Berghof Foundation: 50 years of conflict transformation

Peace education
goes online
Learning spaces
and material for
young people
The increasing importance and constant expansion
of the internet since the late 1990s have resulted in
new, as yet almost untested digital approaches to
teaching peace education. The peace educators at
the Berghof Foundation recognised this potential as
early as 2005 and initiated several digital projects.
Having observed and experienced ourselves how
children ask questions about war and peace, violence
and conflict, we launched the online platform friedenfragen.de.
This platform is still in existence, providing
child-friendly answers to children’s questions about
how we live and interact together. All our answers
are individual, reflect current academic thinking, and
are based on values such as peace, human rights
and non-violence. We use stories, maps, cartoons
and videos, and enable children to reflect their
personal views through quizzes. Parents, teachers
and educators in childcare facilities can also find
educational support on how to deal with children’s
questions, fears or media consumption.
While the frieden-fragen.de website has become
established over the years, digitalisation has
progressed rapidly. It now permeates almost
all spheres of society, and influences how we
communicate with each other, consume news, argue,
search for and access information, or find guidance.
In addition to numerous advantages, this has brought
new challenges for peaceful social relations.
2005–present
Nowadays, the use of smartphones gives children
and teenagers almost unlimited access to online
platforms and thus to a flood of information, which
has a significant effect on their identity formation.
The unprecedented speed of communication, the
dwindling role of journalists as gatekeepers and
the interactivity of Web 2.0, where anyone and
everyone can become a transmitter of information,
all contribute to an unprecedented availability
of information, some of which in turn fosters the
spread of disinformation, propaganda and hate
speech. As a consequence of these developments,
we have seen increasing uncertainty among
children and teenagers, especially with regard to
current political events. Media coverage of war,
terrorism, violence and oppression fuel fears,
especially if the events are not contextualised.
For young people it is sometimes difficult
to distinguish between rumours and facts in the
media they consume online. Again and again,
the questions we received via frieden-fragen.de
referred to sites promoting disinformation, asking
whether they were really telling the truth. Children
and young people also come across alleged news
in social networks and messaging services, such
as the announcement of a third world war or the
destruction of the world through nuclear weapons.
This further reinforces fears and insecurities, which
extremists can then use for their own purposes.
They reinforce polarisation, try to influence media
agendas and can even encourage radicalisation.
This experience was also the impetus
for our project Culture of Conflict 3.0 — Learning
spaces and media for young people to deal
with internet violence and hatred, which we
implemented from 2017 until 2019. Now it was
no longer just about conveying peace education
content through digital learning media, but about
specifically dealing with digital media themselves.
The project thus aimed to raise young people’s
awareness of hate and disinformation online,
to strengthen their critical media skills and
to encourage them to stand up for peaceful
social relations on the internet. This also
involves experiencing the internet as a positive
creative space.
The Culture of Conflict 3.0 app creates
learning spaces for young people to share their
experiences of discrimination, hate speech and
digital violence. They are encouraged to become
active themselves, or to use digital tools for their
involvement. In view of the hatred, anti-democratic
tone and violence in the digital landscape, it is
important to work for peaceful social relations
and to continue to build and strengthen a digital
civil society. Against the background of rapidly
spreading conspiracy theories — especially during
the coronavirus pandemic — peace educators
are now once again faced with the challenge of
facilitating innovative, target group-specific
approaches to these topics.
Based on the experience gained with our
project Culture of Conflict 3.0 and the response
to the diverse needs in dealing with digital antidemocratic
trends in academic and non-academic
education, we have developed the pilot project
#vrschwrng (conspiracy) — an interactive toolkit
against conspiracy theories. Through a dialogueoriented,
participatory process, which will last
from 2020 to 2024, we will develop educational
material together with young people with the aim
of strengthening their knowledge and critical
skills in dealing with conspiracy theories. This free
interactive toolkit will be published on the platform
vrschwrng.de in 2021.
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