Laura Gianna Guntrum

Racism extends into the digital realm, manifesting in various forms of technology-facilitated violence (TFV). Although much research centers on the Global North, it is essential to investigate this issue in other settings, such as Colombia, where activists are particularly vulnerable to TFV. This study enriches the debate with a qualitative approach, conducting 18 interviews with activists from Chocó and Bogotá. The literature on race and TFV reveals that technology can exacerbate racism through social media, like anonymity, and introduce new forms of racist violence, including deepfakes and algorithmic bias. However, these forms were not prevalent in our interviews. For activists, structural racism, especially limited Internet, and electricity access emerged as a primary factor in their experiences with racist TFV. Overt TFV escalates to offline threats, silencing dissenting voices. This research emphasizes the need to understand TFV within non-Western regions, advocating for nuanced approaches to addressing digital racism in diverse contexts.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer valuable tools for fostering social cohesion and conflict resolution, yet little is known about women's roles in this domain. This study draws on 14 interviews to explore how female Cameroonian peacebuilders used ICTs during the Anglophone Crisis. Findings indicate that low-tech tools, like WhatsApp groups, play a key role in information dissemination, while more advanced technologies remain largely absent despite their growing presence in peacebuilding literature. Whilst this study demonstrates the capacity of ICTs to promote women's involvement in peacebuilding by facilitating participation, protection, and prevention, it also examines existing challenges, including restricted accessibility and technology-facilitated violence. By exploring the intersection of digital peacebuilding and the UN's Women, Peace, and Security Agenda through the lens of the Cameroonian case, we propose an intersectional feminist digital peacebuilding framework, incorporating gender-responsive and locally grounded strategies to better support women's engagement in peacebuilding efforts.

Activists’ use of ICTs in contexts affected by violence poses challenges like digital surveillance. Based on 92 interviews with activists from Bolivia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Colombia, India, Myanmar, and Nicaragua, this study explores their protection and coping strategies against technology-facilitated violence. Findings show limited emphasis on digital security and privacy-enhancing technologies, primarily due to the usability and familiarity with popular applications, coupled with relative unfamiliarity with other features. Generally, some precautions, like avoiding real-time location sharing, are common. While many protection strategies are similar, some are shaped by local factors like internet shutdowns and different adversaries’ capabilities. The findings demonstrate that some tools and features, such as VPN, may offer protection but also pose risks, e.g., in the case of criminalization, highlighting the crucial role of local context. Designing secure and usable features that account for the varying levels of limitations, such as poor connectivity and risks activists face, is essential.

Social media plays a crucial role in United Nations (UN) peace operations, which are typically deployed in regions affected by conflict to promote peace, facilitate political dialogue, and support post-conflict reconstruction efforts. The UN has introduced the concept of the digital peacekeeper, whose role is to collect and analyse public data, with a particular focus on social media. This article explores the role of official social media use by African peace operations (POs) between 2003 and 2024 through a qualitative analysis of 126 UN documents. The findings reveal that African POs employ a diverse communication strategy, primarily centred on disseminating information, education, and access to reliable information in disrupted contexts. However, the full potential of social media is not realised, resulting in a predominantly one-way communication model. Using affordance theory for social media, the paper demonstrates how bidirectional interactions could support sustainable peace efforts.

The shrinking of secure online spaces and incidents of technology-facilitated (gender-based) violence (TF(GB)V) against female feminists have partially led to self-censorship, thereby constricting public discourse. To unravel the impact of increasing TF(GB)V on feminist mobilization, 22 interviews with Costa Rican and Colombian, female feminists advocating for feminist issues, such as reproductive rights, were conducted. All interviewees, advocating for often perceived controversial topics within patriarchal societies, have experienced forms of TF(GB)V, including misogynistic hate speech. In reaction to this violence, interviewees respond in varying ways – some reduce their social media activity, while others develop personal coping strategies. In fact, most interviewees engage in both chilling and resistance mechanisms concurrently. Increased awareness of potential consequences and coping mechanisms of female feminists when experiencing TF(GB)V helps to develop gender-sensitive mechanisms to protect (female) activists and foster a safer online environment. While measures such as IT security training for activists, enhanced content moderation on platforms, and gender-sensitive design approaches are crucial, addressing the underlying issue – the targeting of feminists with violence – is imperative. Without such efforts, there is a risk that affected individuals withdraw from digital spaces, thereby limiting the diversity of narratives that shape public discourse online.

In conflict-ridden environments, timely and accurate information is critical for those dealing with the dynamic of events. When individuals have to flee, it becomes evident that refugees frequently rely on information and communication technologies (ICT) for information acquisition, travel coordination, and maintaining connections with related parties. Based on 17 interviews, this research explores how Ukrainian refugees, who sought protection in Germany due to the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion, use ICT before, during, and after their flight. By providing empirical findings, the results show in depth how contextual factors, such as infrastructural instability, privacy concerns, and an advanced digitalization, interrelate with user behaviors. Analyzing the multifaceted civilian ICT use in the context of war and flight, this exploratory research contributes to the existing research on HCI in migration contexts and connects to several topics of CSCW. By contrasting case specifics, this work highlights what makes Ukraine a special case in this research area. Furthermore, this paper examines both existing and emerging affordances of ICT in the context of flight and identifies the crucial role of messenger groups for information gathering in all phases of the flight. Lastly, collaborative dimensions of the identified affordances are discussed.

This article examines how Colombian NGOs use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for peacebuilding attempts amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing from 17 interviews with NGO members, the study underscores the pivotal role of digital peacebuilding in sustaining and expanding peace attempts, effective data management, and a broader engagement of target groups beyond in-person activities often associated with safety and financial concerns. The findings also identify prevailing challenges of incorporating ICTs in NGO's peacebuilding activities, ranging from privacy-related concerns to connectivity issues. The article points out the potential for NGOs to enhance interactivity, knowledge transfer, and diversity in their activities with ICTs, including IT security training and awareness campaigns on hate speech and propaganda. It also emphasizes the importance of developing risk reduction strategies tailored to the specific needs of different target groups.

This special interest group invites participants to critically examine the complex interplay between interventionist Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects and (historical) contexts of conflict and colonialism. It aims to open conversations on the multitude of challenges, barriers, and lessons learned around South-North collaborations, particularly in contexts with a colonial past and present, including researchers and research participants safety, data "security", applied ethics, and methodologies. This SIG aims at jointly developing ideas on how we, as academic researchers, can navigate and reframe the power dynamics inherent in global South-North collaborations.