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Blogs & Bullets

part of the Centers of Innovation

Understanding Online Discourse as a Cause of Conflict and Means of Dialogue

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Event: Sifting Fact from Fiction: The Role of Social Media in Conflict 
This Blogs & Bullets meeting, held in September 2011, brought together the companies that sift through and sell this data with the activists that create it and the policy-makers who use it. The event looked at the cutting-edge of technologies for analysis with experts from around the world in an effort to expand our ability to harness these new platforms for conflict management and peacebuilding. 

Event: Blogs & Bullets: Social Media and the Struggle for Political Change
This event, hosted at Stanford University in February 2011, brought together a diverse array of innovators from across the public, private and academic communities to share research in progress, with a particular focus on harnessing the insights of Silicon Valley companies whose products have been key enablers of political activism from Tehran to Tunisia, Cairo to Colombia.

Event: Mapping the Russian Blogosphere 
On October 19, 2010, at an event hosted by USIP’s Center of Innovation for Science, Technology & Peacebuilding, experts from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Morningside Analytics presented their new research on the Russian blogosphere, while prominent Russia experts and notable bloggers responded.
Read a Peace Brief about the event. 

Event: Blogs and Bullets: Evaluating the Impact of New Media on Conflict 
From Iran to Kenya to Colombia, the impact of new and social media on movements for political and social change has been the subject of much discussion, and controversy. On July 8, 2010, the Center and George Washington University's Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication hosted an event to release a report exploring the role of new media in contested politics around the world.

Partners

  • George Washington University
  • Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society
  • Morningside Analytics

Through this initiative, the Center of Innovation for Science, Technology, and Peacebuilding explores ways to utilize quantitative and analytical tools to map online discourse and content in USIP’s priority conflict areas.

As part of this initiative, the Center has put on major conferences that have brought together a wide range of leading academic and industry experts.  It has produced two papers that laid out an influential framework for analyzing the impact of new media on politics and which took stock of the existing literature, methods, and data. 

These conferences and reports have significantly advanced a broad, collective, and collaborative effort to develop policy-relevant and academically rigorous approaches to urgent questions about the impact of new media on conflict and peace.  

2011 Events and Publications

  • Event: Sifting Fact from Fiction: The Role of Social Media in Conflict 
    This Blogs & Bullets meeting, held in September 2011, brought together the companies that sift through and sell this data with the activists that create it and the policy-makers who use it. The event looked at the cutting-edge of technologies for analysis with experts from around the world in an effort to expand our ability to harness these new platforms for conflict management and peacebuilding. 
  • Event: Blogs & Bullets: Social Media and the Struggle for Political Change
    This event, hosted at Stanford University in February 2011, brought together a diverse array of innovators from across the public, private and academic communities to share research in progress, with a particular focus on harnessing the insights of Silicon Valley companies whose products have been key enablers of political activism from Tehran to Tunisia, Cairo to Colombia.

2010 Events and Publications

2009 Events and Publications