Social Media as a Conflict Driver and a Tool of Participatory Conflict Communication and Peacebuilding in Conflict and Post-Conflict Narratives

Routledge Handbook of Conflict and Peace Communication Seminar Series

22 May

17:00 UK Time 

In the second of the seminar series on the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Conflict and Peace Communication, the Hub for the Study of Hybrid Communication in Peacebuilding is delighted to host two presentations.

Social Media as a Conflict Driver and a Tool of Participatory Conflict Communication

In this presentation Alexandra Pavliuc will explore social media’s dual role as both a conflict driver and communication tool, focusing on participatory engagement, transparency, and algorithmic influence. She will highlight how social media facilitates collaboration among conflicting sides, leaves digital traces for analysis, and shapes perceptions through algorithmically curated content dissemination. Finally, she will explore how social media acts as both a normalizer of conflict and a galvanizer of support and will continue to be shaped by worldwide citizens as conflict communication evolves.

Alexandra Pavliuc is a PhD candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute and a visiting fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. Her research examines the gendered dimensions of digital diplomacy by analyzing how Ukrainian political figures use social media during wartime.

Peacebuilding in Conflict and Post-Conflict Narratives

Heike Härting will present her handbook chapter which examines some of the ways in which contemporary conflict and post-conflict narratives mediate the multiple planetary and epistemological entanglements of peacebuilding processes. Drawing from postcolonial and queer literary theory, it argues that reading these narratives attentively and responsibly constitutes a reparative and decolonial practice of peacebuilding. It discusses reparative translational politics in a selection of child soldier novels, liminal configurations of peacebuilding in Abani’s conflict narrative Song for Night (2007), and collective forms of reparative peacebuilding in Erpenbeck’s novel Go, Went, Gone (2018).

Heike Härting is Associate Professor of English in the Department of Literatures and Languages of the World and co-founder and co-director of the Research Centre on Planetary Cultural and Literary Studies at Université de Montréal (Canada). Her research concentrates on postcolonial studies, focusing on global violence and planetary health narratives in African and Canadian literatures. Her co-edited book Planetary Health Humanities and Pandemics appeared with Routledge in March 2024.