Safe deliberative spaces online between refugee-claimants and the international community

One of the world’s most vulnerable populations are migrants and refugee-status claimants living in camps. There are nearly 80 million displaced persons around the world, 26 million of which live in refugee camps and informal dwellings. These displacements have largely been caused by complex crises, with conflict, discrimination and natural disasters compounding the effects on vulnerable populations. Refugee camps, largely managed by UNHCR in coordination with other UN agencies, are places of extreme precarity for its inhabitants, who might live for years in conditions of overcrowding, poor sanitation, physical insecurity and instability. These conditions have historically made it difficult for refugees to advocate on their own behalf, much less even communicate their needs to the international community. More recently, however, the pervasiveness of mobile phone and Internet connectedness, even in camps, have allowed some of the refugees living in these camps to communicate directly to UNHCR and other agencies through social media. For example, Kaurin (2019) finds that case workers communicate almost exclusively with refugee claimants through Facebook, considering this medium more reliable than phone or even email. Many Facebook groups and Twitter accounts discuss the conditions in camps, allowing other social media users to comment as well. On the other hand, recent conflicts such as the Syrian War have shown how online tools can be used as weapons of war in order to identify and target specific groups. This paper approaches these communications as a form of deliberation, proposing that they allow refugees to engage with the international community in order to shape policy. The paper analyses social media accounts such as the ones managed by the Zaatari refugee camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan, and analyses comments for deliberative quality. In particular, the analysis examines the presence of certain indicators drawn from the quantitative measurement of deliberative quality (Stenbergen et al, 2003; Fournier-Tombs and MacKenzie, 2021 – Forthcoming) such as criticism and encouragement, advocacy, public interest, and justification. Additionally, the analysis searches for the presence of specific indicators of vulnerability, which could be both helpful for camp managers but also risk increasing the exposure of camp dwellers, such as conflict, food insecurity, the presence of unaccompanied children, and sexual orientation. In order to analyse this data, it uses an adaptation of DelibAnalysis (Fournier-Tombs and Serugendo, 2019), a machine learning tool which has been used to analyse the quality of political deliberation on social media, in town halls and in parliaments. The research also draws on a series of semi-structured interviews with former refugees, which have the purpose of discussing the results of the quantitative analysis and highlighting paths for further action. The paper aims to identify the advantages and dangers of social media use by displaced persons, in order to shed light on the importance of safe deliberative spaces for refugees and migrants living in camps in situations of precarity and conflict. The paper also hopes to inform international organisations managing refugee camps, in order to increase their capacity to respond to the needs of the refugee population.