Counting Conflicts. Using Newspaper Reports to Understand Violence. in Indonesia.
Abstract
This paper outlines an attempt to use local newspaper monitoring to measure levels and impacts of conflicts and to assess variation (in incidence, impact, and form) across areas of Indonesia. Section 1 gives a broad overview of the findings from East Java and Nusa Tenggarah Timur (NTT), compares our results with those generated using other methods and draws out some of the implications for our understanding of the level and impacts, the distribution and the nature of conflict in Indonesia. Sections 2 and 3 present the findings from the analysis of the data on conflict in East Java and NTT, focusing on variation between districts within the same province. In Section 4, we explore issues relating to newspapers' reporting of conflict, and raise questions pertaining to the validity of the data and the relative strengths and weaknesses of local newspapers as an instrument for mapping conflict. Section 5 concludes with a summary of lessons learned and gives recommendation on the use of newspaper reports for mapping violent conflict in Indonesia. This paper was presented at 'Conflict Prevention and Peaceful Development: Policies to Reduce Inequality and Exclusion', a CRISE policy conference held on July 9-10, 2007 at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford.
Citation
Social Development Papers No. 25, Conflict Prevention andReconstruction Unit, World Bank, 80 pp.
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