![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In recent years, the difficulty of researching with conflict-affected populations, coupled with the demand for up-to-date and accurate knowledge about the dynamics of conflict on the ground, has led many organizations working in conflict-affected states to turn to mobile and internet technology to find solutions to peacekeeping problems. While acknowledging that new technologies can be of use to peacekeepers seeking to gain a better understanding of the conflicts that they operate in, this article warns against an over-reliance on remotely gathered conflict data. Through a comparative analysis of the author’s own experiences of carrying out both ethnographic fieldwork and utilizing crowdsourcing technologies, this article critically evaluates crowdsourcing’s uses and abuses. It argues that while crowdsourcing may be a useful supplement to knowledge gained from sustained and embedded engagement in the field, it can never be a substitute. Furthermore, an over-reliance on remotely gathered data can end up reifying simplistic or misleading understandings of the drivers of conflict, and promoting elite interests at the expense of the marginalized voices it claims to make visible.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Suda Perera is a Research Fellow at the Developmental Leadership Programme in the International Development Department, University of Birmingham. She has worked on the dynamics of conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and has previously conducted research in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Sri Lanka, Jordan, and Rwanda.
Notes
1 Howe, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”.
2 Howe, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”.
3 Bott and Young, “The Role of Crowdsourcing for Better Governance”.
4 Bott, Gigler, and Young, “The Role of Crowdsourcing for Better Governance in Fragile,” 4.
5 UN Expert Panel on Technology and Innovation, Performance Peacekeeping, 3.
6 Converge and Snyder, “Making Maps to Make Peace,” 566.
7 Clayton et al., “The Known Knowns and Known Unknowns,” 54.
8 The acronym for The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2010 MONUSCO replaced the United Nations Organization Mission in Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) which was established by the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement in 1999. In 2010 the Mission changed its name to MONUSCO.
9 MONUSCO, MONUSCO’S Edge.
10 I use the term ‘peacekeeping mission’ here to distinguish MONUSCO from observer missions, such as that in Lebanon which may have had a longer duration but involved much more passive UN engagement.
11 www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/factsheet.shtml (Correct as of December 2016).
12 A portmanteau of the phrase “Lutte pour le Changement” (Struggle for Change).
13 A spokesperson for LUCHA told one interviewer: ‘For us, the presence of MONUSCO [United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo] is a form of taking responsibility off the Congolese state. The Congolese state has to feel responsible before [sic] its own problems. Therefore, one of our demands for peace is to tell MONUSCO to start packing and to leave the DRC to confront its own problems’ Heredia “LUCHA”.
14 Goetschel and Hagman, “Civilian Peacebuilding”; Hellmuller “The Power of Perceptions”.
15 Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo.
16 Autesserre, Peaceland.
17 Autesserre, “Going Micro”; Autesserre, “The Responsibility to Protect in Congo”.
18 Koddenbrock “Recipes for Intervention”.
19 Interview with MONUSCO worker, Goma, 25 August 2014.
20 Autesserre, Peaceland.
21 MONUSCO, “MONUSCO Chief Martin Kobler Visits Rutshuru”.
22 Cooper, More Harm than Good?
23 Vogel, Islands of Stability.
24 Koddenbrock, “Recipes for Intervention,” 549.
25 Perera, “Bermuda Triangulation”.
26 Duffield, “Challenging Environments,” 477.
27 Fisher, “Reproducing Remoteness?” 2.
28 See the country maps available at www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice.
29 Kirsch, “The Incredible Shrinking World?”
30 Castells, End of Millennium.
31 Castells, 2010 Edition End of Millennium.
32 Donner, “Shrinking Fourth World?”
33 Bott, Gigler, and Young, “The Role of Crowdsourcing for Better Governance in Fragile,” 4.
34 Kemp, We Are Social.
35 See Internet World Stats: www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (accessed March 19, 2015).
36 I am grateful to the British Academy who awarded me a Small Research Grant to conduct this research.
37 The simplicity of the phone was rather crucial. Cheap mobile phones are available in the DRC for a few dollars, whereas smartphones are often at least $50 for ‘Chinese knock-off’ phones. To buy a smartphone from a reputable Tigo or Airtel vendor costs at least $100 and phones such as iPhones from these vendors can cost close to a $1000. Most informants were therefore likely to only have very basic phones.
38 Although there is no intention to use the project to engage in any form of illegal activity, any project involving members of armed groups risks being perceived as engaging with an illegal realm, and that my research associate could be accordingly held responsible, harassed or extorted by a notoriously corrupt legal and justice system.
39 Gleick, Chaos, 24.
40 Amnesty International, DRC: Free Human Rights Activists.
41 Morozov, The Net Delusion, 10.
42 It is true that groups of experienced ‘hackers’ such as anonymous are not so easy to identify, but the point of the Twitter Revolution is that the untrained ‘everyman’ can use it, and this ‘everyman’ does not know how to protect his or her anonymity.
43 Bott, Gigler, and Young, “The Role of Crowdsourcing for Better Governance in Fragile,” 27.
44 Dorn and Semkin, “Blue Mission Tracking,” 245.
45 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.
46 I use the term here to refer to the content of the responses that emerged from the questions. These were asking factual points of information rather than opinions, but no judgement is made here as to whether the answers given were true or not.
47 Verweijen, “Coping with the Barbarian Syndrome”.
48 Duffield, “From Immersion to Simulation,” 90.
49 Boyd and Crawford, “Critical Questions for Big Data,” 667.
50 The supporters of the Iranian opposition leader Seyyed Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh took to Twitter to challenge the victory of the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the post-election crisis of 2009–2010.
51 Morozov, The Net Delusion, 15.
52 van der Windt, “From Crowdsourcing to Crowdseeding,” 1.
53 van der Windt, “From Crowdsourcing to Crowdseeding,” 10.