Conflict Sensitive Approaches to Social Media

The line between real and virtual is increasingly blurred in the age of social media. Our social and political lives are reflected and broadcast on social media and, in turn, social media shapes the narratives that transform our world. While references to social media and politics immediately bring to mind polarization, fake news, and animosity, social media also has vast positive potential for connecting widely disparate people and communities.

A conflict sensitive approach to social media usage can help individuals and organizations leverage this potential and avoid some common pitfalls.

Hallmarks of a Conflict Sensitive Approach to Social Media:

• Resisting the trend toward anonymity
• Humanizing social media users
• Utilizing reflection, awareness and mindfulness to avoid needless escalation
• Decreasing the risk of misinformation
• Fostering connection and collaboration across geographic and social separation via new platforms and technologies
• Privileging face-to-face or audio communication whenever possible to avoid loss in non verbal information

Risks and Possibilities of Social Media:

Social media’s capacity to cause and exacerbate conflict is due in part to the “attention economy.” A common business model in the tech world, the “attention economy” relies on content intended to produce as much internet traffic as possible, resulting in content that appeals to emotions such as fear, outrage and anger. Another potential risk of social media is the reduction in person-to-person communication in favor of brief, remote, text-based communication, which is more prone to miscommunication, simplification, and a loss of emotional exchange and empathy. Finally, social media algorithms tend to show users content based on their previous clicks, which means that users are often exposed to posts and news media that confirm their existing beliefs, thus exacerbating polarization.

The downsides of social media may, however, be counterbalanced by its positive potential, as indicated in the chart below. Some social media engineers are now focusing attention on how to design information technologies to “promote constructive consensus building over destructive polarization.”

Risks:

• Disinformation, propaganda, shaming
• Security and privacy risks
• Polarization and isolation
• Text-based communication leads to lower trust levels and less satisfactory outcomes than person-to-person negotiation

Potential:

• Citizen education, information sharing, empowerment and engagement
• Access to data for research and analysis
• Communication and connection across geographic and other borders; sharing of narratives
• Video-conferencing and emerging applications can promote constructive communication and connection