Web-Based Conflict Research Tutorials

This tutorial is designed to provide users with a set of suggestions and helpful hints for locating information pertaining to social conflicts and conflict resolution on the World Wide Web. Though not a exhaustive list of options for finding the information you need on the Web, these hints will provide you with a starting place and a set of issues to think about, which will aid you in finding the information you need. The first questions you must ask yourself are:

• What information am I looking for? (Background information? Key stakeholders? Recent developments?)
• What type of information? (Books? Articles? Newspaper opinions? Web resources?)
• Why am I looking for this information? (Class project? Academic article? Teaching activity?)

Determining what information and type of information you seek is the first and most essential step of your search, because it defines how and where you will look, and knowing why you are seeking this information will help you determine whether you have found the right material.

• If you do not know much about the conflict, you may not have enough background information to know exactly what you are seeking (or whether you have found it). In this case, a search on the topic area through general search engines like Google or Yahoo! may be the best place to begin. This will allow you to search or browse multiple websites and learn the general background information and main features of the conflict that will aid you in refining your search.
  
• If you do know what you are looking for, you should make a list of each of the different questions you are investigating, and begin your search by going through each item, one by one.
  
• The following table provides a conprehensive list of questions that you can ask yourself to aid you in asking the right questions about your topic: Table 1.

Now that you have tapped into the vast storehouse of information that the Internet provides, you may be a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available, and intimidated by the various perspectives available. As a result, you may not have a clear answer to your questions. Your next task is to discover which information is best suited and of adequate quality for your current needs and objectives.

Firsthand information is likely the most reliable and useful. However, because you cannot travel all over the country or world to seek out the information you need, you will need to locate the best sources available, given time, money, and geographic constraints. Although there are no hard and fast rules about finding the best or most reputable information for your search, there are some general factors to consider before you spend too much time looking in the wrong or inappropriate places.

• The next question you must ask yourself is: What exactly am I looking for? If you do not ask yourself this question, you may spend a considerable amount of time sifting through information that is irrelevant or peripheral to the conflict or your research objectives.
  
• Supersites (also called libraries, databases, information sources, or resource pages) are large, comprehensive websites with a variety of detailed resources on a particular issue, topic, or conflict. Begin searching for supersites pertaining to more specific dimensions of your conflict by typing "topic / conflict and supersite or library." Note: it is possible that supersites for your particular topic may not yet be available via the Internet.
  
• There are also information clearinghouses like CRInfo.org, that allow you to search multiple conflicts across the entire conflict resolution field. Mediate.com is another good resource clearinghouse that allows you a more refined selection of books, articles, and online resources pertaining to Alterntive Dispute Resolution (ADR) processes.

Once you have collected a large stock of information, it is also important to consider the quality of the information. Because it is relatively inexpensive to post information to the Web, it is common to find low-quality, unreliable information which may appear, on the surface, to be perfectly reasonable. To guard against this, it is important to gather and cross-check information from multiple sources. It is also prudent to consider the motives of those who publish information. If there are conflicts of interest, these conflicts should be considered in evaluating the information.

• You may need to focus your research and think more carefully about the types of information available via the Internet, and evaluate the costs and benefits of the information sources at your disposal, based on your main objectives. you may also want to consider the quality and accessability of competing sources. See Table 2.

The key to locating the best information for your particular project is patience. You have to be willing to deal with a fair amount of information overload. There is no instant and painless mechanism for automatically sorting through available information and providing you with a succinct summary of only the truly valuable and reliable information. It is also important to be able to "read between the lines." A great deal of valuable information is buried in materials that are being made available for reasons not directly related to the conflict.

Using the tools described above, you should be able to fairly quickly develop an image of the opportunities that exist and the contributions that you might be able to make. You should also be able to find the information that you need to start integrating your activities into the larger network of people working on the problem. In the days before the Internet, it was common to settle for inadequate information at this initial, exploratory stage. There simply was not much of an alternative, short of spending an enormous amount of time and money doing research. Today, with the Internet, you can get an amazing amount of information very quickly and at very low (or even no) cost. While information alone cannot solve conflicts, it certainly gives interveners a valuable first step.

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