenon but has revealed that when given the option to share what a user has found, many people are willing to do so and in doing so create shared knowledge of a subject. For example, a user looking for information on genocide prevention could just search one of these sites for the combination of those tags. Moreover, should a user locate a person who is appearing to tag a subject that the user is particular interested in the user could choose to subscribe to all a feed of all those tags created by that person on that subject. Very interestingly, this phenomenon is taking place not just of text but also of photographs.For a good example of these tools with both text and pictures, see http://myweb.search.yahoo.com, www.flickr.com, and http://del.icio.us.

RSS feeds & aggregators. This is a tool that permits the user to create a webpage of recent information created on web pages that the user would like to monitor. Many websites (especially news sites such as http://news.bbc.co.uk now delivery all their content in this way and the tools to collate such information are free to users. Again this is being used not only for written but also photographic content.

For the purposes of this paper an additional technological element has to be addressed: how these software tools will be used and what information can be shared. It has been common to view the personal computer as the only major computing tool with which the 14% of the world’s population who access the internet. However, of late, the cell phone now carries more computing power than computers of yesteryear and it is likely that the increase to 400 million people who are expected to use the internet in 2006 (21% of the world’s population), a proportion of them will do so via cell phones.Phones and the deployment cell phone infrastructure in places like Soweto in South Africa are also bringing access at very low cost.[20] What is also important to note is that this infrastructure is becoming pervasive in the underdeveloped world.In Nigeria there are 14 million mobile phone subscribers.[21] In Tanzania 97% of the population can access a mobile phone in whereas only 28% can access a fixed line.[22]Across Africa as a whole, there are 82 million cell-phone subscribers in 2004, up from 51 million in 2003.[23]

Both computers and cell phones are now capable of sharing not only textual data but also live and recorded voice, and still and moving pictures. These enhancements are in some ways obvious and natural extensions of a technology trajectory that could have been predicted.Enabled by the ability to transfer significant volumes of data, it is the higher context communication, real-time and real-color as well as the personal and social element that pictures and sounds can bring to a situation that really can support the developing and maintenance of deep relationships. Whereas an email is just a letter that arrives more quickly than one handwritten, a video-augmented instant messenger conversation is much more.Perhaps the limiting factor in their value to societies at risk of genocidal actions is the fact that most of these tools are currently designed for wealthy western markets and place a premium on functionality rather than cost or supportability in an environment with limited electrical power; these are limitations that will have to be addressed if the tools are to have the broad impact that this paper argues they should.

This combination of social software services and hardware such as the modern PC and cell phone increasingly adapted for purchase and use in less well-off societies is examined further below in arguing that they will transform the possibilities for genocide prevention.

3.Potential impact of these technologies on genocide prevention

In this section I consider the potential impact of social computing using the model developed by Henry Huttenbach regarding the stages of a genocide.[24][25]First, a community must invent the enemy. .Second, the community engages in stereotyping, archetyping, and/or scapegoating the newly created enemy by attributing to the enemy certain specified bad qualities.Third, the community disenfranchises and victimizes the enemy in a variety of ways in the social sphere, but stops short of actually killing the enemy on any broad-scale way.Finally, the community seeks to annihilate the enemy by engaging in massive targeted killing. Huttenbach’s model articulates seven elements of a genocidal process.

The table below describes in a general way how social software can affect each of these elements, both in a way that might mitigate the process and in a way that might encourage the process..

This analysis indicates that the tools are useful both for those who want to take steps in the prevention of genocide as well as for those who may want to create a situation where genocidal acts can occur. It shouldn’t be surprising that this type of tool can be used in un-civil ways by un-civil actors in un-civil society. I will not dwell in these possibilities, however, because the reality that any new technology has the potential to be used in negative ways should not prevent the development of the use of that technology for positive reasons.For example, the train was a significant technology that emerged from the industrial age, and yet trains were critical to execution of both the Armenian genocide and the grim efficiency of the Holocaust. It is pointless to attempt to remove trains from society or somehow through fiat bar the use of trains for genocidal purposes. Such a step is so obvious and the use of trains for that purpose so certainly impermissible in modern international law that to do so has no value, whereas the exploration of the use of technology to prevent genocide is likely to provide a much more fruitful path. Just as it could have been possible, had countries been willing to accept refugees, to use trains to transport threatened peoples to safety, the objective of this paper is to explore parallel possibilities for modern SCT.

To positively support a genocide prevention system, any technology must at an abstract level provide, on balance, more support than hindrance to the development of a genocide prevention system through either (i) affecting society in such a way as to slow or stop genocidal processes or structures or (ii) positively aid anti-genocidal processes or structures more than genocidal processes. What the analysis above shows is that SCT could do both. Whether it will do this will depends to an extent on how it is deployed and the access provided to it. In societies where access to the tools are open and all can participate in the new virtual public space, the tools can act as a brake on genocidal processes through the illegitimizing of points of view in support of a genocidal objective and the public defense of persecuted minorities. This will prevent the creation of the permissive environment necessary to permit genocide on a large scale and characteristic of the situations Armenia, Germany and Rwanda that came to emerge over a period of time, allowing the stereotyping, scapegoating, and archetyping prior to subsequent victimization.Used in a positive sense, these tools could create a broad enough, public enough space that would preserve liberal speech and prevent the legitimization of hate or genocidal speech as the sole political message. Importantly, though it is likely difficult to prevent the negative uses of the technology by un-civil actors and merely the maintenance of a shared, free public space within the internet will permit those dedicated to preventing genocide an opportunity to share ideas, dialogue, and organize.

Further, since social computing technology tools aid in the dissemination of information and the creation and strengthening of relationships, this increase and enrichment of dialogue is what can provide the strength to the anti-genocidal processes and creation of a genocide prevention system. Here the challenge is to ensure that the dialogue that they enable is on balance aiding anti-genocidal processes more than genocidal processes.The issue is not about the structure of the space but much more about how it is used.

In order to get beyond this very general analysis and understand the roles that actors in anti-genocidal processes can play and how they are and might further be able to make use of the space, I will now look at a model taken from the conflict management literature and analyze the social computing tools within this framework.

4.The Third Side

In his book called The Third Side, William Ury provides an analysis that is particularly useful since it provides a framework through which third parties of many types, people and groups, which he defines as the third side, affect conflict. Considering conflict either to be latent, overt or potentially uncontained, Ury identifies ten roles that third parties can play in either preventing, resolving, or containing the conflict. Considering pre-genocidal processes and genocidal actions as a conflict, despite its prima facie irrationality, allows an application of the model to such a situation.[26]

In conflicts that are latent and can be prevented, Ury suggests that the third side can act as a provider, someone who delivers resources that meet basic human needs that drive conflict; a teacher, someone who provides skills to be people in conflict situations; or a bridge-builder, someone supports the creation of relationships to enable negotiation. In ongoing conflicts, the roles are focused on negotiating the ends to conflicts through a mediator, a person who facilitates dialogue and reconciles conflicting interests; an arbitrator, who determines disputed rights; an equalizer, someone who democratizes conflicts by forcing stronger parties to negotiate with weaker; and a healer who listens, acknowledges and encourages apologies. Finally, in conflicts that are at risk of uncontrolled escalation, there are three more limited roles that can be played by the third side: a witness, through which merely a person’s presence can modify the dynamics of a conflict; a referee, who sets limits to fighting; and a peacekeeper, who can through his or her presence enforce the peace.

The analysis in the tables below exposes the value of individual social computing tools and the opportunities for communication and dialogue that they are enabling on a scale previously unimaginable with respect to these roles that could enable society to develop in an anti-genocidal fashion, generate subsequent intervention from or outside a society, or conversely render it unnecessary in cases where potential genocidal processes or slowed or stopped. I have done this by pointing to examples from the genocide prevention movement, where they exist, or examples from similar cases, where they exist, for how these tools support the third side playing an expanded role.

These tables demonstrate that SCTs can changes the dynamics of conflicts through the way they enable people or groups to play roles that aid the management of conflict. I do not argue that the new technologies create fundamentally new opportunities but rather that they permit those possibilities for dialogue to happen on a larger scale by collapsing time and space between people. In particular, it is very interesting that there are both possibilities of simple tools in supporting individuals or groups to act as bridgebuilders or witnesses and possibilities of more sophisticated tools to support negotiating through arbitrators or mediators.That social computing technologies have the potential to act at such different levels in a system underscores the potential for wide-scale value in genocide prevention.

5.Institutional analysis of social computing tools in genocide prevention

Next, I consider how the tools could be used by the various institutional actors in society and the state in a genocidal situation. Rather than examining the idealized, generic roles that could be played by various actors, this analysis looks at how the tools could impact specific functional roles taken on by institutions in modern society.

The table below identifies possible uses of blogs, wikis and social networking services by media, intelligence, military, political actors and diplomats. What should be noted is that the tools are most useful if embraced in a public, open manner. Using them in a private or closed manner reduces their value such that they become another private information repository. For instance, the role that blogs could play in informing either the military or intelligence services where the information could subsequently be consolidated and synthesized using wiki tools is much more powerful if embedded in a public space where the data, analysis, and conclusions can be critiqued by many.[28]

Furthermore, for the media to regard blogs as just another information source rather than to embrace them as a medium that can be used to provide information and engage in an ongoing dialogue with readers would be failing to take full advantage of a new technology to enhance media coverage.[29]

The roles that these tools could play in the political processes that are essential to development of anti-genocidal momentum are significant.They have already been shown to have aided several groups, such as the Genocide Intervention Fund, an organization set up by Swarthmore College students who have utilized the web to build tools to support political organizing around the issue of providing logistics funding to African Union troops to intervene in Darfur, Sudan.[30]Additionally, a celebrity-supported campaign called www.darfurgenocide.org/ and a large coalition of more than 100 NGOs who are lobbying under the auspices of the www.savedarfur.org campaign are also active on the issue using similar tools to collect signatures and lobby.

It is unclear how these tools directly aid traditional diplomacy between diplomats of countries that only deal with a small number of relationships that are already known and supported adequately by current technology. What is likely is that the widespread emergence of social computing tools will likely change the balance of power between other actors who gain benefit from these tools and those who practice traditional diplomacy for which the tools provide little use.This could have a significant affect as not only are the traditional diplomats likely to be on balance weaker but the positions the diplomats take will be as adopted likely following a markedly larger number of direct contacts with political leaders following citizen-to-citizen and citizen-to-diplomat lobbying.

Now that the the ways in which institutional actors could adopt these tools could utilize these tools it is necessary to consider the critical factors that need to be fulfilled for them to be adopted.