A new discussion paper examines how Facebook can blur the line between feelings and conversations around sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV), or locally known as sanguma, in communities in Papua New Guinea.
The study, conducted by the Australian think tank Development Policy Centre (Devpolicy), analyses how Facebook influences the debate around SARV in PNG through the people involved, the messages they share, and the broader role the platform plays.
An estimated 200 people are killed due to SARV in PNG every year, with thousands more severely injured, tortured, mutilated and exiled. Sanguma violence in the era of social media has spread the belief and the violence to eyes beyond the communities the violence originates from.
Last month, the Melanesian Institute released the results of the first nationwide survey into the views on SARV, showing nearly three quarters of respondents use social media as their main source of SARV news.
Autralian National University’s Professor Miranda Forsyth, the lead researcher of study, told RNZ Pacific why they chose Facebook as the social media platform to conduct their research.
“Facebook is Papua New Guinea’s dominant digital public sphere, and so it made sense for me to look into that.
“Also, as a researcher who’s been working in this space for a long time, I’ve constantly been sent Facebook posts about SARV, so I knew that was a place where these narratives were circulating.”
The research found that 87 percent of posts opposing SARV came from government, non-governmental organisations (NGO) and advocacy pages, and when using strong human rights language disconnected with the intended audience.
Professor Forsyth said the PNG government adopted a hardline approach communicating distain to SARV for nearly a decade, which is slowly working. However, she added different approaches needed to be used.
“I’m not saying that messaging should be displaced. I’m saying it should be supplemented by conversations at other levels where people are able to talk in vernacular languages about their concerns,” she said.
“And really be able to be brought into understanding how to interrogate claims that people are making that misfortune has occurred because of sorcery, [and] encourage to understand that there might be other explanations for what’s gone wrong.”
She said after analysing over a decade worth of Facebook posts (from 2013-2024), she was hopeful for the future as an anti-SARV ecosystem was starting to advocate for change.
“There are the beginnings of this sort of institutional coordination where survivor services and the criminal justice system are starting to be joined together, as well as a lot of demands for political accountability against leaders.
“And some leaders are really stepping up and calling out against this practice, which is fantastic.”
In February, PNG’s opposition leader James Nomane attended a SARV workshop and later raised its findings with Prime Minister James Marape and government.
Professor Forsyth said companies that own social media networks, like Meta which owns Facebook, also need to be held into account regarding the spreading of these videos.
“These videos are contagious. They’re spreading this violence, and the platforms that are enabling that need to think about how they can stop doing that, 100 percent.”
Professor Forsyth hopes to undertake another study on WhatsApp’s use in spreading SARV videos in the digital space, however she noted that the ethics of accessing that material is going to require some time to work through.
