Below you can find my musings about potential uses of Net-Map in understanding violent conflicts. I am both excited and wary because of the power of visualization and basically only recommend the use of tools such as Net-Map for people who understand very well what they are meddling with. Skye Bender-deMoll pointed me to the work of a group called “New Tactics in Human Rights”, who does have this kind of expertise in the field.
While they don’t put actors on Influence Towers and don’t explicitly indicate the goals of actors, they do use a network mapping approach in their work about torture. Tactical Mapping produces powerful images of the complex formal and informal networks of accomplices that make torture possible and prevent the exposure of torturers. This tool is used to develop concrete tactics, so in a second step participants develop interventions and point them towards those they want to tackle first to break open the torture chamber.
Filed under: exploring new ideas, Other people's work
