Digital Peacemaking: From Mediator-Machine Impasse to Mediator-Machine Hermeneutics

Peacemaking efforts are increasingly characterized by the use of new technologies. While efforts to settle armed conflicts have long been viewed as an “analogue” affair, mediators now increasingly go “digital”. In particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine-learning tools are considered to support with the analysis of large amounts of publicly available data, including social media data, for purposes of conflict analysis and to inform the mediation approach. This move seems justified through the increasing digitalization of peace processes, the large amounts of data this generates, and the need to automate data analysis processes. Yet, the discussion of AI among peacemakers is commonly driven by either (wo)man hyperbole or a machine hyperbole: the capacity of both to obtain authority over peace processes information ecosystems is limited. On the one hand, human mediators have been unseated from their eminent position as information brokers by platforms and algorithms that slice peace process publics into impervious digital spaces. They therefore no longer enjoy superior epistemic authority through which they can claim “that this is true and that is not”. On the other hand, peace processes are commonly characterized by ontological insecurity, which means that there is little to gain from attempts to produce “objective facts”, for instance through machine-learning powered applications that establish correlations between conflict actors, their behavior and process events. That said, both humans and machines require that the information they generate is framed in ways that support the continued negotiation between conflict parties and stakeholders, including on the ontological and epistemological levels of the conflict. The paper argues that this impasse may be breached by a hybrid approach, through which mediators and machines jointly generate knowledge relevant to the peacemaking effort. It will first introduce a conception of hybrid peacemaking intelligence, through which human and machine capabilities are combined. The paper will then discuss the requirements of a hybrid peacemaking hermeneutics that enables conflict parties to navigate the ontological and epistemological insecurities that characterize digitalized peacemaking efforts. Finally, it will consider the dynamics of the participatory politics of hybrid peacemaking, through which power is distributed within human-machine networks.