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This paper presents the first outcomes of a large-scale project to comprehensively map the follower/followee relationships between public accounts in the Australian Twittersphere. Using custom network crawling technology, we have conducted a snowball crawl of Twitter accounts operated by Australian users to identify more than one million users and map their interconnections. In itself the map provides an overview of the major clusters of densely interlinked users, centred largely around shared topics of interest (from politics through arts to sport) and/or sociodemographic factors (geographic location, age groups); additionally, in combination with our investigation of participation patterns in specific thematic hashtag discussions on Twitter (from #spill for the 2010 Rudd/Gillard leadership challenge to #qldfloods for the January 2011 floods in southeast Queensland), the map enables us to examine which areas of the underlying follower/followee network are activated in the discussion of specific current topics. Our work, conducted as part of a three-year ARC Discovery project investigating public communication through social media in Australia, demonstrates the possibilities inherent in the current 'computational turn' (Berry 2010) in Digital Humanities, as well as adding to the development and critical examination of methodologies for dealing with 'big data' (boyd and Crawford 2011). Our map of the Twittersphere is the first of its kind for the Australian part of the global Twitter network and provides the first independent and scholarly estimation of the size of the total Australian Twitter population. Our tools and methods for doing Twitter research, released under Creative Commons licences through our project website, provide the basis for replicable and verifiable Digital Humanities research on the processes of public communication which take place through this important social network. ; Australian Academy of the Humanities; the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

Der Beitrag führt die Felder der Transformations- und Konfliktforschung anhand der Geschichte der deutsch-polnischen Doppelstadt Frankfurt (Oder)/Słubice zusammen. Der Blick auf eine Stadt als Arena, in der sich die Dynamiken und Konflikte rund um die vielschichtigen Transformationsprozesse der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart entfalten, soll Erfahrungswerte freilegen und Erkenntnisse in die gesellschaftlichen Wandelprozesse der Zukunft einspeisen. Die drei im Lichte der Fallstudie untersuchten Ebenen des Wandels sind der Prozess der deutschen Einheit, die Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union sowie die multisektoralen Wenden der Gegenwart. Integraler Teil des transdisziplinären Blickes auf Transformation ist die - in Form eines Interviews eingebettete - Perspektive des Oberbürgermeisters von Frankfurt (Oder) auf die mit Umbrüchen einhergehenden politischen Herausforderungen und Chancen.

This article focuses on the dilemmas and trade-offs that third parties face when mediating violent political conflicts. Should they ignore human rights violations because pushing the issue could jeopardize relationships with political actors who grant access for humanitarian aid? Will bringing moderates and hardliners together help the peace process or radicalize moderate actors? What should dialogue facilitators do when the act of identifying non-mainstream groups to be included into dialogue increases division and polarization? The activity of peacemaking is inherently characterized by such process and strategy dilemmas where two equally compulsory imperatives seem not to be attainable at the same time. The article proposes a framework to break out of either-or thinking in these situations. We argue that: 1) making oneself aware of how a decision is perceived, and 2) systematically exploring a set of different strategies for creating new unexpected options helps to ease these decisions and avoid rotten compromises. The model reworks and combines existing problem-solving strategies to create a new explorative option generation approach to peacemaking dilemmas and trade-offs. Some of these strategies, such as sequencing and incrementalization, are already well-established in peacemaking. Others, such as compartmentalization and utilization, are rather unconsciously used. All identified strategies, however, are not yet systematically employed to manage third parties' own dilemmas and trade-offs. Under the suggested framework, these strategies can act in complement to synthesize creativity and strategic thinking with surprising ease. Using examples from the authors' peacemaking activities and observations in Myanmar, Thailand, and Ukraine, the article demonstrates the real-world benefits of the framework in terms of decision assessment and optional thinking.

This article focuses on the dilemmas and trade-offs that third parties face when mediating violent political conflicts. Should they ignore human rights violations because pushing the issue could jeopardize relationships with political actors who grant access for humanitarian aid? Will bringing moderates and hardliners together help the peace process or radicalize moderate actors? What should dialogue facilitators do when the act of identifying non-mainstream groups to be included into dialogue increases division and polarization? The activity of peacemaking is inherently characterized by such process and strategy dilemmas where two equally compulsory imperatives seem not to be attainable at the same time. The article proposes a framework to break out of either-or thinking in these situations. We argue that: 1) making oneself aware of how a decision is perceived, and 2) systematically exploring a set of different strategies for creating new unexpected options helps to ease these decisions and avoid rotten compromises. The model reworks and combines existing problem-solving strategies to create a new explorative option generation approach to peacemaking dilemmas and trade-offs. Some of these strategies, such as sequencing and incrementalization, are already well-established in peacemaking. Others, such as compartmentalization and utilization, are rather unconsciously used. All identified strategies, however, are not yet systematically employed to manage third parties' own dilemmas and trade-offs. Under the suggested framework, these strategies can act in complement to synthesize creativity and strategic thinking with surprising ease. Using examples from the authors' peacemaking activities and observations in Myanmar, Thailand, and Ukraine, the article demonstrates the real-world benefits of the framework in terms of decision assessment and optional thinking.

This article focuses on the dilemmas and trade-offs that third parties face when mediating violent political conflicts. Should they ignore human rights violations because pushing the issue could jeopardize relationships with political actors who grant access for humanitarian aid? Will bringing moderates and hardliners together help the peace process or radicalize moderate actors? What should dialogue facilitators do when the act of identifying non-mainstream groups to be included into dialogue increases division and polarization? The activity of peacemaking is inherently characterized by such process and strategy dilemmas where two equally compulsory imperatives seem not to be attainable at the same time. The article proposes a framework to break out of either-or thinking in these situations. We argue that: 1) making oneself aware of how a decision is perceived, and 2) systematically exploring a set of different strategies for creating new unexpected options helps to ease these decisions and avoid rotten compromises. The model reworks and combines existing problemsolving strategies to create a new explorative option generation approach to peacemaking dilemmas and trade-offs. Some of these strategies, such as sequencing and incrementalization, are already well-established in peacemaking. Others, such as compartmentalization and utilization, are rather unconsciously used. All identified strategies, however, are not yet systematically employed to manage third parties' own dilemmas and trade-offs. Under the suggested framework, these strategies can act in complement to synthesize creativity and strategic thinking with surprising ease. Using examples from the authors' peacemaking activities and observations in Myanmar, Thailand, and Ukraine, the article demonstrates the real-world benefits of the framework in terms of decision assessment and optional thinking.

This is a short monograph that summarizes a series of meetings of the Mediation Support Network (MSN), a network of primarily non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that support mediation in peace negotiations. Specifically, MSN members discussed and reflected on the "UN Guidance for Effective Mediation" and specifically focused on how to translate the UN Guidance into practice. Rather than being a comprehensive commentary, this document therefore focuses on certain issues and cases that seem pertinent from the MSN perspective. The discussions focused on numerous case studies that illustrate the challenges of mediation, and how they were dealt with. The aim of these case studies – some of them specifically focusing on the NGO role in mediation – is to help translate the UN Guidance into effective practice. A few key themes about mediation were featured: preparedness; consent; impartiality; inclusivity; national ownership; international law and a normative framework; coherence, coordination, and complementarity; and quality peace agreements. Conclusions included the need for mediation to be professionalized and that careful analysis is needed before any mediation action. Such analysis and strategizing requires the long-term development of institutional and human capacity. There is a strong and legitimate call for making mediation processes more inclusive, with regard to the inclusion of a range of actors (e.g., marginalized groups, women, religious actors, etc.) and with regard to the content of a peace agreement. However, mediators often face pressure to reach a minimum agreement quickly, especially when hostilities are ongoing. This can make it particularly difficult to reach more inclusive, and thus more complex, agreements. Inclusivity also entails efforts, outside the formal mediation process, to support dialogue between actors, so that they can better influence formal processes and sustain peace agreements once they are signed. Coordination of mediators benefits from the inclusion of civil society: Local ...