To what extent does the advancement of digital media impact contemporary attempts of conflict resolution?

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During the past two decades, the continuous development of modern forms of digital media haveaffected the contemporary understanding of politics and society. A cursory examination of recentevents emphasizes the scale of the impact which digital media has had in the political sphere. TheArab Spring demonstrations, foreign interference in the 2016 U.S presidential election, and the NewsInternational phone-hacking scandal are examples which demonstrate how, owing to its wideranginguse and socio-political consequences, digital media can effectively become the story.Given the ubiquity and transformative effect of digital media on our interactions, it could beassumed that its impact within the fields of conflict resolution and peacebuilding has been explored.As the enhancement of dialogue between parties, including international mediators, state actorsand civil society, is cited as a practical step towards engendering resolution (Wilkinson, 2000; Tocci,2011, 2013; Bercovitch et al., 2016), exploration of digital media's role in such dialogue appearsparticularly relevant. However, the possible link between digital media and conflict resolution islargely absent in academic literature. Although political scientists, including Nathalie Tocci and JacobBercovitch, have explicitly advocated active communication as essential for successful mediationstrategies, the methods of such interaction have largely been unexplored. Attention has mostly beendevoted to the overall strengths and limitations of active engagement between mediators anddomestic parties (Orjuela, 2003; Fischer, 2011; Nilsson, 2012; Paffenholz, 2014). There is littleunderstanding of the role of digital media in such engagement.