At the same time, it has long been recognized that when it comes to dealing with conflicts and violence, it is essential to work with a multi-stakeholder approach. To put it simply, no one can do it alone. Traditional actors, with each their own influence on exacerbating or resolving armed conflicts, like armed factions, governments, civil society, media, inter-governmental organisations etc. all need to be involved and cooperate to be able to come to a durable and sustainable solution.

However, the changes that multimedia developments have brought for each of these stakeholders, require a re-estimation of the roles and responsibilities of each of these actors, when it comes to conflict prevention and peacebuilding. And, potentially more importantly, they require a re-evaluation of how these different actors can and/or should cooperate.

So, how do these changes influence the roles, responsibilities and possibilities of the different stakeholders involved in conflict prevention and peacebuilding? And how does that in turn change the way in which these different stakeholders could and/should cooperate?
 Does new modern media offer an opportunity for getting information and accounts from people that are on-the-ground? Or does it create an illusion of everybody being an expert, a journalist, and even more participants in a process that is already very complicated?

• Should journalists take these individuals as serious sources? How can their reliability be verified, without running the risk of exposing in case they live under repressive regimes? And how can these people be integrated into conflict prevention or peacebuilding strategies?  
• Is it true that the 24 hours media coverage has caused such high pressure for news now that there is no more room for profound reporting? Or has more coverage given more space for more alternative opinions to be heard? And how come that most civil society organizations working on conflict prevention and peacebuilding feel that they are still not being heard? Should they be heard?
• Have civil society organizations working for conflict prevention managed to adjust themselves to the possibilities of modern multimedia? Or are they still using the same methods as in the 60's?  
• How effective are the campaigns that civil society organizations working on conflict prevention have developed by using tools of modern multimedia? How effective is using YouTube, blogs, text-messages? Are they reaching new audiences? Or are they creating an even larger gap between the people that do or do-not have access to such means?

 

 

Alvito de Souza, Secretary General, SIGNIS

 

Augusto Miclat, Director, Initiatives for International Dialogue

 

Damas Misanga, Director, Radio Kwizera/Tanzania  

 

Florence Mpaayei, Executive Director, Nairobi Peace Initiative 

 

Georgios Terzis, Associate Professor Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit, Brussels 

 

Marte Hellema, Programme Manager Awareness Raising, ECCP 

 

Vladimir Bratic, Assistant professor of media and communications