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By Carole St. Laurent, ICT Consultant, fluidIT solutions
 The theme of WACC’s 2008 Congress is “Communication is Peace: Building Viable Communities.” If communication is peace, then information and communication technologies (ICTs) are valuable tools that enable communication. How can we use these tools - particularly audio, visual, and online communications - to promote and sustain peace? The goal of communication is understanding. Without understanding, peace cannot be achieved. Even when true understanding exists, differing views, values and needs can make peace challenging. When misunderstandings exist, or are even entrenched, true communication becomes increasingly difficult, yet increasingly important if peace is to be achieved. It is therefore critical to ensure that our communications for peace foster true understanding. Audiovisual messages offer powerful ways to increase this understanding.
In both traditional and online communications, text-based messages play an important role. However, text can only provide one dimension of understanding. Even in close personal relationships it is easy to misconstrue the emotional tone of an email, or unwittingly convey an emotional tone not intended. In communications for peace, such misunderstandings are even more difficult to prevent. When the speaker shares her own words in her own voice, the hearers can more easily discern emotions that are difficult to convey in print. Sharing images evocative of the time and place the speaker is describing allows the viewers to visualize the scenario in greater detail. Even in face-to-face communications people share photographs, videos, songs and sounds to convey deeper understanding than words can alone. When the storyteller is not present to answer questions and embellish understanding, these mediums become even more important.
ICTs offer unique benefits that support communications for peace. Especially in conflict situations, it is difficult to truly hear, let alone empathize with our adversary’s position. Seeing and hearing the other’s perspective through a multimedia message, with no corresponding opportunity to defend one’s own position, may allow deeper hearing to occur. A time lapse in creating a response may allow the hearer a chance for further reflection. For the speaker, the opportunity to share one’s story alone offers a measure of healing. The benefit of enabling understanding and reconciliation is an additional benefit.
Of course, dialogue must occur to move further into the peace process, but must they be solely face-to-face? Asynchronous, time-delayed dialogues offer opportunities for reflection. Multimedia messages enable people to see and hear diverse positions from another’s point of view. Participatory media offer two-way communication with politicians, leaders, and experts who cannot speak with everyone in person due to time, money, and geographical constraints. ICTs also allow greater numbers of people to participate in dialogues than could do so in person.
Film Screening in Second Life PeaceFest ‘08
I recently attended another peace conference, PeaceFest ’08 (http://slpeacefest.wordpress.com). A panel of speakers from South Africa, Ghana and Croatia showed slides of their work. An organization from Ecuador screened a video. Art was auctioned, singers gave live concerts, attendees from around the world mingled, and $3,200 US was raised for grassroots organizations. Yet the organizers did not rent a venue, and the attendees did not incur travel expenses. We all attended the conference online in the virtual world, Second Life (www.secondlife.com). Second Life is an online environment where companies, individuals, and organizations can digitally draw offices, stores, theatres and meeting rooms. Educators offer real courses there, and people shop with real dollars. Designing a personal online alter-ego (called an “avatar”) you can use to interact with others makes this an exciting advancement in online community building. However, it requires powerful computers and highspeed Internet access. One panelist only participated in the conference through Skype, an Internet voice over IP service, because of bandwidth constraints.
Although some software and online media require advanced infrastructure, the benefits of ICTs are not limited to those in the North, or the affluent in the South. Slow Internet connections can support image and sound files without much difficulty, and multimedia messages can be brought to remote communities through battery-powered laptops and DVD players. Open-air cinemas have enabled offline, off-grid communities to hear important messages in their own languages. And the conversation is not necessarily unidirectional. Facilitators, camcorders and tape recorders can bring the villagers responses’ back to others. Shirley White’s book, Participatory Video, offers powerful case studies and recommendations for using video for community development.
Nor are online and offline communications mutually exclusive. Last year I attended the culminating event presented by the Palestinian and Israeli youth participants of a two-week Peace Camp. As they shared the deep personal impact that this experience had on them, I imagined how ICTs might have extended its effects. An online community, teleconferences, web cameras, or creating collaborative videos might have enabled the youth to invite others into the conversation, or deepened the relationships that had developed in person.
One of my own particular interests is the power of storytelling to explore conflicts from diverse angles. In 1994, I was very emotionally impacted by the Rwandan genocide. I watched the events unfold with horror from the safety of my home in Canada. I was outraged at the impotent UN intervention offered in my name as a global citizen, yet was unable to influence it. Today, online tools enable greater citizen action and awareness than was possible in 1994. This was powerfully demonstrated by the ICT-enabled protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999, and the simultaneous anti-Iraq war protests of millions of people around the world in 2003. ICTs are not all-powerful, and the war was not prevented, but they do offer us greater opportunities for empowerment than we would otherwise experience.
Resources
Free Editing Software
Books
White, Shirley A., ed. 2003. Participatory Video: Images that Transform and Empower. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
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