Digital humanitarianism alters how data is collected and represented in humanitarian responses. It emerges at the intersection of new mapping technologies, practices, and philanthropy-capitalism. Specifically:
1. Social media allows needs to be crowdsourced, but these needs must be "tamed" and filtered for operational use.
2. Needs are represented to construct "needy subjects" through place-based and temporal framings to justify interventions.
3. It enables further private sector involvement through philanthropy-capitalism, which depoliticizes humanitarianism and naturalizes tradeoffs.
Digital humanitarianism is shaping the humanitarian sector and broader political and economic relationships through knowledge politics around data collection and
The document discusses the appropriation and reuse of images on the internet and how this has changed notions of authorship. It explores how mass collaboration through sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and YouTube have blurred the lines between content creation and consumption, making users both players and spectators. The increasing speed and availability of information online has created new structures of production and consumption of media like cinema.
HunchWorks: Combining Human Expertise and Big DataDane Petersen
O'Reilly Strata Conference
New York City
September 23, 2011
Slides from our talk at Strata about U.N. Global Pulse's HunchWorks initiative, a system designed to detect and mitigate emerging global crises before they occur.
Adaptive Path helped Global Pulse work through the messy human challenges of the HunchWorks experience, including establishing trust with the system and fostering a community of experts with complementary skills.
Chris van der Walt (U.N. Global Pulse)
Dane Petersen (Adaptive Path)
Sara Farmer (U.N. Global Pulse)
Political ecologies of immaterial commoning: data storage, digital waste, and...Juhana Venäläinen
Presented at the Commons Convivium, University of East London, Centre for Social Justice and Change, 29th April 2015. See https://sustainabilityandthecommons.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/3078/
ABSTRACT: Networked commons-based peer production, as in Wikipedia or in open source communities, has occasionally been depicted as a revolutionary socio-economic system with fundamental consequences for the future of capitalism. These conceptions are, however, often prone to neglecting the material boundaries of the economy. In a "digitalist" utopia (Pasquinelli 2008), production is portrayed as a pure symbolic exchange, independent of the physical, biological, financial or socio-cultural conditions for its reproduction. With the current growth in the networking infrastructures, it is becoming more obvious that the so-called immaterial economy is tightly connected to the constraints of the finite planet. In my presentation, I will examine the political ecologies of immaterial commoning by focusing on one of its material boundaries: data storage capacity. By following the events and discourses unfolding from the 2011 Thailand floods that caused an unforeseen shock in the data storage markets, I seek to illuminate some more general interlinkages between the practices of immaterial commoning and its material underpinnings.
Using Minecraft for Youth Participation in Urban Design and GovernanceFanny von Heland, PhD
This document discusses using the video game Minecraft to engage youth in urban design and governance. It describes UN-Habitat's methodology which involves creating Minecraft models of public spaces based on community input, then having youth workshops to design upgrades in Minecraft and present their ideas. The document provides case studies of this process being tested in Kibera, Kenya and refined in Les Cayes, Haiti and Mexico City to crowdsource youth ideas which are then sometimes implemented in real life. An evaluation of the process in Nepal found it increased youth interest in urban issues.
Slides I used in the last term of Media Management Basics course I did until 2010 at Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University. Includes "Reading Drucker from a Viewpoint of a Manager of Human Civilizations."
Statement for the Record of Heather Blanchard, Co Founder of CrisisCommons before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and Intergovernmental Affairs, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, United States Senate on May 19, 2011
The document discusses the appropriation and reuse of images on the internet and how this has changed notions of authorship. It explores how mass collaboration through sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and YouTube have blurred the lines between content creation and consumption, making users both players and spectators. The increasing speed and availability of information online has created new structures of production and consumption of media like cinema.
HunchWorks: Combining Human Expertise and Big DataDane Petersen
O'Reilly Strata Conference
New York City
September 23, 2011
Slides from our talk at Strata about U.N. Global Pulse's HunchWorks initiative, a system designed to detect and mitigate emerging global crises before they occur.
Adaptive Path helped Global Pulse work through the messy human challenges of the HunchWorks experience, including establishing trust with the system and fostering a community of experts with complementary skills.
Chris van der Walt (U.N. Global Pulse)
Dane Petersen (Adaptive Path)
Sara Farmer (U.N. Global Pulse)
Political ecologies of immaterial commoning: data storage, digital waste, and...Juhana Venäläinen
Presented at the Commons Convivium, University of East London, Centre for Social Justice and Change, 29th April 2015. See https://sustainabilityandthecommons.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/3078/
ABSTRACT: Networked commons-based peer production, as in Wikipedia or in open source communities, has occasionally been depicted as a revolutionary socio-economic system with fundamental consequences for the future of capitalism. These conceptions are, however, often prone to neglecting the material boundaries of the economy. In a "digitalist" utopia (Pasquinelli 2008), production is portrayed as a pure symbolic exchange, independent of the physical, biological, financial or socio-cultural conditions for its reproduction. With the current growth in the networking infrastructures, it is becoming more obvious that the so-called immaterial economy is tightly connected to the constraints of the finite planet. In my presentation, I will examine the political ecologies of immaterial commoning by focusing on one of its material boundaries: data storage capacity. By following the events and discourses unfolding from the 2011 Thailand floods that caused an unforeseen shock in the data storage markets, I seek to illuminate some more general interlinkages between the practices of immaterial commoning and its material underpinnings.
Using Minecraft for Youth Participation in Urban Design and GovernanceFanny von Heland, PhD
This document discusses using the video game Minecraft to engage youth in urban design and governance. It describes UN-Habitat's methodology which involves creating Minecraft models of public spaces based on community input, then having youth workshops to design upgrades in Minecraft and present their ideas. The document provides case studies of this process being tested in Kibera, Kenya and refined in Les Cayes, Haiti and Mexico City to crowdsource youth ideas which are then sometimes implemented in real life. An evaluation of the process in Nepal found it increased youth interest in urban issues.
Slides I used in the last term of Media Management Basics course I did until 2010 at Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University. Includes "Reading Drucker from a Viewpoint of a Manager of Human Civilizations."
Statement for the Record of Heather Blanchard, Co Founder of CrisisCommons before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and Intergovernmental Affairs, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, United States Senate on May 19, 2011
Invited talk presented by Hemant Purohit (http://knoesis.org/researchers/hemant) at the NCSU workshop on IT for sustainable tourism development. The talk presents application of technology developed for crisis coordination into more general marketplace coordination via social media for helping suppliers (micro-entrepreneurs) and demanders (tourists).
Civic Technology and Mind Sets in Big DataAndrew Nash
This document summarizes Andrew Nash's presentation on civic technology and mindsets in big data. It discusses how civic technology uses data to enable public engagement and participation for good governance. It outlines how data collection and reporting through social media and sensors has increased due to big data. It also describes how this data can be analyzed using open data and tools, and how collaboration and action are taking place through games, visualizations, and decision making platforms. New forms of transportation provision are emerging through information sharing, civic groups, and crowd-sourced or app-based services.
Egypt - history's first "Facebook revolution"?Giuseppe Lugano
Are we witnessing Revolution 2.0 spreading throughout the globe, enabled by mobile technologies and social networking?
Viewpoint by Giuseppe Lugano published on Helsinki Times 9(
Scraping the Social Graph with Ushahidi and SwiftRiverUshahidi
This document discusses Ushahidi, an open-source platform for crowdsourcing and visualizing data on maps. It was created in 2008 to allow Kenyans to report incidents via SMS during an election crisis. Ushahidi has since been used to monitor many global crises. The challenge is effectively managing the large amounts of real-time data. The SwiftRiver initiative aims to help discover credible information from public reports. It uses algorithms and a global trust database to augment but not define human decision making.
1) The document discusses the philosophical bases for universal design and the acceptability of implementing universal access principles in both the digital and physical world.
2) It argues that while access is seen as a core value and right in the digital world, there is more reluctance to implement access universally in the physical world.
3) The document advocates applying the emerging values of the digital age like facilitation, transparency, collaboration, and end-user design to promoting universal access in the material world to make physical environments accessible to all.
1. Every decision made about information is a filter that shapes reality. When classifying or structuring information, professionals are asserting power over what information is organized and how.
2. No information filter is neutral - they all reflect biases and choices about what to include or exclude. Indigenous communities have suffered from biased filters in colonial archives, so tools like Mukurtu are being developed through community partnerships.
3. Professionals have a responsibility over the power of information filters and must ensure biases are not amplified to disempower groups. While machines can help, humans cannot outsource accountability for information outcomes and consequences.
Physical and virtual mobilities are interdependent and co-constitutive, not separate realms. Early perspectives viewed information and communication technologies (ICTs) as enabling dematerialization and substitution of physical travel and infrastructure. However, empirical evidence shows ICT and transport growth are parallel. ICTs are embedded in material networks requiring industry and infrastructure. They orchestrate complex combinations of electronic and physical mobilities across scales. Understanding mobilities requires seeing their inseparability rather than a binary view of virtual versus real worlds.
Michel Puech - From fishbowl to global: ordinary agency in the Anthropocene"mpuech
This document discusses the "fishbowl fallacy" as it relates to addressing anthropocenic issues. It argues that viewing the world through distorted lenses like mass media, filters, and algorithms is problematic, likening it to looking at the world through a fishbowl. It advocates moving from this "fishbowl idiocy" to a more direct engagement with issues by focusing on ordinary lived experience and proximal awareness between the global and local.
2015.10.25 NATC International Symposium at the Tokyo Univ. of Art Campus (Yokohama, Basha Michi).
With Jasia Reichardt, curator of the 1968 ICA exhibition "Cybernetic Serendipity".
Today we find ourselves confronted by an overwhelming frequency of radical transformation and information overload. Extracting meaning from this paradigm and accordingly, addressing opportunities and challenges arising through ubiquitous connection and socialisation, has become the conversation of our time. The Third Place Manifesto addresses this change with a view to 'rediscovering' context within persistently disruptive and emergent social ecosystems.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The document discusses digital ethnography. It covers several topics:
1. Digital ethnography takes a non-digital centric approach and considers both the digital and non-digital aspects of people's lives.
2. Principles of digital ethnography include multiplicity, non-digital centricness, openness, reflexivity, and attention to unconventional forms of communication.
3. Examples of digital ethnography research cover a range of topics from virtual worlds and social media to political economy, ubiquitous digital technologies, and posthuman perspectives. A variety of methods are used including participant observation, interviews, and analysis of digital traces.
The document discusses civic intelligence and engagement. It begins by providing background on The Evergreen State College, noting its focus on teaching, interdisciplinary learning, and student-determined learning. It then discusses several of the college's programs and efforts related to civic engagement, including working to create equitable public spheres and developing online tools to facilitate distributed meetings. The document goes on to discuss civic intelligence, defining it as how smart society is at addressing its problems collectively. It notes some shortcomings of current civic intelligence and provides examples of projects that demonstrate civic intelligence. Finally, it discusses different perspectives on civic intelligence and the need to recognize and improve it.
This document discusses the human dimension of knowledge management. It notes that people are central to knowledge management as knowledge workers. It discusses knowledge workers from four perspectives: the nature of their work, as human capital, their human nature, and how they interact with computers. It also discusses communities as important for knowledge sharing and management, noting the role of virtual communities enabled by internet connectivity.
Ubiquitous Commons workshop at transmediale 2015, Capture AllSalvatore Iaconesi
Here are the slides from the workshop, with a framing of the concept of Ubiquitous Commons, a series of examples and links, and an update about how the development of the toolkits (legal, technological, philosophical, aesthetic) are going, together with some source code and prototypes.
More info can also be gathered here:
human-ecosystems.com/home/ubiquitous-commons-the-slides-from-the-workshop-at-transmediale-festival-in-berlin
Open Humanitarian Initiative - August 2012 updateGisli Olafsson
The Open Humanitarian Initiative aims to improve information sharing and management capacity during disaster response through two key streams: 1) Developing technology solutions like data standards, a sharing platform, and visualization tools. 2) Building capacity through training, digital volunteers, and research innovation. This unique initiative focuses on collaboration, leveraging existing investments, utilizing a broad community including the private sector and governments, and having a flexible funding and governance model. Bringing together such a diverse set of partners is seen as critical to the initiative's success.
This document discusses how new technologies are remediating and reshaping urban spaces in complex ways. It provides four key points: 1) The relationship between real and virtual is one of remediation, not distinct binaries. 2) Cities are "fluid machines" characterized by movement of people, goods, data and services. 3) Ubiquitous technologies tend to become invisible infrastructure over time. 4) This automatic production of space through technology establishes a new urban-technological politics with multiple trajectories, including consumerization, securitization, and activism/democratization.
Synthesising NGOs' use of Social Media in the Context of DevelopmentAnand Sheombar
The document discusses a study on how Dutch NGOs perceive the opportunities and challenges of using social media for development projects. It outlines the research problem, defines key terms like social media and NGOs, and describes the grounded theory research method used. A framework is presented that cross-references the characteristics of NGOs (e.g. institutionalized, non-profit) with those of social media (e.g. participation, conversation). Initial findings are discussed relating to how NGOs use social media for openness, participation, conversation, connectedness and community building in the context of development.
Invited talk presented by Hemant Purohit (http://knoesis.org/researchers/hemant) at the NCSU workshop on IT for sustainable tourism development. The talk presents application of technology developed for crisis coordination into more general marketplace coordination via social media for helping suppliers (micro-entrepreneurs) and demanders (tourists).
Civic Technology and Mind Sets in Big DataAndrew Nash
This document summarizes Andrew Nash's presentation on civic technology and mindsets in big data. It discusses how civic technology uses data to enable public engagement and participation for good governance. It outlines how data collection and reporting through social media and sensors has increased due to big data. It also describes how this data can be analyzed using open data and tools, and how collaboration and action are taking place through games, visualizations, and decision making platforms. New forms of transportation provision are emerging through information sharing, civic groups, and crowd-sourced or app-based services.
Egypt - history's first "Facebook revolution"?Giuseppe Lugano
Are we witnessing Revolution 2.0 spreading throughout the globe, enabled by mobile technologies and social networking?
Viewpoint by Giuseppe Lugano published on Helsinki Times 9(
Scraping the Social Graph with Ushahidi and SwiftRiverUshahidi
This document discusses Ushahidi, an open-source platform for crowdsourcing and visualizing data on maps. It was created in 2008 to allow Kenyans to report incidents via SMS during an election crisis. Ushahidi has since been used to monitor many global crises. The challenge is effectively managing the large amounts of real-time data. The SwiftRiver initiative aims to help discover credible information from public reports. It uses algorithms and a global trust database to augment but not define human decision making.
1) The document discusses the philosophical bases for universal design and the acceptability of implementing universal access principles in both the digital and physical world.
2) It argues that while access is seen as a core value and right in the digital world, there is more reluctance to implement access universally in the physical world.
3) The document advocates applying the emerging values of the digital age like facilitation, transparency, collaboration, and end-user design to promoting universal access in the material world to make physical environments accessible to all.
1. Every decision made about information is a filter that shapes reality. When classifying or structuring information, professionals are asserting power over what information is organized and how.
2. No information filter is neutral - they all reflect biases and choices about what to include or exclude. Indigenous communities have suffered from biased filters in colonial archives, so tools like Mukurtu are being developed through community partnerships.
3. Professionals have a responsibility over the power of information filters and must ensure biases are not amplified to disempower groups. While machines can help, humans cannot outsource accountability for information outcomes and consequences.
Physical and virtual mobilities are interdependent and co-constitutive, not separate realms. Early perspectives viewed information and communication technologies (ICTs) as enabling dematerialization and substitution of physical travel and infrastructure. However, empirical evidence shows ICT and transport growth are parallel. ICTs are embedded in material networks requiring industry and infrastructure. They orchestrate complex combinations of electronic and physical mobilities across scales. Understanding mobilities requires seeing their inseparability rather than a binary view of virtual versus real worlds.
Michel Puech - From fishbowl to global: ordinary agency in the Anthropocene"mpuech
This document discusses the "fishbowl fallacy" as it relates to addressing anthropocenic issues. It argues that viewing the world through distorted lenses like mass media, filters, and algorithms is problematic, likening it to looking at the world through a fishbowl. It advocates moving from this "fishbowl idiocy" to a more direct engagement with issues by focusing on ordinary lived experience and proximal awareness between the global and local.
2015.10.25 NATC International Symposium at the Tokyo Univ. of Art Campus (Yokohama, Basha Michi).
With Jasia Reichardt, curator of the 1968 ICA exhibition "Cybernetic Serendipity".
Today we find ourselves confronted by an overwhelming frequency of radical transformation and information overload. Extracting meaning from this paradigm and accordingly, addressing opportunities and challenges arising through ubiquitous connection and socialisation, has become the conversation of our time. The Third Place Manifesto addresses this change with a view to 'rediscovering' context within persistently disruptive and emergent social ecosystems.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The document discusses digital ethnography. It covers several topics:
1. Digital ethnography takes a non-digital centric approach and considers both the digital and non-digital aspects of people's lives.
2. Principles of digital ethnography include multiplicity, non-digital centricness, openness, reflexivity, and attention to unconventional forms of communication.
3. Examples of digital ethnography research cover a range of topics from virtual worlds and social media to political economy, ubiquitous digital technologies, and posthuman perspectives. A variety of methods are used including participant observation, interviews, and analysis of digital traces.
The document discusses civic intelligence and engagement. It begins by providing background on The Evergreen State College, noting its focus on teaching, interdisciplinary learning, and student-determined learning. It then discusses several of the college's programs and efforts related to civic engagement, including working to create equitable public spheres and developing online tools to facilitate distributed meetings. The document goes on to discuss civic intelligence, defining it as how smart society is at addressing its problems collectively. It notes some shortcomings of current civic intelligence and provides examples of projects that demonstrate civic intelligence. Finally, it discusses different perspectives on civic intelligence and the need to recognize and improve it.
This document discusses the human dimension of knowledge management. It notes that people are central to knowledge management as knowledge workers. It discusses knowledge workers from four perspectives: the nature of their work, as human capital, their human nature, and how they interact with computers. It also discusses communities as important for knowledge sharing and management, noting the role of virtual communities enabled by internet connectivity.
Ubiquitous Commons workshop at transmediale 2015, Capture AllSalvatore Iaconesi
Here are the slides from the workshop, with a framing of the concept of Ubiquitous Commons, a series of examples and links, and an update about how the development of the toolkits (legal, technological, philosophical, aesthetic) are going, together with some source code and prototypes.
More info can also be gathered here:
human-ecosystems.com/home/ubiquitous-commons-the-slides-from-the-workshop-at-transmediale-festival-in-berlin
Open Humanitarian Initiative - August 2012 updateGisli Olafsson
The Open Humanitarian Initiative aims to improve information sharing and management capacity during disaster response through two key streams: 1) Developing technology solutions like data standards, a sharing platform, and visualization tools. 2) Building capacity through training, digital volunteers, and research innovation. This unique initiative focuses on collaboration, leveraging existing investments, utilizing a broad community including the private sector and governments, and having a flexible funding and governance model. Bringing together such a diverse set of partners is seen as critical to the initiative's success.
This document discusses how new technologies are remediating and reshaping urban spaces in complex ways. It provides four key points: 1) The relationship between real and virtual is one of remediation, not distinct binaries. 2) Cities are "fluid machines" characterized by movement of people, goods, data and services. 3) Ubiquitous technologies tend to become invisible infrastructure over time. 4) This automatic production of space through technology establishes a new urban-technological politics with multiple trajectories, including consumerization, securitization, and activism/democratization.
Synthesising NGOs' use of Social Media in the Context of DevelopmentAnand Sheombar
The document discusses a study on how Dutch NGOs perceive the opportunities and challenges of using social media for development projects. It outlines the research problem, defines key terms like social media and NGOs, and describes the grounded theory research method used. A framework is presented that cross-references the characteristics of NGOs (e.g. institutionalized, non-profit) with those of social media (e.g. participation, conversation). Initial findings are discussed relating to how NGOs use social media for openness, participation, conversation, connectedness and community building in the context of development.
GEOWEB S.p.A. è stata costituita per lo sviluppo e la diffusione di servizi basati sull’Information Technology rivolti ai professionisti. La società nasce da un’iniziativa del Consiglio Nazionale Geometri e Geometri Laureati e Sogei S.p.A. per rendere disponibili un insieme di servizi mirati a semplificare l’attività professionale degli iscritti alla categoria, a migliorare il rapporto con la Pubblica Amministrazione e a costituire nuove opportunità di lavoro.
Wikimaps nordic kickoff Helsinki 28 February 2014Susanna Ånäs
The document summarizes a Wikimaps Nordic kickoff event held in Helsinki, Finland. It discusses the participatory commons project and how GLAM institutions could collaborate with Wikimedia to georeference and enrich map collections. Attendees provided feedback on desired Wikimaps functionalities and how their organizations could participate through uploading content, organizing events, or providing expertise. The document outlines potential task groups and working methods for the collaborative project going forward.
"Personal/Political/Feminist Maps: Reflections on Spatial Methods for Action Research"
Talk given at Feminist Social Justice Conference, a Workshop on Participatory and Feminist Research Methods
March 16, 2015
San Diego State University, San Diego, CA
In _The Practice of Everyday Life_, de Certeau writes that "What the map cuts up, the story cuts across." But what if the everyday stories you seek are already cut up by centuries of structural inequality and oppression, such as those of lesbians and queer women? In this talk I investigate what can be gained for the study of women’s lives and spaces by bringing together the isolated but overlapping stories of lesbians and queer women in maps, from the hand-drawn to the most technologically advanced and interactive. Drawing upon qualitative and quantitative work on lesbians' and queer women's spaces and economies in New York City from 1983 to 2008—including multi-generational focus groups and mental maps, archival research and GIS—I work through three different types of mapping methods and platforms within a participatory action research framework. Through a close analysis of mental maps and GIS maps created using QGIS and TileMill/Mapbox, I suggest that while the spatial and verbal can both obfuscate and illuminate understandings of everyday life. It is the queer practice of holding these seeming binaries in tension that reveals the most rich and complicated knowledge.
Mission:
To provide healthcare to under served people and to promote humanitarian values through education.
WONM Values
We are called to serve the neediest of the most disadvantaged people of the earth and seek to relieve their suffering and to assist in making sustainable improvements in their lives.
We seek to engage them, to promote their voice, and to offer our hands and feet in service.
We respect those in need as active participants, not passive recipients, in this relationship.
We regard all individuals as created and loved by God.
We believe that healthcare should not focus on for profit care but geared towards self-care, prevention of disease and sustainable development of rural communities.
We are not owners of the resources made available to us on behalf of the forgotten of this world.
We are partners with those we serve as well as with those who invest into our shared mission.
Our relationships are purposeful, diverse, and encourage mutual participation in achieving WONM's mission.
WONM seeks cooperation and partnerships with other organizations and groups that share our vision.
President:
Hon. Dr. Sheila McKenzie, Doctor of Humanitarian Services, Public Health Diplomat, Dame Commander of the Sovereign Orthodox Order of Knights Hospitallers (OOSJ) and Global ambassador for women’s Rights-National Coalition Party of Canada (NCPC).
Big Data Digital Humanitarianism Lightning TalkRyan Burns
Big Data and Digital Humanitarianism are becoming intertwined in ways that *necessitate* we as geographers ask new questions. This is a 5-minute lightning talk I gave at the 2014 AAG, as part of the series of Big Data lightning talks organized by Andy Shears, Joe Eckert, and Jim Thatcher.
Tools and processes in digital voluntarismperaarvik
Svend-Jonas Schelhorn at the seminar: Digital Humanitarianism and Networked Crisis Support, Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Bergen, Norway, 19th October 2013
Digital Humanitarians is a wide description of individuals and NGOs using digital tools for collaboration, mapping, analyzing or data-mining for humanitarian purposes and in humanitarian contexts. They typically engage for humanitarian crises, natural disasters, democracy projects, human rights monitoring or disaster preparedness. There are digital tools, procedures and ethical questions they all have in common.
This 3-sentence summary provides the high-level information about the document:
The document discusses emerging technologies that will have a global social impact on health and humanitarianism, with the learning objectives being to make students familiar with cutting-edge advances in technology and how they may disrupt health and humanitarianism. It explores several future technologies such as health apps, electronic self-testing instruments, ingestible imaging devices, bionics, artificial intelligence physicians, tattooed sensors, and exponential growth trends that will influence these fields in coming decades.
This document promotes the Tech Girls Movement and encourages girls to see themselves as digital humanitarians and tech superheroes. It provides information about digital humanitarianism and crisis mapping projects. It also announces a competition for school girls to pitch technology solutions to social problems. Overall, the document celebrates girls in STEM and calls on them to unlock their superpowers in technology fields to make positive social change.
Digital Humanitarianism - uLearn Showcase 2013, NZMegan Iemma
This presentation was for #uLearn13 Showcase held in Hamilton, New Zealand. It was the story of using social media (Facebook and Twitter) to help the communities of those affected in the Tasmanian Bushfires, Jan 2013.
Assessing and Finding Sources for Human Rights & HumanitarianismNicoleBranch
This document discusses how to assess and find sources for human rights and humanitarianism topics. It begins by distinguishing between different types of sources like scholarly, popular, trade/practitioner, and reference sources. It then provides descriptions of each source type's author, audience, purpose, and references. The document guides how to identify keywords for a topic, find relevant databases to search, and search and refine results. It uses the example topic of how the Flint, Michigan water crisis reflects environmental racism to demonstrate defining, refining, and focusing a topic as well as identifying keywords.
This document provides background information on Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) and summarizes the book "Hope in Hell" by Dan Bortolotti. It outlines MSF's history of providing independent medical aid around the world since 1971. While MSF aims to treat patients impartially according to medical ethics, some critics argue they cannot remain completely neutral and are sometimes used as political tools. The book examines individual volunteers' experiences and serves as a reminder that humanitarianism is a compassionate response to human suffering.
This document lists 5 organizations that operate in the Nyarugusu refugee camp founded in 2015 to empower the community. The organizations are: Community Empowerment Network which is a union of 5 organizations; Union for Progress and Deliverance of Humanitarians which provides microfinance for women; Dafi Students Organization in Tanzania which offers vocational training; Bureau du Developpement et des Oeuvres Social which focuses on small agricultural gardens to fight hunger; and Non violence Communication Trainings which provides conflict resolution and peace training.
More Than a Profile: The Ethics of Digital Storytelling in Study AbroadCIEE
Students post, tweet, and blog about their experiences overseas, and these narratives contribute to the growing popularity of study abroad. We must reinvent our pedagogy to adapt to this changing world and examine the stories that inspire student travel. How might they collide with the expectation of health equity and sustainable service? How can we promote self-reflection and cultural humility? An interdisciplinary panel – representing film studies, anthropology, and public health – will place the current debate in the context of postcolonial narratives, describe the potential for self-reflection, and offer a sample technique for using digital storytelling in trip preparation and in-class learning.
This document discusses the parallels between humanitarianism and naturopathic medicine. It notes that students of naturopathic medicine, called Boucherians, find ways to serve locally through initiatives like a community herb garden and globally through medical brigades to countries like Nicaragua and Haiti. It also emphasizes that optimal service requires optimal personal wellness and discusses how chronic stress can negatively impact physical and mental health. The document promotes self-care and restoration through practices like meditation, yoga, massage and nutrition to balance the effects of stress and maintain well-being. It frames naturopathic treatment as focusing on individualized and holistic care through lifestyle and prevention strategies.
This is a slide created for a better understanding on the topic of humanitarianism and volunteerism. This include the definition of humanitarianism and volunteerism, what is and what is not humanitarianism and volunteerism, the difference and similarity between both and the example of each.
This document summarizes the development of American Romanticism from the late 18th century to the early 19th century. It discusses the rise of American Romanticism due to factors like the nation's fast development, growth of journalism, and foreign influences. The document also outlines historical background, technological advances, reform movements, characteristics of Romantic literature including transcendentalism, imaginative works, free expression of emotion, and nationalism. It concludes with the end of the Romantic period after the Civil War and emergence of realism and modernism in American literature.
The document discusses several topics related to democracy and the internet, including how electronic technologies can impact private spaces and democratic rights, how online communities like Second Life and social media can promote activism and discussion, and debates around public versus private spheres in digital spaces. It also examines issues of surveillance, control of online spaces, and the potential for the internet to reinvigorate public discourse.
Mapping is characterized as a collaborative creative practice shaped by free software culture. The process of creating mappings involves parallel work between creative/audiovisual teams and computer engineers producing code. This iterative process involves moments of collaboration and problem solving. The members of Telenoika organize flexible work teams around projects while sustaining themselves through paid work for institutions alongside personal projects. For them, creative practices and digital media are constitutive of mapping as a collaborative practice requiring sharing through open software.
Digital intermediation: Towards Transparent Public Automated MediaUniversity of Sydney
The document discusses digital intermediation, which refers to the combination of data (online content producers) and algorithms (automated decision making within media systems) and how they create new forms of online communities and knowledge exchange. It examines digital influencers and micro-platformization, where digital agencies ensure advertisers receive the appropriate influencer. It proposes three potential applications of digital intermediation: applying it to public service media, policy recommendations on regulatory systems, and designing algorithmic transparency interfaces. The overall aim is to understand how this new media ecosystem works and provide recommendations to help media organizations engage audiences on important issues.
Plotting Paths Through Digital MinefieldsDom Pates
These were the slides that accompanied a workshop/talk I gave for City, University of London's Library and Information Science Masters students, as part of their 'After Hours' series. The session looked at some of the ethical choices we face in the information society, and my particular journey towards a more critical lens on that society.
This document discusses combating hate speech on the internet. It covers four main topics:
1) The concept of hate speech and how it is a social construct dependent on context.
2) Social media platforms and their role in disseminating content, including YouTube's recommender algorithms that may radicalize users and Twitter's trending topics.
3) The hybrid media environment where social media is integrated with traditional news production and dissemination, creating both opportunities and challenges.
4) The current populist political moment in Europe and the need for counter-narratives to challenge dominant stories that fuel resentment and claims of victimhood.
The document discusses the evolution of the social web and internet of things. It describes how early giants like Google harnessed collective intelligence by treating every link as a vote. It also discusses concepts like ubiquitous computing, the internet of things, and how technologies are aiming to make the human and natural environment legible to computers. However, others argue this could diminish the distinct competencies of humans and machines. The document advocates for an internet of people that enhances lives through open collaboration. Affect and emotion may serve as connection points between individuals and their environment in a networked future.
1) Social machines are hybrid systems of people and technology that allow for democratization and disintermediation by empowering citizens at scale.
2) They are studied as ecosystems of living, hybrid organisms where the successes and failures of instances inform the design of successors.
3) Stories and narrative play an important role in social machines by facilitating sociality, sustainability, and emergence through collaborative authorship and mixed authority.
Social media enlarging the space for user generatedAlexander Decker
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Social media enlarging the space for user generatedAlexander Decker
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This document provides a case study on Citilab, a living lab located in Cornella de Llobregat, Barcelona. Citilab is housed in a former textile factory from the late 19th century that fell into disuse. In the 2000s, local activists worked to connect the community to the internet and launch innovation projects through CornellaNet. Citilab was founded in 2007 with support from local government, universities, companies and citizens to promote technological and social innovation through open collaboration. It has over 4,500 members who participate in projects and digital literacy programs.
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http://www.sites.google.com/site/sisom2011/
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I base my thoughts on experiences with http://haiti.ushahidi.com.
Source is on github: http://github.com/unthinkingly/ICCM-2010-Presentation
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Digital Humanities 101, ENGL 206, January 27, 2015Elizabeth Skene
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The Digital Humanitarian Moment: New Practices, Knowledge Politics, and Philanthro-capitalism
1. THE DIGITAL HUMANITARIAN
MOMENT:
NEW PRACTICES, KNOWLEDGE POLITICS,
AND PHILANTHRO-CAPITALISM
Ryan Burns, doctoral candidate
Department of Geography
University of Washington
@burnsr77
http://burnsr77.github.io
8. VIGNETTE #2: HOT DATA MODEL
“…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?”
“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
9. How are these technologies influencing aid
allocation and distribution?
What kinds of organizations are using these
technologies, data, and practices? How are they
being used?
Whose knowledges are left out in this
reconfiguration of knowledge encoding?
What kinds of relationships are implied between
those helping and those being helped?
15. critical GIS
institutional relationships
around data
socio-political
implications
knowledge
politics political
geography
governance (citizen
participation, etc)
geographies
of activism
political economy
neoliberalism
philanthropy
& capitalism
critical humanitarian studies
“contribution”
economies
urban
geography
the right to the
(digital) city
code/space
urban
redevelopment
BROADER IMPLICATIONS
16. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
What kinds of digital
spatial data are relief
and redevelopment
actors using, and from
what sources are they
gathering these data? How are needs collected
and represented in digital
humanitarian contexts,
and what are the
implications of this shift?
What does “crisis
mapping” mean and entail
for responders, and how
does this impact their
operations, how they
leverage the technology in
response strategies?
How do geoweb modes of mapping influence the
assessment of where resources are needed, the
allocation of resources, and the decision-making
processes that lead to such resource allocations?
How are problems, places,
and people represented in
the emerging digital spatial
data, and what inclusions or
exclusions are implied in
these representations?
17. EXTENDED CASE METHOD
“…applies reflexive science to ethnography in order to extract the general
from the unique, to move from the ‘micro’ to the ‘macro,’ and to connect
the present to the past in anticipation of the future, all by building on
preexisting theory.” (Burawoy 1998, 5)
Max Gluckman
18. 37 in-depth semi-structured
interviews
100s
archived data artifacts:
reports, maps, websites,
blog posts, (public)
listserve discussions
7
months of participant
observation (including
some preliminary work)
EXTENDED CASE METHOD
1 year research project
20. one: alters how data are collected
THE ARGUMENT
Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new
spatial technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.
social media = needs which occupy both “public” and “private” discursive spaces
needs must be “tamed”
21. one: alters how data are collected
THE ARGUMENT
Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new
spatial technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.
social media = needs which occupy both “public” and “private” discursive spaces
needs must be “tamed”
two: alters how data are represented
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject”
they are interpolated through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response
the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large at in particular interventions
22. one: alters how data are collected
THE ARGUMENT
Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new
spatial technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.
social media = needs which occupy both “public” and “private” discursive spaces
needs must be “tamed”
two: alters how data are represented
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject”
they are interpolated through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response
the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large at in particular interventions
represents the further incursion of the private sector into humanitarianism
this has taken the form of “philanthro-capitalism”
the formal humanitarian sector is turning to digital humanitarianism as its important “innovation”
three: represents philanthro-capitalism
23. one: alters how data are collected
THE ARGUMENT
Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new
spatial technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.
social media = needs which occupy both “public” and “private” discursive spaces
needs must be “tamed”
two: alters how data are represented
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject”
they are interpolated through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response
the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large at in particular interventions
represents the further incursion of the private sector into humanitarianism
this has taken the form of “philanthro-capitalism”
the formal humanitarian sector is turning to digital humanitarianism as its important “innovation”
three: represents philanthro-capitalism
24. PUBLIC OR PRIVATE? SOCIAL MEDIA AND NEEDS DISCOURSES
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.
public/legitimate
formal intervention
private/individual
private = “noise”?
social media occupies
both “public” and
“private” discursive spaces
25. TAMING NEEDS
LaurieVan 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
“[T]hese communities need to get their priorities of what they're
working on from enlightened emergency management
communities. … I think [emergency managers need to] bring the
technology volunteer community into our process. … [T]here
should be more integrated planning of using these technology
volunteer groups.”
-Thomas, personal interview
“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)
26. one: alters how data are collected
THE ARGUMENT
Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new
spatial technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.
social media = needs which occupy both “public” and “private” discursive spaces
needs must be “tamed”
two: alters how data are represented
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject”
they are interpolated through place-based imaginaries
the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large and in particular interventions
three: represents philanthro-capitalism
represents the further incursion of the private sector into humanitarianism
this has taken the form of “philanthro-capitalism”
the formal humanitarian sector is turning to digital humanitarianism as its important “innovation”
27. CONSTRUCTING DIGITAL HUMANITARIANISM’S NEEDY SUBJECTS
1. “Victims” of crises
2. Formal humanitarian sector
“…thanks to this map – using this map – every hour of every day [responders] were able
to save hundreds of lives” (TEDxTalks 2011).
“Ushahidi kept Kenyans current on vital information and provided invaluable assistance
to those providing relief” (Ushahidi 2009).
“Haiti showed everyone that it is going to be crucial to adopt and use these technologies
to make humanitarian work better, faster and more efficient” (Adele Waugaman, quoted
in Lohr 2011).
interpolated through place-
based and temporal imaginaries
“That's part of why the preparedness work is to help build communities
in places where there isn't one. … if there's a really strong local
community then there's not much for the international or OpenStreetMap
community to do, which is great.” (Alex, personal interview)
28. LEGITIMATION BOTH WRIT LARGE AND AD HOC
1. Individual activations
2. As a whole
“On December 12th, 2011, … WHO Mediterranean Center… (WMC) based
in Tunisia contacted the SBTF, OSM and GISCorps to request support on a
project related to the public health system in Libya. The purpose of the
project was to get a final Health Facility Registry GIS layer for Libya. … This
was to be the starting point for providing a crucial service to the local
community since the public health infrastructure was starting to get back
“online” as it’s [sic] capacity was starting to increase again, which would
benefit the entire community and citizens” (standbytaskforce 2012).
• TED talks
• ICCM
• Popular press
• Hackathons
29. one: alters how data are collected
THE ARGUMENT
Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new
spatial technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.
social media = needs which occupy both “public” and “private” discursive spaces
needs must be “tamed”
two: alters how data are represented
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject”
they are interpolated through place-based imaginaries
the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large and in particular interventions
three: represents philanthro-capitalism
represents the further incursion of the private sector into humanitarianism
this has taken the form of “philanthro-capitalism”
the formal humanitarian sector is turning to digital humanitarianism as its important “innovation”
30. INNOVATION AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR
1. Drive for efficiency and fewer resources
2. Enter: private sector
“Robert Kirkpatrick, who’s now at the U.N. Global
Pulse program, used to be at Microsoft. And he
used to argue that -- in these discussions, please let
the private sector take care of this. We will
address this problem for you, we will take the
research, we will commercialize it, and we’ll sell it
back to you for cheap. Everybody will be happy”
(Eric Rasmussen, in WoodrowWilsonCenter 2012).
“There wasn't time and resources to work on [digital humanitarian] kind of things. …
But I'm allowed to bring in interns. … Now, as soon as I bring in interns I can task
them on what I want. … So I tasked them on doing [digital humanitarian] and other
things. … Then I have to manage them. So I'm allowed to dedicate time to manage
interns” (David, personal interview).
32. PHILANTHRO-CAPITALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM
1. Private-sector rationalities and languages
2. Accumulating capital through philanthropy
• Depoliticizes humanitarianism and avoids critique through its appeal to ‘the good’
• Obscures and naturalizes certain tradeoffs/consequences
“Well, part of it is just pure manpower. … So say we're working with OCHA in Geneva…
when Geneva is asleep and everybody else is still working away, by the time that they
wake up they see that a massive amount of work has been done overnight. And it gives
them [a] sort of 24/7 workforce … So I think that's not something that a lot of
organizations would typically have: … a breadth of really strong technical people that can
work across time zones…” (Jasmine, personal interview)
33. SIGNIFICANCE AND CONTRIBUTIONS
Critical GIS : knowledge politics enacted prior to the visual artifact (map)
Political economy : private sector incursions through philanthro-capitalism
Urban geography : cities are redeveloped with exclusionary mechanisms
Political geography : scaled-up form of humanitarianism that invokes
responsibilization of, well, everyone
34. CONCLUSION
Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new spatial
technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.
This has implications for how needs are collected and represented in
humanitarian contexts, representing further advance of the private
sector into humanitarianism.
Digital humanitarianism is shaping humanitarianism, and consequently political
and urban geographies, and broader political-economic relations.
We could listen to those involved in the development and marketing of these new technologies, who are calling the technologies “revolutionary”, “democratizing”, “promoting ‘the good’”, and increasingly “efficient”. But if we accept these discourses at face value, it feels a bit like…
what is not known in this area
governance:
governance:
governance:
governance:
Max Gluckman, anthropologist at Manchester.
Burawoy’s (1998) extended case method is a framework used to generate theoretical propositions from ethnographic evidence, or qualitative case studies more broadly. This approach is based on a theory-driven inductive analysis of evidence, in my case focused on how social relations and structures operate in a given context, and how they respond to observation by researchers.
In the extended case method, the researcher continually tacks between theory and empirical observations during the course of fieldwork in order to detect anomalies and “reconstruct” theory recursively. In other words, the extended case method is a framework encompassing observation, analysis, and theory-building or theory-reconstruction.
My particular case was headquartered, so to speak, at a major policy research institute that has been a crucial actant in the development of the field of digital humanitarianism. While there, I attended important meetings, events, panels, hackathons, and workshops, all oriented around furthering digital humanitarianism and streamlining its integration into the formal humanitarian and emergency management spheres.
I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with leaders in the field of digital humanitarianism, but more importantly, I was able to speak to key actors working in the formal sector. Upper-level management of agencies like UN OCHA and FEMA attended meetings where I was able to connect with them through my connections as a digital humanitarian myself and by my work with the research institution.
And that really is why this particular case was the most appropriate case for the questions in which I was interested. It allowed me to connect with the decision-makers and the people responsible for managing humanitarian and emergency crises.
My particular case was headquartered, so to speak, at a major policy research institute that has been a crucial actant in the development of the field of digital humanitarianism.
I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with leaders in the field of digital humanitarianism, but more importantly, I was able to speak to key actors working in the formal sector.
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject” of digital humanitarian interventions
these are produced partly by interpolating through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response
in the context of increased pressure to perform more “efficiently,” the formal humanitarian sector is increasingly turning to digital humanitarianism to navigate these pressures. Increased private-sector involvement in digital humanitarianism has meant that the formal humanitarian sector is adopting the rationalities, languages, and profit-imperatives of the private sector.
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject” of digital humanitarian interventions
these are produced partly by interpolating through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response
in the context of increased pressure to perform more “efficiently,” the formal humanitarian sector is increasingly turning to digital humanitarianism to navigate these pressures. Increased private-sector involvement in digital humanitarianism has meant that the formal humanitarian sector is adopting the rationalities, languages, and profit-imperatives of the private sector.
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject” of digital humanitarian interventions
these are produced partly by interpolating through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response
in the context of increased pressure to perform more “efficiently,” the formal humanitarian sector is increasingly turning to digital humanitarianism to navigate these pressures. Increased private-sector involvement in digital humanitarianism has meant that the formal humanitarian sector is adopting the rationalities, languages, and profit-imperatives of the private sector.
The public sector is struggling with how to address or incorporate what seem to be “private” needs – emotions, concerns, interpersonal networks, empathy. These are all things humanitarian workers encounter on the very public – the very visible – forum of social media. While digital humanitarianism relies on the multitudinous – indeed, the deluge – of personal expressions of need, humanitarian managers have difficulty bringing these expressions into the spaces necessary to justify the needs as legitimate for formal-sector intervention.
Thus, social media occupies both “public” and “private” discursive spaces, and as such, the formal humanitarian sector is struggling with how to incorporate these expressions of need. This leads, inevitably, to a paradox at the very heart of digital humanitarianism.
The paradox at the heart of digital humanitarianism is that, while digital humanitarianism relies on the deluge of laypeople’s knowledges and needs, digital humanitarians must condense, abstract, and categorize the needs in order to make them usable by the formal humanitarian sector. As needs are collected, they must be filtered and categorized, they must adhere to data models and the formal-sector’s workflows.
This is where we start to make sense of vignette #2 that I opened with –digital humanitarianism introduces a new dimension of knowledge politics to geoweb research. In this case, here, data models, workflows, legitimacy, they all work to tame knowledges and needs, so that they can be usable by the formal sector. But I want to underscore that this is a new form of knowledge politics taking place through digital technologies.
needs are represented in order to construct the “needy subject” of digital humanitarian interventions
these are produced partly by interpolating through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response
in the context of increased pressure to perform more “efficiently,” the formal humanitarian sector is increasingly turning to digital humanitarianism to navigate these pressures. Increased private-sector involvement in digital humanitarianism has meant that the formal humanitarian sector is adopting the rationalities, languages, and profit-imperatives of the private sector.
These constructions take place, practically speaking, in listserves, after-action reports, the popular press, white papers, and in in-operation communication spaces like Skype. Further, these people, by virtue of their location, are already positioned as future-victims, and in need of digital humanitarians’ assistance right now.
Interestingly in the last quote – as an aside – is a process I saw reflected pretty broadly across the digital humanitarian landscape, and that was the connection of the place – Haiti, in this case – with a disaster – an earthquake, particularly when the place is in the global South.
Appeals and solicitations take place in digital spaces like listserves and social media, in an effort to construct the subject in need of an individual’s contribution vis-à-vis digital humanitarian technologies. These appeals construct the particular individuals in need at the given moment, normally couched in urgent and altruistic language.
But how do digital humanitarians justify their activities when there’s no immediate need? If in humanitarian contexts they are able to easily construct the victim as being on the ground and in desperate and immediate need, what about when these discourses are impossible to invoke? Always invoking the inevitable future context in which they will be activated and the technologies they develop will be needed. One interviewee told me that despite the fact that, according to him, there’s quote: “no evidence digital humanitarian technologies are doing anything,” end-quote, digital humanitarians develop technologies in the background during non-crisis contexts.