Digital Peacebuilding and Peace Tech Online Course

Focus Education program
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Digital Peacebuilding and Peace Tech

This online training course provides advanced-level skills to use social media and other technology as tools for peacebuilding. Participants from around the world will analyze the impact technology is having on democracy and conflict, and practice new skills to transform online violent extremism, hate, and disinformation with mid-level career professionals. The course will involve concise lectures, discussion and participant exercises to practice advanced skill sets. Participants will learn strategies for defusing hate and using counterspeech online, create video-based content to tell your peacebuilding stories online, develop peace memes you can use to promote your ideas and map the whole social media system so you can address its problems and harness its power for peace

This course is part of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University. Cost $495 with scholarships available. Also offered for academic credit.

Faculty:
Dr. Lisa Schirch is North American Research Director for the Toda Peace Institute where she directs a research program on “Social Media, Technology, and Peacebuilding.” She is a formal collaborator with the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab and the Alliance for Peacebuilding and holds an official advisory role with the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund in Geneva. A former Fulbright Fellow in East and West Africa, Schirch works alongside local colleagues in over 20 countries and on racial justice, Indigenous rights and digital media in North America. Dr. Schirch has written ten books on peacebuilding, including an edited volume on The Ecology of Violent Extremism. Read Lisa’s Congressional Testimony on The Roles of Non-military Programs Within a Comprehensive Preventive Approach to Terrorism and Insurgencies.

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People who reject peace will not be swayed by memes.

I’m sure many realize they are hateful extremists, prefer their view, are paid to be terrorists, have their entire social architecture based around hatred, at that point they aren’t responding to logic and will only respond to force.

Please show one example of any positive outcome from online peace building, getting someone to call off an attack, defect to a western state, doing anything besides paying for tenure?

Even if it was to correct bias and erroneous reporting in the worlds media, to counter it with real information about war and peace and the status quo and what we need to do to change, it would never be distributed as much as cnn, fox, bbc, aljezeera, etc etc etc.

To me it’s disingenuous to any real struggle for peace. I saw a great meme about it with a muslim terrorist being grabbed by a giant that represents the e.u.

The giant asks “what do you want?” And the terrorists says “I want to kill infidels!” And The giant shakes him in frustration and says “why won’t you tell me what you want?”

How many nazis and jihadis have a twitter account? How many beheading videos does it host right now?

Go to one, and post a counter point meme under it, that will fix everything, here’s $500!

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The path to peace is long enough as it is. It’s made longer still when we wilfully or without realising it poke holes in the efforts of those that strive for it.