By looking at digital humanitarianism I argue that geographers have theorized knowledge politics too narrowly. Knowledges are negotiated, contested, and enacted through processes prior to the visual map artifact, for instance through coding, data structures, and project planning. I argue that when digital humanitarianism produces digital spaces, these new spaces embody knowledge politics and enable or constrain what kinds of knowledges can be expressed and represented there. I have made an analogous argument in my Geoforum article (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2406156) and in a chapter of my dissertation. I blogged about the policy implications of this argument in a brief blog post for the Commons Lab of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (http://wilsoncommonslab.org/2014/04/08/digital-humanitarian-technology-and-knowledge-politics/).

1. rethinking knowledge
politics through digital
humanitarianism
Ryan Burns
Dept. of Geography, University of Washington
http://burnsr77.github.io
burnsr77@gmail.com
@burnsr77

2. Standby Task Force
Digital Humanitarian Network
Humanity Road
CrisisMappers
Humanitarian
OpenStreetMap
Network
digital humanitarian organizations
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

3. Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

4. Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

5. “…visible on the ground…” “…average person…”
“…my experience with communities… local people
know very well where the main hazard zones are
located… every year… ‘My father told me…”
…”would you see any relevance to develop classes for natural
(and man-made?) hazards to be included in HOSM framework?”
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o
“top-down information … place-based knowledge systems
… counter intuitive to initiatives to 'democratize' data?”
“…we should aim at a fork-project…”
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenHazardMap

6. what are the sites of negotiation and
contestation in digital humanitarian
technologies?
displace the visual artifact (map)
from the primary site of knowledge
politics
digital humanitarian spaces constitute a distinct
space worth exploring
knowledge politics occur in social processes prior to
the map: coding, data structures, project planning
needs collection and processing
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

7. significance
the ways digital humanitarian technologies develop
influences how they can be used in the future
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o
we can learn a lot about society by interrogating our technologies
immediacy and impacts of humanitarian crises

8. seven-month research project at the Commons
Lab, Wilson Center in Washington, DC
participant observation
data archiving
38 semi-structured in-depth interviews
coding
methods
hackathons ICS Training
transcription
themes
analysis
notes
memos
(source: http://youtu.be/vAUt7h4kk0A)
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

9. knowledge politics
mechanisms:
two: “taming” needs
three: responsibilization
one: actionability and utility
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

10. one: actionability and utility
Jordan:
[W]here we're a little not sure where
this fits in, in the crowdsourcing sense,
[is in] being able to take information
from the public and use it for
operational decisions - that's different.
How do you feel about things? What
are you concerned about? The issues
we need to address when we talk to the
public, that's one thing. But for them to
provide us, in a crowdsourcing way,
with operational information is the area
I'm still struggling with. … But the
perception of the danger - the
operational issue of where is the fire - I
don't think we're at a point where we
can ask the public to pin on a map
where they think the fire is, because
we're going to get a lot of noise in
there. It's really hard, even for
seasoned firefighters, to look down a
mountain and tell you how far away
that is.
“…operational decisions…”
situated knowledges
“noise”
Incident Command System
expert vs. lay knowledges
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

11. Laurie Van Leuven:
“…we in emergency management need to
filter those out and listen specifically to
actionable pieces of content. So, we’ve got
some work to do in how we can build a system
to receive that information.”
Source: http://youtu.be/vAUt7h4kk0A
Kevin: “…let it sit…”
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

12. two: “taming” needs
paradox: digital humanitarianism derives its “value” from
recruiting a potentially infinite number of knowledges, yet
those knowledges but be abstracted, condensed, and
categorized
actionable, usable,
valuable
infinite knowledges
and perceptions
tension
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

13. two: “taming” needs
Jeremy:
“…taxonomically distort[ing] the data through
categorization. … Categorization is forcing a level
of pre-judgment that prevents the data from
telling its own story. … You never, ever want to
append or amend a primary source that's digitally
collected. Because when you do that, you don't
know what its significance is.”
“some … misclassification was deliberate in an attempt to
move critical reports into what were perceived to be more
closely monitored categories in order to improve the chance
that the reports would trigger a response” (Morrow et al.,
2011, pp. 24–25)
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

14. three: responsibilization
first: individual digital
humanitarian collaborators
second: “victims” of crises
third: digital humanitarian
organizations
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o
source: http://crisismappersfletcher.wordpress.com/

15. three: responsibilization
first: individual digital
humanitarian collaborators
second: “victims” of crises
third: digital humanitarian
organizations
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o
source: http://irevolution.net/2011/10/02/theorizing-ushahidi/

16. three: responsibilization
first: individual digital
humanitarian collaborators
second: “victims” of crises
third: digital humanitarian
organizations
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o

17. summing up
knowledge politics are enacted before the visual artifact
(design, coding, data model, categorization)
http://irevolution.net/2011/10/02/theorizing-ushahidi/
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o
we can understand new soci0-political relations by
interrogating digital humanitarian technologies
three mechanisms of digital humanitarian knowledge politics:
actionability/utility, “taming” needs, and responsibilization

18. Thank you!
http://irevolution.net/2011/10/02/theorizing-ushahidi/
Ryan Bur ns Uni ver si t y of Washi ngt on ht t p: / / bur nsr 77. gi t hub. i o