Introducing Digital Media Arts for an inclusive Public Sphere (DMAPS) Digital Media Arts for an inclusive Public Sphere (DMAPS) is a program that supports young leaders from creative and media arts organisations across eight countries (Libya, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Tunisia and Syria) to conduct social media mapping in order to understand how issues of identity, social cohesion and inclusion play out on social media. DMAPS is led by a consortium comprising Build Up, University of Sheffield, University of Manchester, the American University of Kurdistan and datavaluepeople in collaboration with the British Council. It uses participatory actionresearch (see position paper 2 for details) and is inherently participant-led – with 18 local organisations driving the research definition, analysis and intervention design, and delivery. Its aim is to promote openness and inclusivity in the digital public sphere. More specifically, the DMAPS program is an intervention that focuses on polarisation in online spaces and how to decrease such polarisation. It is of interest to both practitioners and academics engaged in peacebuilding, communication and the creative arts as well as local participatory-action research.
The latter resonates with the British Council’s understanding of cultural relations based on genuine reciprocity and mutual understanding, as well as on supporting local communities in their own capacity-building, building cultural relations within communities and beyond borders as well as approaches to local peacebuilding. Local peacebuilding emphasises that ‘people at the local level (a) have the capacity to articulate, develop, and enact solutions to their own problems; (b) possess important knowledge and a better understanding about the complexities of the people, situation, context, and culture of the conflict; (c) maintain pre-existing, established relationships that enable them to network and engage with others in the peace process; (d) may be more likely to have the motivation to act, and act quickly, to resolve issues that directly impact them; and (e) have the staying power to sustain peace long after external actors have left’ (Locally Driven Peacebuilding 2015: 2).
This unique collaboration between academics, practitioners, local organisations and researchers and the British Council is informed by theoretical research that was undertaken by consortium members prior to the program. In this first of three position papers we show how this theoretical research has fed into the DMAPS project, its approach to polarisation, communication and the arts as well as into the specific pilot interventions developed by the six clusters in the MENA region. The second paper outlines the participatory action research process and select findings from the social media mapping and analysis, and discusses opportunities, challenges, and lessons from this practitioner-led social media analysis process. The third position paper forthcoming focuses on the British Council’s rationale for creating the framework for and funding the DMAPS collaboration. All three position papers recognise the fundamental importance of communication within societies and between societies.
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