Authored by Helena Puig Larrauri as part of the Accord by Conciliation Resources.
A volume on innovations in mediation would be amiss without a section addressing the potential and risks of digital technologies. Technology and innovation are entwined, both because technological advances are the result of innovative industry, and because technological advances very often catalyse the need for innovation in processes and practices. Digital technologies in turn are now inextricable from mediation, being intrinsic too to how wars are being fought and peace needs to be made.
A decade ago, in the adjacent fields of peacebuilding and humanitarian response, interest in digital technologies sparked a new wave of innovations. Many of these were premised on the idea that new technologies were democratising access to information and communication tools, enabling a multiplicity of actors to make use of their potential to increase their impact. Enhanced data management held out the possibility of delivering better understanding, and communications and networking platforms of delivering greater participation and inclusion. While many actors participating in this initial wave of ‘digital peacebuilding and humanitarian response’ were aware of the risks that came along with these opportunities, the underlying premise was that new technologies were a tool of great potential. What mattered was how we chose to use them.
The mediation field entered the digital debate somewhat later but adopted a similar framing. The 2019 Digital Mediation Toolkit was a collaboration between the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue to assess opportunities and risks related to the use of digital technologies in mediation. The toolkit is foundational in setting out four areas where mediators might innovate their practice using digital technologies: conflict analysis, engagement with parties, inclusivity, and strategic communications.
This framework encourages practitioners to balance the risks and opportunities of (otherwise neutral) technology tools. In recent years this framing has been challenged by increasing concerns about how the design and affordances of digital technologies, especially digital media platforms, are impacting conflict dynamics. As misinformation, hate speech and polarisation manifested on these platforms in ways that directly impacted the work of peacebuilders, humanitarians and mediators, organisations with strong digital practices, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, warned that these new technologies were not just neutral tools with risks to be managed, but new conflict landscapes to be understood, mitigated, and at times mediated.