Paige Alexander is chief executive officer of The Carter Center.
President Carter frequently reminds us of his high school teacher’s words of wisdom: “We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.” At The Carter Center, we practice this precept by holding fast to our founding commitments to defend human rights and relieve human suffering while continually seeking new and improved ways to accomplish our humanitarian goals.
New technologies in a range of fields offer us opportunities that were not imagined at the time The Carter Center was founded in 1982. In fact, some of the technology we use today didn’t exist just 10 years ago. And yet here we are, not only making good use of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, but also using satellites, GPS, drones, and botnets, which are algorithms that detect online robot networks spreading election disinformation.
The Carter Center developed open-source software for reporting on and analyzing election results. The system is now used in all elections observed by The Carter Center (Photo: The Carter Center)
Our Syria Conflict Mapping Project crunches vast amounts of online data to determine which forces control which parts of Syria and how they are aligned. The Center’s Digital Threats to Democracy Project develops and refines tools and techniques to analyze election-related disinformation on social media. We developed the digital ELMO system to modernize election monitoring. ELMO was then adapted to create a system for digitally collecting and analyzing data points that help us with disease elimination. We and our partners in 13 cities around the world are using social media to spread the word about women’s access to information.
We put all this new technology to work in support of our unchanging commitment to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope—by any means available during these changing times.
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