The Technology of Nonviolence ─ Social Media and Violence Prevention

Tunisian and Egyptian protestors famously made use of social media to rallysupporters and disseminate information as the "Arab Spring" began to unfold in 2010. Lesswell known, but with just as much potential to bring about social change, are ongoing local effortsto use social media and other forms of technology to prevent deadly outbreaks of violence. InThe Technology of Nonviolence, Joseph Bock describes and documentstechnology-enhanced efforts to stop violence before it happens in Africa, Asia, and the UnitedStates. Once peacekeeping was the purview of international observers, but today local citizens takeviolence prevention into their own hands. These local approaches often involve technology--includingthe use of digital mapping, crowdsourcing, and mathematical pattern recognition to identify likelylocations of violence--but, as Bock shows, technological advances are of little value unless theyare used by a trained cadre of community organizers. After covering general concepts in violenceprevention and describing technological approaches to tracking conflict and cooperation, Bock offersfive case studies that range from "low-tech" interventions to prevent ethnic and religiousviolence in Ahmedebad, India, to an anti-gang initiative in Chicago that uses Second Life to trainits "violence interrupters." There is solid evidence of success, Bock concludes, but thereis much to be discovered, developed, and, most important, implemented.