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Salam Shabab: Views and Voice of Iraqi Youth

Theo Dolan, Alexis Toriello

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2011), 5 pp.

"Salam Shabab (Peace Youth) is a unique reality TV series filmed in Iraq that brought together youth from six provinces of Iraq to compete for a chance to become youth “Ambassadors of Peace.” The views of young Iraqis participating in Salam Shabab, along with new surveys on youth perspectives, h ... more

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Afghanistan Media Assessment: Opportunities and Challenges for Peacebuilding

Eran Fraenkel, Emrys Shoemaker, Sheldon Himelfarb

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 40 pp.

"International donor support for Afghanistan's media has had two primary goal The short-term goal has been to counteract the effects of insurgent communications in order to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. The long-term goal has been to create a free and independent media sector that w ... ill continue to function after donor support has ended. Although millions of dollars have been invested in the development of the Afghan media sector and the growth of private media since 2001 is considered one of Afghanistan's greatest success stories,neither of these donor goals is being met. Donor support for Afghan media has led to the growth of radio and television outlets that are almost entirely dependent on foreign funding - direct and indirect. Recent strategic communications policies have neither diminished nor adequately countered the presence of extremist voices in Afghanistan. Despite some examples to the contrary, Taliban communications continue to affect the lives of ordinary Afghans, whereas many communications by and from Western sources do not. Neither short- nor mid-term analysis of the Afghan economy - ranked the third poorest in the world by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) - foresees the growth of a market able to sustain Afghanistan's domestic media sector without foreign financing. The limited impact of Western communications endeavors, in conjunction with the predicted continued weakness of the Afghan economy, reveals an urgent need for a dramatic shift in the media strategies and goals pursued by the United States and its allies. First and foremost, donors should invest primarily in the Afghan media's production and dissemination of socially constructive contents rather than in building media institutions or infrastructure that the Afghan economy cannot support. For these contents to be received as authentic and credible, they must reflect the vulnerabilities and priorities that Afghans themselves have identified as vital. Donors should make a multiyear funding commitment to the media in Afghanistan. Support should be allocated to both terrestrial and wireless media through a transparent and competitive process developed jointly by donors and Afghan media experts. Aggressively supporting the dissemination of socially constructive contents through new outlets will permit access to both geographic and demographic segments of the population not adequately served by current media outlets." (Summary) more

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Can You Help me Now? Mobile Phones and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan

Sheldon Himelfarb, Cecilia Paradi-Guilford

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 15 pp.

"A decade ago, mobile phone usage in Afghanistan was almost nonexistent; now there are 13 million subscriptions for a total of 29 million citizens, and the annual growth rate of subscription is estimated at 53 percent. A number of factors have fueled this dramatic increase, including the sheer popul ... more

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Make it Theirs: The Imperative of Local Ownership in Communications and Media Initiatives
Top Insights

Simon Haselock

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 17 pp.

"This report presents the author's experiences regarding the relation of international interventions and local institutions in the (post-)conflict countries of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan. Haselock states that media reforms are most successful where they are the result of partnership ... more

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Crowdsourcing Crisis Information in Disaster-Affected Haiti

Jessica Heinzelman, Carol Waters

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 16 pp.

"The traditional disaster-response system employed by relief actors in Haiti concentrated on enabling information-sharing among teams of responders from the international community. This system lacked the ability to aggregate and prioritize data that came from outside sources, making it difficult to ... more

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Media and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan

Sheldon Himelfarb

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 5 pp.

"Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the Afghan media sector has experienced dramatic growth in all areas: television, radio, print, internet, mobile phones. As such, the sector holds tremendous potential for making significant contributions to peacebuilding in the country. However, the media sec ... more

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Preventing Media Incitement to Violence in Iraq

Theo Dolan

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 5 pp.

"The monitoring of Iraqi media reveals that inflammatory coverage does not necessarily consist of a direct call to violence, but instead takes the form of indirect or coded terminology that still has dangerous potential to foment conflict. Current regulatory and self-regulatory efforts designed to p ... more

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Blogs and Bullets: New Media in Contentious Politics

Sean Aday, Henry Farrell, Marc Lynch, John Sides, John Kelly, Ethan Zuckerman

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 31 pp.

"The impact of new media can be better understood through a framework that considers five levels of analysis: individual transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, regime policies, and external attention. New media have the potential to change how citizens think or act, mitigate or exa ... more

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Advancing New Media Research

Sean Aday, Henry Farrell, Marc Lynch, John Sides

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 8 pp.

"New media are powerful but have mixed effects on political organizations. To identify these consequences, we need to continue devising new frameworks of analysis. Knowing more about how new media relate to each other and to traditional media is critical. Being sensitive to the differences between, ... more

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Managing Public Information in a Mediation Process
Key Guidance

Ingrid A. Lehmann

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2009), 55 pp.

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Media and Conflict: Afghanistan as a Relative Success Story

Yll Bajraktari, Christina Parajon

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2008), 8 pp.

"The development of media in post-Taliban Afghanistan has been relatively successful (compared with both the Taliban regime and other countries subject to international intervention) in establishing free and responsible expression despite the lack of electricity, harsh terrain, absence of viable med ... more

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Developing Media in Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations
Key Guidance

Yll Bajraktari, Emily Hsu

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2007), 20 pp.

"This report [...] recommends that interveners take the following series of steps as they generate a strategy for media development in post-conflict zones. Predeployment Phase: Mapping and Strategizing: map out the existing media landscape; identify the postwar condition of the media infrastructure, ... more

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Designing for Results: Integrating Monitoring and Evaluation in Conflict Transformation Programs

Cheyanne Church, Mark M. Rogers

Washington, DC: Search for Common Ground; Alliance for Peacebuilding; United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2006), 228 pp.

"The purpose of the manual is to introduce peacebuilding practitioners to the concepts, tools, and methods needed to incorporate better design, monitoring, and evaluation practices into peacebuilding programming. As an introductory volume, the target audience is front-line peacebuilding practitioner ... more

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On the Road to Peace: Reporting Conflict and Ethnic Diversity. A Research Report on Good Journalism Practice in Sri Lanka

Jacqueline Park, Sunanda Deshapriya

Brussels: International Federation of Journalists (IFJ); United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2005), 23 pp.

"This report presents the findings of the research into journalists’ attitudes towards and experiences of reporting conflict. It includes the results of two media monitoring exercises: the first, how the media has covered conflict; the second, how it performed in the immediate aftermath of the tsu ... more

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Use and Abuse of Media in Vulnerable Societies
Top Insights

Mark Frohardt, Jonathan Temin

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2003), 15 pp.

"Analyzing the “clues to conflict” in vulnerable societies can enable policymakers to identify societies that are particularly vulnerable to media abuse and decide on the most appropriate type and timing of media interventions. These clues are divided into two categories. Structural indicators c ... more

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The News Media and Peace Processes: The Middle East and Northern Ireland

Gadi Wolfsfeld

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2001), 37 pp.

Make it Theirs: The Imperative of Local Ownership in Communications and Media Initiatives Top Insights

Managing Public Information in a Mediation Process Key Guidance

Developing Media in Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations Key Guidance

Use and Abuse of Media in Vulnerable Societies Top Insights

Make it Theirs: The Imperative of Local Ownership in Communications and Media Initiatives
Top Insights

Managing Public Information in a Mediation Process
Key Guidance

Developing Media in Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations
Key Guidance

Use and Abuse of Media in Vulnerable Societies
Top Insights