Social Science Research Council

Rafal Rohozinski, project leader

The centrality of information and communications technologies to conflict and war is well established and requires little substantiation. What is less well understood is how new global technologies such as the Internet may be changing the dynamic of conflicts as communicative and information power is de-centralized down to the level of individuals and its reach extends beyond the confines of local territorially-defined boundaries or co-located communities. At issue are two intertwined process. On the one hand, the increasing penetration of the “global”–capital, culture, physical presence in the form of aid workers and peacekeepers–into every community and corner of the globe. On the other hand, the appropriation and adaptation of technologies of mass media and personal communication by groups and individuals according to new and existing social practices as local communities and their growing diaspora communities stake out, claim and colonize “the global.”

The past ten years witnessed the emergence of a Global Information Infrastructure and with it various expectations–utopian and dystopian–concerning the eventual trajectories of the political, economic and social transformations precipitated during this period of rapid technological change. This research proposal seeks to explore the intersection between information technologies and social practices where social relations exist at their rawest, and institutional relations in the greatest state of flux.

The scholarly aim of the project is to build understandings at the theoretical, methodological and specific levels as to how actors involved in local conflicts use, understand and appropriate ICTs in their struggles, and how their use of these technologies may affect the dynamics of these struggles at the local and global levels. Are information and communications technologies changing the way that local conflicts are fought and resolved? Do present day understandings of how information technologies intersect with social practices illuminate or constrain our ability to consider alternative explanations for how technologies are appropriated and used? To what extent do institutional factors such as ownership and “design” act to set limits on social and individual “appropriation” of information technologies, and if so, to what end?

The practical objectives of the project are to build better understandings of the policy and operational implications of glocal wars for those interested in preventing or ending these conflicts. The aim is to identify policy and operational aspects of an informational approach to peacebuilding. The proposed research is sequenced over two stages. Stage One proposes to establish a research agenda that addresses theoretical and methodological approaches towards ICT and conflict. The goals here is to generate understandings and analytical tools for observing how globalisation interact with the dynamics of locally generated conflicts rendering them “glocal”–local in their specific territorial intent, but increasingly played out on a planetary scale. Stage Two proposes to apply the theoretical and analytical “toolkits” informed by the stage one to the specific context of an existing “glocal” conflict (the selection of conflict will be made during stage one). The specific findings of the case study–its strengths, weaknesses and findings– will be incorporated into the broader research agenda outlined in Stage one as well as serving as a point of reference for future academic and policy-related research.