Crowdseeding Conflict Data

Poor quality data about conflict events can hinder humanitarian responses and bias academic research. There is increasing recognition for the role new information technologies can play in producing more reliable data faster. We piloted a novel datagathering system in the Democratic Republic of Congo in which villagers in a set of randomly selected communities report on events in real time via SMS. We first describe the data and assess its reliability. We then examine the usefulness of such “crowdseeded” data in two ways. First, we implement a downstream experiment on aid and conflict and find evidence that aid can lead to fewer conflict events. Second, we examine conflict diffusion in Eastern Congo and find evidence that key dynamics operate at very micro levels. Both applications highlight the benefit of collecting conflict data via cell phones in real time. ∗Corresponding author: [email protected]. We would like to thank Junior Bulabula, Ruth Carlitz, Simon Collard-Wexler, Yair Ghitza, Stefan Lehmeier, Steven Livingston, Neelanjan Sircar and Patrick Meier. We also thank Tracy Longacre, Desire Cimerhe and Alain Kabeya for outstanding in-country work. Voix des Kivus has been presented at a number of occasions: 2009 International Conference for Conflict Mapping, UNOCHA’s Coordination Meeting, 2010 Folke Bernadotte Conference, 2011 World Bank Workshop (Bukavu), Free University Berlin (2011), 2012 MPSA, the University of British Columbia (2012), and 2013 ISA (San Fransisco). We thank the participants at these meetings. The Voix des Kivus pilot project was funded by USAID and benefited from support from the group’s learning network; we thank especially Borany Penh and John Berry. Thanks too to the IRC for their partnership on the larger study of the development interventions in Congo. Peter also thanks Wageningen University where part of this paper was written. Most of all we thank our 54 phone holders who, by sending thousands of SMS-messages, made it possible to learn about events that take place in Eastern Congo.