HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGED DISASTER RESPONSE IN HAITI: EXPANDING FOREIGN VOLUNTEERISM OPPORTUNITIES In my February 26 post titled “How the Rise of Social Media Changed Disaster Response in Haiti,” I identified five ways in which social media aided or altered the disaster relief effort in Haiti. I concluded that it appears social media have fundamentally changed disaster relief, though of course they are no sort of cure-all. Since my February 26 post I have condensed my list of five ways in which social media changed disaster relief in Haiti into four. This post is part two in a four-part series explaining these ideas. Expanding foreign volunteerism opportunities Social media technology drastically increased the global public’s ability to contribute via micro-vounteerism. Through three main activities, individuals were able to contribute volunteer work from anywhere in the world to help provide relief to survivors in Haiti. The Haiti earthquake relief effort marks the single greatest micro-volunteerism effort in human history; social media made this effort possible by providing new avenues of communication and collaboration. First, foreign volunteers contributed by developing computer programs and technology applications to assist the relief effort. Many of these programs helped enable the massive social media relief effort that proceeded. Ushahidi, a program originally built to track election violence in Kenya, created Haiti.Ushahidi.com, a site that tracks people, emergency incidents, and search and rescue operations. The maps created for this initiative rely on open-source mapping software that depends on volunteers to provide geographical information. Prior to the earthquake, the map of Haiti contained only major roads.A day after the quake, Port-au-Prince had been almost completely mapped by groups of volunteers, a task that normally would have required a great deal of time and money. These maps enabled people on the ground to more effectively provide relief when and where it was needed. Second, foreign volunteers contributed to the Haiti relief effort by participating in people locating projects. One example, the Haiti Earthquake Support Center project, created by The Extraordinaries—a micro-work volunteer website—allowed volunteers to log online to match photos of missing persons in Haiti to pictures taken at relief centers. By doing this, friends and families of the missing individuals would be alerted that the missing were safe. Individuals would post photos of missing relatives and friends, and others would post photos taken at relief centers. REPORT THIS AD Volunteers had two primary tasks: to sort and tag these thousands of photos by age, gender, and other attributes in order to develop a missing person database, and to sift through this database in an attempt to match missing persons with people photographed in relief centers. Each time a match was confirmed, the survivor’s friends and family would be alerted: a photo of the surviv ...

1. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGED DISASTER RESPONSE IN
HAITI: EXPANDING FOREIGN
VOLUNTEERISM OPPORTUNITIES
In my February 26 post titled “How the Rise of Social Media
Changed Disaster Response in Haiti,” I identified five ways in
which social media aided or altered the disaster relief effort in
Haiti. I concluded that it appears social media have
fundamentally changed disaster relief, though of course they are
no sort of cure-all. Since my February 26 post I have condensed
my list of five ways in which social media changed disaster
relief in Haiti into four. This post is part two in a four-part
series explaining these ideas.
Expanding foreign volunteerism opportunities
Social media technology drastically increased the global
public’s ability to contribute via micro-vounteerism. Through
three main activities, individuals were able to contribute
volunteer work from anywhere in the world to help provide
relief to survivors in Haiti. The Haiti earthquake relief effort
marks the single greatest micro-volunteerism effort in human
history; social media made this effort possible by providing new
avenues of communication and collaboration.
First, foreign volunteers contributed by developing computer
programs and technology applications to assist the relief effort.
Many of these programs helped enable the massive social media
relief effort that proceeded. Ushahidi, a program originally built
to track election violence in Kenya, created Haiti.Ushahidi.com,
a site that tracks people, emergency incidents, and search and
rescue operations.
The maps created for this initiative rely on open-source
mapping software that depends on volunteers to provide
geographical information. Prior to the earthquake, the map of
Haiti contained only major roads.A day after the quake, Port-au-
Prince had been almost completely mapped by groups of
volunteers, a task that normally would have required a great

2. deal of time and money. These maps enabled people on the
ground to more effectively provide relief when and where it was
needed.
Second, foreign volunteers contributed to the Haiti relief effort
by participating in people locating projects. One example, the
Haiti Earthquake Support Center project, created by The
Extraordinaries—a micro-work volunteer website—allowed
volunteers to log online to match photos of missing persons in
Haiti to pictures taken at relief centers. By doing this, friends
and families of the missing individuals would be alerted that the
missing were safe. Individuals would post photos of missing
relatives and friends, and others would post photos taken at
relief centers.
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Volunteers had two primary tasks: to sort and tag these
thousands of photos by age, gender, and other attributes in order
to develop a missing person database, and to sift through this
database in an attempt to match missing persons with people
photographed in relief centers. Each time a match was
confirmed, the survivor’s friends and family would be alerted: a
photo of the survivor had been taken at a relief center; thus the
survivor had made it out of the destruction and was out of
immediate danger. The organization also created an iPhone
application, which allowed volunteers to work remotely.
Through these implementations, social media enabled
volunteers to contribute to the relief effort from anywhere in the
world.
Third, foreign volunteers assisted the Haiti relief effort by
participating in crisis camps, groups that would do both of the
aforementioned activities, and also scour Twitter and other
social media sites for information from victims. They would
respond to requests from relief teams on the ground in Haiti,
looking up coordinates for buildings, finding directions, and
answering other needs from people on the ground with limited
technological access.

3. These crisis camps set up command centers in major cities
including Washington, Los Angeles, London, and Bogota,
pooling the efforts of groups of volunteers to provide assistance
to survivors and relief teams in Haiti. Google also created a
crisis response center to provide similar support services. Along
with missing person finders and map- and program makers,
these crisis relief centers were a significant contribution to the
Haiti relief effort as an example of micro-volunteerism through
the usage of social media technology.
Come back tomorrow and Saturday for the remaining two parts
in this series.
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