In a world where social media deeply shapes public opinion, data-driven insights can play a pivotal role in preventing conflict and fostering peace. That’s exactly what Build Up, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting peacebuilders—sought to accomplish through Phoenix. Developed in partnership with datavaluepeople, Phoenix is an open-source (code repository here), end-to-end AI powered platform designed to help peacebuilders and mediators, allowing them to analyze social media discourses, informing effective strategies for conflict prevention and resolution. Since January 2025 Phoenix has been open to the public and you can apply for a Phoenix account here.
In this article, we’ll explore the challenges Build Up faced, the solutions datavaluepeople provided, and how Phoenix is transforming social media analysis for peacebuilding around the globe.
The challenge: Leveraging social media for peacebuilding
Peacebuilders and mediators increasingly look to social media to gauge public sentiment and identify emerging tensions. Yet collecting and analyzing massive volumes of data from diverse platforms is practically impossible. Several roadblocks stood in the way:
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Data overload: Peacebuilders needed a reliable way to gather, organize, and filter vast streams of social media data.
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Limited technical expertise: Many peacebuilders aren’t data scientists, so any AI-driven platform had to make analyzing social media discourses intuitive and accessible.
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Multi-language support, including under-resourced-languages: Commercial social media analysis tools don’t often support under-resourced languages or classification across multiple languages.
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Open-source requirement: Build Up wanted to show the non-commercial nature of the project. Plus to make the technology transparent and to allowing others with technical expertise to collaborate and use it.
The solution: Phoenix — An AI powered Social Media analysis platform for peacebuilders
Working closely with Build Up, datavaluepeople created Phoenix: a powerful, user-friendly system that addresses each challenge in a single, comprehensive platform.
Modern web console
Built with React and Next.js, Phoenix’s web console offers a straightforward interface accessible from any device with an internet connection. It allows peacebuilders to collect social media data, explore data points, easily configure analyses, and review insights without advanced technical skills.
Authentication and dashboarding
Phoenix’s authentication system ensures secure access, while its Superset-based dashboards make data visualization highly flexible. Users can build interactive charts and graphs that help surface trends or spikes in conflict-related discussions—providing clarity on community sentiment and emerging risks.
Data scraping integration
By integrating with data-scraping platforms like Apify, Phoenix streamlines large-scale data collection from social media and other online sources. It lets users define specific parameters for what data to capture, helping them focus on the most relevant content while honouring platform and data privacy policies.
Classification systems for all (Unicode-supported) languages
A standout feature is Phoenix’s multi-language classification engine, which manages high- and low-resource languages alike. This ensures peacebuilders can quickly identify posts of interest—crucial when sifting through huge volumes of potentially conflict-related material.
How it works
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Gather: Peacebuilders specify keywords, locations, or other criteria for collecting data from social media and other sources such as ACLED.
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Classify: Phoenix’s machine learning models process the incoming data, identifying critical topics, trends, and sentiments.
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Explore: Users start with a standard dashboard and then tailor visualizations to track data trends they are interested.
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Collaborate & share: Being open-source, Phoenix allows contributors worldwide to enhance its capabilities—ensuring continued evolution and impact. As well as increasing the transparency and accessibility of social media analysis for a positive impact.
The results: A global impact on peacebuilding
Since launch, Phoenix has proven invaluable for peacebuilders worldwide, yielding several noteworthy outcomes:
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Global reach: Versions v1 and v2 of Phoenix have supported hundreds of peacebuilders, allowing them to analyze social media discourses and develop targeted interventions. Including being one of the 31 projects (of 770 applicants) accepted into the Paris Peace Forum.
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Massive data handling at low cost: Phoenix has processed terabytes of social media data, managing the scale more commonly associated with large tech firms than small nonprofits. With the platform, that Build Up and datavaluepeople maintain, being free for small organisations that make a positive impact.
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Real insights: By revealing the narratives driving online discussion, Phoenix enables quicker, more evidence-based decision-making. Case studies can be found in the Phoenix manual.
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Public good platform launch: Scheduled for 2025, Phoenix will be offered as a public-good platform, bringing large-scale data analytics to even more communities and organizations. Read more here.
Conclusion
It has been a rewarding journey collaborating with Build Up on Phoenix. Together we have found a way to balance a “sticks and chewing gum” approach to rapidly deliver working solutions on a limited budget while still ensuring that peacebuilders have robust, maintainable, and transparent technology at their fingertips. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in creating something that communities worldwide can not only use but also improve upon—knowing it might help prevent conflict and foster dialogue. We’re excited for Phoenix to continue evolving, flourishing, and positively impacting peacebuilding efforts for years to come.
Ready to explore what AI can do for your organization? Contact us today and let’s take your data-driven vision to the next level.