The Role of Social Media Research in Foreign Policy

The role of social medias in the Arab Spring is being intensely analysed (and we’re among those analyzing) and was perhaps the crux point of governments and other organizations seeing the value of social medias in civil society change. The failed green revolution in Iran in 2009 was arguably the opening gambit of social medias role in political change. Whether social media played a pivotal role however, is up for debate.

Revolutions aside, social medias offer more opportunities to governments, IGO‘s, NGO’s and multi-national corporations for knowledge, context and understanding  of civil society than has been possible before. No longer is social media usage purely for entertainment value – and those that think it is, may be missing critical insights.

We have conducted a number of research projects into social media for public sector and private sector clients on foreign policy issues. Through these projects (and our in-house research) we’ve come to gain a very deep appreciation, as have our clients, into the value social medias can play. Among them are;

Citizen Views & Opinions in Recovering States: A prime example here is Haiti. After the cholera outbreak in 2010, many Haitians and Haitian diaspora took to social media channels to discuss the issue. Chief among them was the evolution of a mythology or conspiracy theory that the UN was out to poison them. This is certainly not the case. But such views become valid perceptions and create communications gaps and strained relationships between those giving and receiving aid. Research into social media can identofy such issues and enable improved communications.

Trade Negotiation Issues: One of our recent research projects helped a government to identify why its attempts to communicate with the business community in a foreign country weren’t going so well. Our research showed that the target business community was referring to the bilateral trade agreement in a completely different way – simply because of a cultural issue of language. By taking an innovative step in looking at online chatter, the government was able to change its communications tactics and better engage the audience more effectively.

Domestic Views on Foreign Policy: Citizens at home have their views on their governments activities in foreign countries; especially when it comes to conflicts where military personnel are at risk. Understanding the views, opinions and mood of citizens at home can help a government to develop effective communications to its citizens and understand if the engagement in a foreign country may cause significant unrest in the civil population.

Peace Operations: Today’s peace operations in fragile states in or just coming out of conflict are delicate and far more complex than they used to be. Citizens in fragile states are also more connected to the Web than is often realized; through both broadband access and mobile devices. In fact, the use of social medias via mobile devices is quite significant – enough for viable research. Monitoring and analyzing citizens commentary can help understand citizen views, identify areas at risk for aid delivery and more.

There are more areas where such research can have an impact. Often, online research is a complement to traditional methodologies such as interviews and focus groups, providing a layer of insight not possible before.

Where Social Technologies Have Been Used to Effect Societal Change

If you’ve turned on any form of news media in the last 6 weeks you’re more than aware of the unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Oman and Yemen. And a few mild attempts in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. No doubt Israel’s foreign service folks are not getting much sleep and the military is wired on caffeine. Thoroughly.

What are some examples of how social technologies have disrupted or aided in the change of government.

• Phillippines: Filipino’s use texting to coordinate mass protests resulting in the ousting of Joseph Estrada
• Spain: Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero used text messaging to coordinate the 2004 ouster of the People’s Party in four days.
• Moldovans used social media in 2009 to turn out 20,000 protesters in just 36 hours
• In 2008 Egyptian youth use Twitter to coordinate the taking of an activist and protest his release
• In 2010 Canadians use Facebook to hold a peaceful nationwide rally against proroguing of Parliament
• In the autumn of 2010 British students coordinate massive rallies in London against changes to fees
• Ukrainians used text messaging to coordinate the Orange Revolution, ousting the communist government in 3 days
• South Koreans rallied against beef imports in 2008 taking their grievances directly to the public, sharing text, photos, and video online, without needing permission from the state or help from professional media.
• In 2011 Tunisians use various social technologies to share and coordinate unrest, ousting a dictator in a week
• Inside of 3 weeks after using a Facebook group and other social technologies, Egyptians ousted dictator Mubarak in 2010
• Chinese anticorruption protesters use the instant-messaging service QQ to coordinate in 2011

In our research into which social technologies are most often used to coordinate social change activities we found that text messaging has proven to be the most popular and what we classify as a Tactical Tool; meaning it can be used quickly and in a rapidly changing context. While SocNets (Social Networks like Facebook or Orkut) are what we term Strategical Tools that are used to establish groups and set an event, but are poorly adapted to being mobile. Microblogs (such as Twitter, which leads the way) are still more “strategic” sliding towards tactical since Twitter is susceptible to outages (Fail Whale) and not always a rapid means of posting.

That new technologies will come onto the scene there is little doubt. Some will be used in ways we cannot yet predict. It took nearly 300 years until the printing press aided a speedier revolution and the telephone nearly 40 years. Social Technologies of today took less than a decade to begin aiding social unrest activities.

Digital Activism: The Message Map

With the advent of so many communications channels today via the Web and mobile networks, creating, executing and delivering a message by digital diaspora groups or social activists, protestors etc., is increasingly easy and very low cost. Consciously or not, and in most cases it is a conscious plan, there is a method to the seeming madness.

In our research, we’ve plotted out the most common route a group will take to push their message. The map below shows this process. In many cases an activist group or social group has an idea of the channels to leverage (i.e. they will establish a Facebook group or a blog/microsite to be the “focal point” of the message) then they will distribute the message across other digital channels such as Twitter. Simultaneously, they will address traditional methods of attracting industrial news media such as international news broadcasters, radio and print publications. Using digital media channels however, they can drive an issue much faster and set the news agenda when they garner a large following with uptake of the message. This was shown in Egypt when Twitter was actively engaged by the protesters on January 25, 2011; The first “hashtag” for the protests was #Jan25 and the second most popular was #Egypt. The volume went viral rapidly in the wake of the Tunisia uprisings. Although it was only part “organized” a form of “digital mob mentality” (a blog on that to come) took over. The noise was loud enough that news media began to pick up the story.

While we aren’t, for obvious reasons, unveiling our entire look at process in the case of using digital media channels to communicate activism, this map can provide some key insights to the process that follows. Even as the Egyptian government disconnected Web access, people found a way around using mobile networks (we’ll have another map on that shortly.)

The Evangelical Right & Aid Relief in Fragile Nations

Over the past few months we’ve undertaken, on our own, a project to map the use of social media by the evangelical right. Part of our research has been how Christian/evangelical non-profit aid groups are engaging in aid delivery in fragile nations and post-crisis states (e.g. Haiti post-earthquake.)

A Crisis of Information in a Crisis?

There’s little doubt that social technologies and crowdsourcing can play a crucial role in managing information during and immediately after a natural disaster or conflict outbreak in fragile and developed nations. Services that Ushahidi offers are critical and effective.

But with more and more of these crowdsourcing and information sites evolving, will we face a crisis of information overload? Perhaps there can be too much of a good thing.

We saw the value of SMS/txt donations during the Haitian earthquake and Ushahidi being able to coordinate information. Such success was widely publicized and now we’re seeing these tools applied in the Pakistan flood crisis. Pardon the pun, but is there a flood of confusion however, on what tools are effective or where to go?

Effective crisis management has to have a central coordination point. Something UNOCHA works very hard to do. And often does very well at. So what’s happening online?

Ushahidi is leading the way, very effectively. Yet we have other systems such as the US military’s HARMONIEWeb, a Wiki type of tool. Then there’s CrisisCommons and SAHANA a platform built OpenSource and freely available.

There’s little question that these are useful and critical. But toss in blogs, Twitter and similar services, txt messaging and video blogs and the inevitable in-country tools that are rapidly developed like the floodmaps by Lahore University and the Punjab government relief site and you’ve got an overload situation.

All of this presents a serious challenge; what is the one critical mass spot that is most effective in aid coordination? Given it’s capabilities, ideally Ushahidi’s tools such as SwiftRiver.

The challenge becomes politics (governmental preferences on platform), access to broadband Internet and then the tools (laptop, software/browser) to access them along with driving awareness of their availability. Most of these tools are difficult to access in fragile states, even with limited dial-up, so txt messaging plays a vital role, but is restrictive for the mobile user. Additional issues follow, such as validity of information, missing critical insights from one platform to another and user capacity to understand these tools.

Services like Ushahidi have and are making a difference. But can you have uniformity with so many communications options available? Can you aggregate effectively? I suspect so, but it will be some time for that to happen.