Digital peacebuilding in post-conflict Colombia – A conceptual framework

Abstract

This article proposes a preliminary conceptual framework that integrates digitality, or the condition of being digital, with existing frameworks of peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. It builds on existing literature about how the Internet impacts social capital, polarization, participation, and conflict as well as traditional conflict research that examines stability post-conflict. The framework is designed to evaluate the impact of digitality, which I treat as the independent variable, on six societal factors relevant to post-conflict civil society, which I treat as dependent variables. I hypothesize that these effects are meaningful for outcomes of social capital, reintegration, and justice in post-conflict civil society and find that digitality meaningfully changes post-conflict civil society. Finally, I recommend that policymakers tailor a peacebuilding approach to a digital world.