Social media are forms of information and commu-nication technology disseminated through social interaction. Social media rely on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that are collaborative, decentralized, and community driven. They transform people from content consumers into content producers. Popular networking sites such as MySpace™, Facebook™, Twitter™, and Google™are versions of social media that are most commonly used for connecting with friends, relatives, and employees. The role of social media in disaster management became galvanized during the world response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. During the immediate aftermath, much of what people around the world were learning about the earthquake originated from social media sources. Social media became the new forum for collective intelligence, social convergence, and community activism. During the first 2 days following the earthquake, “texting” mobile phone users donated more than $5 million to the American Red Cross. Both public and private response agencies used Google Maps™. Millions joined MySpace™ and Facebook™ discussion groups to share information, donate money, and offer comfort and support. Social media has also been described as “remarkably well organized, self correcting, accurate, and concentrated,” calling into question the ingrained view of unidirectional, official-to-public information broadcasts. Social media may also offer potential psychological benefit for vulnerable populations gained through participation as stakeholders in the response. Disaster victims report a psychological need to contribute, and by doing so, they are better able to cope with their situation. Affected populations may gain resilience by replacing their helplessness with dignity, control, as well as personal and collective responsibility. However, widespread use of social media also involves several important challenges for disaster management. Although social media is growing rapidly, it remains less widespread and accessible than traditional media. Also, public officials often view P2P communications as “backchannels” with potential to spread misinformation and rumor. In addition, in absence of the normal checks and balances that regulate traditional media, privacy rights violations can occur as people use social media to describe personal events and circumstances. Key words: social media, resilience, vulnerability,
Evaluating Platforms for Community Sensemaking: Using the Case of the Kenyan ...COMRADES project
Vittorio Nespeca
TU Delft
V.Nespeca@tudelft.nl
Kenny Meesters
TU Delft
K.J.M.G.Meesters@tudelft.nl
Tina Comes
TU Delft
T.Comes@tudelft.nl
WiPe Paper – T12 - Designing for Resilience
Proceedings of the 15th ISCRAM Conference – Rochester, NY, USA May 2018
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324162897_Evaluating_Platforms_for_Community_Sensemaking_Using_the_Case_of_the_Kenyan_Elections_Vittorio_Nespeca
The sociology of social media and crises bahnisch 040411Dr Mark Bahnisch
Presentation at the Eidos Institute and QUT/ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation event, Social Media and Crises, 4 April 2011
Social and Environmental Accountability: A Natural Resources Governance Frame...Emmanuel Nuesiri
How can we hold powerful actors (governments, big business, and international NGOs) to account in natural resources management? This is the major question this ground breaking paper addresses. It comprehensively explores the principle of accountability, particularly the accountability of powerful actors for the social and environmental outcomes of their decision making about natural resources.
Powerful actors are institutions with decision making powers and influence over management of forests, fisheries, land, water, and extractive resources. While it focuses on government and the private sector, accountability is a principle common to all governance systems. Accountability is the requirement for powerful actors to accept responsibility and answer for their actions; it could be vertical and characterized by a hierarchical principal-agent relationship, horizontal where accountee is not hierarchically superior to the accountor, or diagonal and inclusive of citizen initiatives to hold powerful actors accountable. When vertical, horizontal and diagonal accountability practices are primarily civil society or citizen driven, they are referred to as social accountability initiatives (SAIs).
There are five dimensions or aspects to accountability namely transparency, liability, controllability, responsibility, and responsiveness. The main questions being asked by the paper are: why is accountability an essential principle for natural resources governance; how has it been recognized internationally and by whom; and what are the key challenges and good practices related to holding powerful actors around the world to account? The paper finds that government has primary obligation for accountable management of natural resources on behalf of its citizens who are right holders over these resources. However, government is often reluctant to unreservedly hold powerful actors to account, especially business, preferring to allow business to opt for voluntary mechanisms of accountability or to self-regulate.
This has given rise to citizen driven SAIs as external means of holding powerful actors to account, while contributing to strengthening formal internal accountability procedures. Thus supporting citizen driven accountability practices in vertical, horizontal and diagonal accountability systems, is a reliable way to ensure that powerful actors in natural resources management are held accountable for the social and environmental outcomes of their decision making and actions.
Social media are forms of information and commu-nication technology disseminated through social interaction. Social media rely on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that are collaborative, decentralized, and community driven. They transform people from content consumers into content producers. Popular networking sites such as MySpace™, Facebook™, Twitter™, and Google™are versions of social media that are most commonly used for connecting with friends, relatives, and employees. The role of social media in disaster management became galvanized during the world response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. During the immediate aftermath, much of what people around the world were learning about the earthquake originated from social media sources. Social media became the new forum for collective intelligence, social convergence, and community activism. During the first 2 days following the earthquake, “texting” mobile phone users donated more than $5 million to the American Red Cross. Both public and private response agencies used Google Maps™. Millions joined MySpace™ and Facebook™ discussion groups to share information, donate money, and offer comfort and support. Social media has also been described as “remarkably well organized, self correcting, accurate, and concentrated,” calling into question the ingrained view of unidirectional, official-to-public information broadcasts. Social media may also offer potential psychological benefit for vulnerable populations gained through participation as stakeholders in the response. Disaster victims report a psychological need to contribute, and by doing so, they are better able to cope with their situation. Affected populations may gain resilience by replacing their helplessness with dignity, control, as well as personal and collective responsibility. However, widespread use of social media also involves several important challenges for disaster management. Although social media is growing rapidly, it remains less widespread and accessible than traditional media. Also, public officials often view P2P communications as “backchannels” with potential to spread misinformation and rumor. In addition, in absence of the normal checks and balances that regulate traditional media, privacy rights violations can occur as people use social media to describe personal events and circumstances. Key words: social media, resilience, vulnerability,
Evaluating Platforms for Community Sensemaking: Using the Case of the Kenyan ...COMRADES project
Vittorio Nespeca
TU Delft
V.Nespeca@tudelft.nl
Kenny Meesters
TU Delft
K.J.M.G.Meesters@tudelft.nl
Tina Comes
TU Delft
T.Comes@tudelft.nl
WiPe Paper – T12 - Designing for Resilience
Proceedings of the 15th ISCRAM Conference – Rochester, NY, USA May 2018
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324162897_Evaluating_Platforms_for_Community_Sensemaking_Using_the_Case_of_the_Kenyan_Elections_Vittorio_Nespeca
The sociology of social media and crises bahnisch 040411Dr Mark Bahnisch
Presentation at the Eidos Institute and QUT/ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation event, Social Media and Crises, 4 April 2011
Social and Environmental Accountability: A Natural Resources Governance Frame...Emmanuel Nuesiri
How can we hold powerful actors (governments, big business, and international NGOs) to account in natural resources management? This is the major question this ground breaking paper addresses. It comprehensively explores the principle of accountability, particularly the accountability of powerful actors for the social and environmental outcomes of their decision making about natural resources.
Powerful actors are institutions with decision making powers and influence over management of forests, fisheries, land, water, and extractive resources. While it focuses on government and the private sector, accountability is a principle common to all governance systems. Accountability is the requirement for powerful actors to accept responsibility and answer for their actions; it could be vertical and characterized by a hierarchical principal-agent relationship, horizontal where accountee is not hierarchically superior to the accountor, or diagonal and inclusive of citizen initiatives to hold powerful actors accountable. When vertical, horizontal and diagonal accountability practices are primarily civil society or citizen driven, they are referred to as social accountability initiatives (SAIs).
There are five dimensions or aspects to accountability namely transparency, liability, controllability, responsibility, and responsiveness. The main questions being asked by the paper are: why is accountability an essential principle for natural resources governance; how has it been recognized internationally and by whom; and what are the key challenges and good practices related to holding powerful actors around the world to account? The paper finds that government has primary obligation for accountable management of natural resources on behalf of its citizens who are right holders over these resources. However, government is often reluctant to unreservedly hold powerful actors to account, especially business, preferring to allow business to opt for voluntary mechanisms of accountability or to self-regulate.
This has given rise to citizen driven SAIs as external means of holding powerful actors to account, while contributing to strengthening formal internal accountability procedures. Thus supporting citizen driven accountability practices in vertical, horizontal and diagonal accountability systems, is a reliable way to ensure that powerful actors in natural resources management are held accountable for the social and environmental outcomes of their decision making and actions.
Putting the community into Total Flood Warning SystemsNeil Dufty
Presentation to the 2018 Floodplain Management Australia National Conference held on the Gold Coast, Australia.
Abstract:
The lead guiding document for the development of the Total Flood Warning System (TFWS) in Australia is ‘Manual 21 – Flood Warning’ (Attorney-General’s Department, 2009). According to Manual 21, the TFWS consists of six components: Prediction; Interpretation; Message Construction; Communication; Response; and, Review.
In a review of these TFWS components in relation to the findings of previous social research and government inquiries into flood warning in Australia, Molino et al. (2011) identified a further six components of a TFWS: Understanding the Flood Risk; Emergency Management Planning; Community Flood Education; Data Collection; Community Participation in the TFWS; and, Integration of the TFWS Components.
The twelve components have since been tested in the assessment of existing warning systems and the development of TFWSs for several communities across Australia.
This paper provides a summary of the findings from these projects with a particular emphasis on the successes and challenges involving the more community-related TFWS components such as Understanding the Flood Risk, Community Flood Education and Community Participation. For example, the TFWS assessments found that:
• Up to 20% of people living in floodplains were unaware of their flood risk
• Community flood education tended to rely on the provision of information
• There was little community participation in flood warning systems.
The findings demonstrated the need to engage with communities about all twelve TFWS components and this paper concludes by explaining how this could be best done using tailored techniques.
Presentation to National Academy of Science workshop on Public Response to Alerts and Warnings Using Social Media. I argued that the citizen science model, in which volunteers contribute to substantive scientific research, is a great model for how to involve the general public in making accurate, actionable social media posts (Twitter, Twitvid, Facebook) that first responders can use to direct their efforts in a disaster.
Eltantawy wiest2011 Relation Sandro Suzart SUZART GOOGLE INC United St...Sandro Suzart
relationship between Sandro Suzart SUZART GOOGLE INC and United States on Demonstrations 2013 and Impeachments of 22 governments Relation, Sandro Suzart, SUZART, GOOGLE INC, United States on Demonstrations countries IMPEACHMENT GOOGLE INC
Under what conditions can information and communications technologies (ICTs) enhance the well-being of poor communities? The paper designs an alternative evaluation framework (AEF) that applies Sen’s capability approach to the study of ICTs in order to place people’s well-being, rather than technology at the center of the study. The AEF develops an impact chain that examines the mechanisms by which access to, and meaningful use of, ICTs can enhance peoples “informational capabilities” and can lead to improvements in people’s human and social capabilities. This approach thus uses peoples’ human capabilities, rather than measures of access or usage, as its principal evaluative space. Based on empirical evidence from rural communities’ uses of ICTs in Bolivia, the study concludes that enhancing people’s informational capabilities is the most critical factor determining the impact of ICTs on their well-being. The findings indicate that improved informational capabilities, like literacy, do enhance the human capabilities of the poor and marginalized to make strategic life choices to achieve the lifestyle they value. Evaluating the impact of ICTs in terms of capabilities thus reveals that there is no direct relationship between improved access to, and use of, ICTs and enhanced well-being; ICTs lead to improvements in people’s lives only when informational capabilities are transformed into expanded human and social capabilities in the economic, political, social, organizational and cultural dimensions of their lives.
Putting the community into Total Flood Warning SystemsNeil Dufty
Presentation to the 2018 Floodplain Management Australia National Conference held on the Gold Coast, Australia.
Abstract:
The lead guiding document for the development of the Total Flood Warning System (TFWS) in Australia is ‘Manual 21 – Flood Warning’ (Attorney-General’s Department, 2009). According to Manual 21, the TFWS consists of six components: Prediction; Interpretation; Message Construction; Communication; Response; and, Review.
In a review of these TFWS components in relation to the findings of previous social research and government inquiries into flood warning in Australia, Molino et al. (2011) identified a further six components of a TFWS: Understanding the Flood Risk; Emergency Management Planning; Community Flood Education; Data Collection; Community Participation in the TFWS; and, Integration of the TFWS Components.
The twelve components have since been tested in the assessment of existing warning systems and the development of TFWSs for several communities across Australia.
This paper provides a summary of the findings from these projects with a particular emphasis on the successes and challenges involving the more community-related TFWS components such as Understanding the Flood Risk, Community Flood Education and Community Participation. For example, the TFWS assessments found that:
• Up to 20% of people living in floodplains were unaware of their flood risk
• Community flood education tended to rely on the provision of information
• There was little community participation in flood warning systems.
The findings demonstrated the need to engage with communities about all twelve TFWS components and this paper concludes by explaining how this could be best done using tailored techniques.
Presentation to National Academy of Science workshop on Public Response to Alerts and Warnings Using Social Media. I argued that the citizen science model, in which volunteers contribute to substantive scientific research, is a great model for how to involve the general public in making accurate, actionable social media posts (Twitter, Twitvid, Facebook) that first responders can use to direct their efforts in a disaster.
Eltantawy wiest2011 Relation Sandro Suzart SUZART GOOGLE INC United St...Sandro Suzart
relationship between Sandro Suzart SUZART GOOGLE INC and United States on Demonstrations 2013 and Impeachments of 22 governments Relation, Sandro Suzart, SUZART, GOOGLE INC, United States on Demonstrations countries IMPEACHMENT GOOGLE INC
Under what conditions can information and communications technologies (ICTs) enhance the well-being of poor communities? The paper designs an alternative evaluation framework (AEF) that applies Sen’s capability approach to the study of ICTs in order to place people’s well-being, rather than technology at the center of the study. The AEF develops an impact chain that examines the mechanisms by which access to, and meaningful use of, ICTs can enhance peoples “informational capabilities” and can lead to improvements in people’s human and social capabilities. This approach thus uses peoples’ human capabilities, rather than measures of access or usage, as its principal evaluative space. Based on empirical evidence from rural communities’ uses of ICTs in Bolivia, the study concludes that enhancing people’s informational capabilities is the most critical factor determining the impact of ICTs on their well-being. The findings indicate that improved informational capabilities, like literacy, do enhance the human capabilities of the poor and marginalized to make strategic life choices to achieve the lifestyle they value. Evaluating the impact of ICTs in terms of capabilities thus reveals that there is no direct relationship between improved access to, and use of, ICTs and enhanced well-being; ICTs lead to improvements in people’s lives only when informational capabilities are transformed into expanded human and social capabilities in the economic, political, social, organizational and cultural dimensions of their lives.
Post 1The whole community” approach as described in the Natanhcrowley
Post 1
The “whole community” approach as described in the National Preparedness Goal refers to the shared responsibility amongst governmental, non-governmental, public and private sector entities, communities and individuals to work together in order to ensure national security and promote resilient communities (FEMA.gov, 2015, p. 1-2). Meaning that individuals must not simply rely on the federal, state or local governments to ensure thier safety and security, but individuals must take thier own safety seriously. Furthermore, the problem does not go away with more funding. Appropriate guidance, laws, education, training, and equipment all play significant roles in national preparedness.
The concept of “whole community” is important when viewing both short- and long-term effects that natural and man-made disasters can have on a population. Hurricane Katrina is a perfect example of the lack of a "whole community approach" resulting in improper risk analysis and poor emergency planning. The substandard response and recovery efforts at the federal, state and community-level contributed to almost every issue negatively impacting this incident. Ultimately, there was no precedent for a natural disaster of that magnitude and community leaders and residents found themselves unprepared. There was no distinct chain of command to delegate resources for recovery and rescue operations. Breakdowns in coordination from the federal level to the local level were apparent. “State and local authorities understood the devastation but, due to destruction of infrastructure and response capabilities, lacked the ability to communicate with each other and coordinate a response, struggled to perform responsibilities such as the rescue of citizens stranded by the rising floodwaters, provision of law enforcement, and evacuation of the remaining population of New Orleans (Townsend, 2006, ch. 5).
The Federal Emergency Management Agency leads the charge of the whole community approach to emergency management with the goal of facilitating a culture that shifts primary responsibility from the federal government managing disaster recovery to a community-centric approach. Creating crosstalk between emergency management stakeholders, decision makers, and communities, facilitates exchange of information and best practices that can be shared between communities that have the same hazards and threats. Additionally, community leaders are able to form a shared understanding of thier respective needs and capabilities, leverage resources, strengthen infrastructure, forge more effective prevention, protection, response and recovery while increasing preparedness and resiliency across the community and the nation (FEMA.gov, 2011, p. 3).
Fostering a culture of shared responsibility places responsibility of emergency management on governments thereby sharing that responsibility amongst non-governmental, public and private sector agencies, and individual persons with the community ...
Concept of community "What is community" Concept about itProfessor5G
The word "community" is derived from Latin and has been used in the English language since the 14th century. The word community is derived from the Latin communitas (meaning the same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means "common, public, shared by all or many" (encyclopedia).
A community is a small or large social unit (a group of living things) who have something in common, such as norms, religion, values, or identity. Communities often share a sense of place that is situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighborhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms.It is a social group sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness. Human beings, like many other species, are essentially social beings, and naturally form communities which often develop into more structured societies.
Prospecting Socially-Aware Concepts and Artefacts for Designing for Community...COMRADES project
Defining flexible and consistent methods and artefacts to design for social impact is a current challenge for HCI. The ephemeral and vulnerable conditions of people living as refugees add even more questions about the suitability of design methods to the complexity of real — and many times tough — life . In this position paper we briefly introduce two concepts embraced by the Socially-aware Design Approach, the Semiotic Onion and the Basic Block of Culture. We then reflect about the potential contributions of applying these concepts and artefacts to inform design for boosting community resilience of people living as refugees.
http://oro.open.ac.uk/49641/1/prospecting-socially-aware.pdf
2. From page 89 The Culture Industry encompasses all those.docxfelicidaddinwoodie
2. From page 89: “The Culture Industry encompasses all those sectors involved in the creation and distribution of mass-culture products: television, film, radio, music, magazines, newspapers, books, and the advertisements that sell them. Geared toward entertaining and pacifying the masses, the culture industry administers “mass deception” by churning out a never-ending supply of mass-produced, standardized commodities that “aborts and silences criticism.” Manufactured movie and television stars act as its leading spokespersons, promoting its superficial, conformist vision of the happy life both in their performances and in their revolving appearances on the cycles of vacuous, ever-the-same talk shows.”
First, discuss the concept of technological (or instrumental) rationality and how it has come to form the basis of the dominant ideology in our society.
Next, choose a recent news article and describe how it either supports or refutes the notion that the culture industry administers mass deception.
Technological Rationality
Technological rationality is a way of thinking practically that enables a person to choose on how to get things done or rather to perform some specialized assignments in a productive way, and resolve issues. This can be done by considering the various factors involved with a situation as factors to be controlled. Expansion in the scientific and also technological rationality has been used to allow the number of people which is ever increasing to overcome the concept of material scarcity. This has led or, at minimum, contributed to it becoming or forming a basis as a dominant ideology in the society as many people have adopted it in their day to day living.
The development of current free attempt refashioned monetary and social relations and passed on with it the affirmation that science and progression would produce a dominating life. The adjust of various accommodating, plant, correspondence, and transportation issues, regardless of different things, would change society and decline persevering.
In any case, with progress comes related issues. Such a change was achieved through the distance of work and the ascent of production line framework. In the emphasis of proficiency, ware creation, disentanglement, work synchronization and association as well clears the changes objectivity and anything individual mechanical levelheadedness. According to Appelrouth (2012), the technological rationality theory of action incorporates scrutinizing the behavior of living organization by conceiving it as oriented to end situation attainment.
As per this domain of mechanical reasonability, the rationale behind the loss of force of the reason starts in roots conveying sane stagnated society. (first name??) Fuchs?? characterizes an individual as the main reason as to why there are various crucial gauges and says that no power from outside should interfere with it. Moreover, the judiciousness of the aforementioned incorporates both remo ...
The social networks and the new social order between the individualized socia...INFOGAIN PUBLICATION
The new Social Networks (SN) evolved very quickly. They conquered of wide population as well in the cities as in the campaigns. They pushed aside values, attitudes, behavior…; In countries with strong social culture, they modified these values and modified the social rules formerly considered as unchanging.In this paper, an empirical study concerned the case of the Moroccans and their behavior with regard to the social networks in numerous domains as those of society, economy, consumption, social and societal relationships, information and communication, politics, etc. The traditional conventional social order is today in deep transformation. This paper contributes to the understanding of behavior change currently facing Moroccan society at all levels.The designers of software or applications bound to the social networks have to integrate these new behavior in their strategies.
2013 ws creativity & attention-creativity and the management of attention wit...Thierry Nabeth
Social media has transformed the web into a hyper-connected social space that is inundated by a flood of social signals that reflects the activities of the members, and contributes to the dynamic of the interaction. In this context, the participants decode, process and emit information for making sense of this social world, and for acting upon it. The objective of this paper is to explore the implication of this setting for an application in the context of supporting creativity online, and in particular taking into consideration effects such as social facilitation (people’s performance is affected positively or negatively when they know they are being watched). More specifically, we examine the effect of the different conflicts (e.g. arousal versus distraction) induced by this massive social transparency on the online creative process, and we look at how attention management systems can help at supporting more effectively creativity with social media.
Information privacy is rife with unanswered questions of distributive justice. Privacy at least contributes to achieving just distributions of social goods. Information flow models of privacy assume answers to questions about justice in acquisition and transfer that may be indefensible on their own or incompatible with each other. Rights approaches often assume rather than articulate a justification of privacy itself. And there are considerable implicit differences between the two in what is to be distributed. It should not be seen as practical to address questions of information privacy without considering these questions. But Young’s critique of the distributive paradigm reveals deeper problems with understanding the question of justice in information privacy. Information privacy is as much a matter of social structure as it is of distributing material or moral goods, and the focus on distribution obscures the ways in which information privacy violations challenge the ability to participate in determining one’s actions. These critiques suggest that a more productive line of inquiry would be to pursue information justice as a matter of primarily structural rather than distributive justice.
Presentation for the Digital Sociology Mini-Conference of the Eastern Sociological Society 2016 about MediaCamp, social media skills building workshops for academics conducted in 2014 by the Just Publics @ 365 project at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
These are the slides of my presentation at the Digital Sociology Miniconference at ESS 2016. I am a PhD candidate in Sociology at Northeastern University, Boston.
The growing mediatization of everyday life has led to the emergence of new forms of social movements and political contestation. While this trend can be examined meaningfully through the lenses of traditional political, journalistic, and activist cultures, there is something about the distinct combination of communicative action and affective labor that carries uniquely transformative implications (Castells 2015). Whereas popular, individualized articulations of affective empowerment, and personal politics have been criticized for their lack of bearing on material realities (Barnard 2016b), alternative forms of expression on social media appear to have much deeper resonance with political and activist cultures, and therefore much greater chances at contributing to social change. Nevertheless, collective identity and collective action, supported through active engagement with networked technologies, are requisite characteristics of new social movements.
Whether on the ground, on Twitter, or both, participants in the #Ferguson protests expressed feelings of outrage against major social institutions—namely the criminal justice system and the mainstream media. This paper will examine the role that citizen journo-activists play in the transformation of political and journalistic cultures. As a hybrid, journo-activist space, tweeting #Ferguson quickly emerged as an effective way for interested actors to network and spread their message. Similarly, many networked journalists—increasingly referred to as “j-tweeters” (Hedman 2015)—have taken to Twitter to collect and share information about the events in Ferguson. Using a combination of digital ethnography and content analysis of tweets from #Ferguson, this study examines journalistic and activist uses of Twitter as well as the correspondent implications for changes in field relations and practices. Given the growing convergence of these two fields, as well as their concurrent practices, this case study provides unique insights about the role of digital media in efforts aiming to share information and bolster social change.
Presentation: "Academic Microcelebrity and Tenure Track" at the Digital Sociology Mini-Conference, Eastern Sociological Society. March 19, 2016. Boston, MA USA.
This paper explores the tensions between urban and youth development in the information age so as to critically reflect on the rights of urban youth to reorient their socio-technological surroundings, and with it their own life course. Findings from two case studies of NYC youth are drawn on to consider both a ‘right to the city’ and ‘to research’ as deeply intertwined ontological and epistemological movements that reconfigure the production of space, knowledge and media in the smart city. As NYCs economy becomes oriented toward high-tech and creative industries, public investments are made to recruit and accommodate a highly educated, largely white, and supposedly more creative class of workers. Marginalized and poor youth are meanwhile segregated and largely sorted out of this ‘new’ economy. At a more intimate scale of development, apps like Uber shape public mobility, companies like News Corp equip public schools with educational media, and daily communication is largely facilitated by privately owned platforms and networks. The result is a geography of youth development that increasingly takes place in the proprietary cross-hairs of smart urbanism’s creative destruction. This paper unpacks two youth-based projects intended to shift this dynamic: one that developed an open-source social network and one that maintains a community-based WiFi network. Together, these projects help illustrate how broader calls for rights ‘to the city’ and ‘to research’ play out in the practical yet powerful ways youth are remaking the social, material, and digital configuration of the smart city.
Slides for my presentation at the Digital Sociology mini-conference at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, March 17, 2016 in Boston, MA
ESS Digital Sociology Conference presentation.
I provide an overview of methodological opportunities, challenges, and solutions to consider for sociologists who are thinking about delving into the world of online ethnography.
Today’s growth in technological capabilities, exponential increase in computing power available to both consumers and enterprises, and almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity among other digital advances is changing the way employees and enterprises work.
Organizations are benefiting from the increased digitization of the workplace through increased productivity, cost savings, a more mobile and agile workforce, and generally increased flexibility and adaptability in an ever increasingly complex marketplace. Enterprises are collaborating more globally, and with more diverse and global staff. Employees can now work all over the world, from the jungle to the arctic, as long as they have reliable Internet.
While this has been a boom for employers, it has also changed the power balance in the employer-employee relationship, often more towards the employee. The ability to work from anywhere and stay connected through smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices has enabled employees to stay connected and collaborate with peers and stay on top of digital trends more readily than the organizations they work for.
This new digital workplace also creates its own challenges, including security, developing a new kind of digital etiquette to expectations for employees, and the tendency for building expectation of always being “on,” causing burnout and often leading to retention problems. Integrating digital technologies into the workplace can not only wreak havoc on the productivity of workers, but it also creates its own distinct culture, impacting the previous work culture and the general work experience. These changes will challenge the workplace by forcing both executives and employees to adapt the way they interact with each other and the technologies that enable their work.
Companies must be proactive in creating new systems and policies, and re-interpreting their corporate culture around digital in the workplace, or they risk losing clients, productivity, and employees.
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Unsubscribed: Combat Subscription Fatigue With a Membership Mentality by Head...
Nobody has come to help us yet. wip paper digital sociology conference
1. 1
Nobody has come to help us yet: giving voice and visibility to marginalized communities during a
humanitarian disaster
Femke Mulder, Smart Disaster Governance, Department of Organization Sciences, VU Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Work-in-Progress Paper for the panel on Online Grassroots Activism, Hashtag activists, and Citizen’s
Digital Literacy at the Mini-Conference on Social Change through Social Media [with Digital Sociology
Mini-Conference], 19 March 2016
Smart Disaster Governance
Department of Organization Science
VU Amsterdam
www.disastergovernance.info
Contact: f.mulder@vu.nl
2. 2
Abstract
When a region is hit by a large-scale disaster, established power structures tend to be severely
affected. Until a new status quo becomes established, the country finds itself in a state of in-
betweenness, or liminality. This period is marked by an absence of clear power structures, making it
possible for new empowering social practices to take hold that challenge the old status quo. Indeed,
in recent years online community platforms have increasingly been used during crises in an attempt
to enable citizens’ agency. In this paper we explore attempts by online grassroots activists in Nepal to
empower overlooked marginalized communities in the aftermath of two earthquakes in order to
improve their condition long-term. When Nepal was struck twice by earthquakes in the spring of 2015,
humanitarian agencies focused their work primarily on the Kathmandu Valley area, which is the heart
of government and business. Other areas were worse affected but received far less assistance. Indeed,
some rural areas and communities of so-called “untouchables” still had not received any assistance
two months after the first earthquake struck. This suggests that old power structures, although
destabilized, still greatly influenced the response. This paper will explore how the changing power
dynamics in Nepal, brought on by the earthquakes, shaped the humanitarian response, looking in
particular at the role of online grassroots activists and their efforts to give visibility and voice to those
most in need.
Note on the research project
This research contributes to a wider project funded by the Netherlands’ Organisation for Scientific
Research (NWO) entitled “Enhancing smart disaster governance: assessing the potential of the net-
centric approach”. The aim of this overarching project is to identify ICT and organizational practices
that enable responders to draw on information and capabilities present in heterogeneous community
networks in order to complement – or replace - formal top-down ‘command and control practices’ in
disaster response settings. In this project we combine qualitative research (e.g. interviews, shadowing,
observations) with social media analytics as well as social network analysis. This work-in-progress
paper is based on fieldwork carried out in Nepal in June 2015, six weeks after that country was struck
by two major earthquakes, as well as qualitative analyses of online grassroots humanitarian
community platforms, specifically QuakeMap. Our current data set and analyses will be
complemented by a semantic network analysis of the communications logged on quakemap.org as
well as follow-up fieldwork in Nepal, which has been planned for April and May 2016.
3. 3
Introduction
When a region faces a major humanitarian crisis, large numbers of national and international agencies
and citizen led groups tend to become active in order to respond to the unfolding disaster. In order
for these humanitarian actors to respond effectively, they need adequate and timely information on
the needs and priorities of affected communities. A lack of awareness of the situation on the ground
among these humanitarian actors can result in groups of affected citizens being overlooked during the
response. Furthermore, a lack of awareness of what humanitarian initiatives are active, what they
provide and how they can be linked up with, limits the agency of affected communities. Hence, the
extent to which different affected community groups are able to access – and contribute to –
humanitarian information flows is likely to have a significant impact on the effectiveness of a response
(Mulder, et al. forthcoming). Being connected to crisis-relevant networks strengthens affected
communities’ ability to cope with - and adapt to - disaster situations. This is because it allows them to
access crisis relevant information and share information about their needs with people outside their
communities who might be able to assist – be it (inter) national humanitarian agencies, government
bodies, formal grassroots organizations, or emergent citizen led initiatives. Web 2.0 platforms play an
increasingly important role in humanitarian coordination and communication exchanges, particularly
toward enabling citizen involvement (Boersma et al, 2014). The (partial) collapse of established power
structures in the aftermath of a disaster makes it possible for new empowering social practices to take
hold that challenge the old status quo. As such, an effective humanitarian response has the potential
to improve the condition of marginalized groups long-term. However, if marginalized groups are
overlooked or excluded from coordination efforts, a response can also reinforce and exacerbate pre-
existing inequalities and vulnerabilities.
Disasters as opportunities for change
Not all aspects of crises are negative. The term “crisis” comes from “krisis”: the medical term
Hippocrates used to describe a turning point in a disease. It comes from the Greek “krinein” which
means to judge, separate or decide (Sellnow & Seeger, 2013: 8). Indeed, crises can be regarded as
opportunities for addressing - and changing – ingrained but harmful beliefs and behaviours. The co-
evolution of societies and their environments gives rise to specific patterns of social and economic
vulnerabilities and (cultural) perceptions of danger and risk (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman, 2002). These
processes shape what hazards are likely to emerge in a given setting and how individuals and
organizations respond to them. Not all social groups are affected equally by extreme events. Some are
more able to absorb the impacts of external and internal system shocks without losing the ability to
function, adapt to their changed circumstances and recover from those shocks (Tierney, 2014). As
such, the extent to which an extreme event constitutes a disaster varies by social group.
Over the past three decades disasters have increasingly been interpreted as functions of the ongoing
social order rather than as the as the result of geophysical extremes (e.g. Hewitt, 1983; Oliver-Smith
and Hoffman, 1999). The nature and extent of people’s resilience in the aftermath of an extreme
event depends largely on people’s assets and capabilities. Of particular importance is social capital
(Putnam et al. 2004) for this enables people to connect, share information and cooperate with other
people. The extent to which people can access or leverage assets and capabilities is determined by
long-term social processes of in- and exclusion that are the product of the coevolution of societies
with their environments. Key determinants of vulnerability are poverty and being subject to prejudice
(based on e.g. ethnicity, disability, class, caste, gender, age, etc.). When faced with risks and extreme
events, different stakeholder groups are consequently marked by different – potentially conflicting -
4. 4
needs, interests and discourses. Different actors ‘see’ risk and disaster as different types of events. As
a result, they prepare for, manage and record them in different ways (Bankoff and Hilhorst 2009). A
disaster is, then, the result of the interplay between potential hazards and behaviour over time. The
processes that give rise to disasters tend to be integral to the operations of the status quo. As such,
they usually remain largely unchallenged in mainstream discourse during ‘normal’ times. Disasters
bring them to the fore: they show to what extent different social groups are affected by extreme
events and make their different levels of vulnerability visible (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman, 1999).
When a country is struck by a disaster, the established order is often severely affected. Until the old
status quo is firmly re-established, or a new one has taken its place, communities are in a state of in-
betweenness, or liminality (Horvath, et al. 2015). The temporary absence of clear power structures
that marks the aftermath of a disaster makes it possible for new social practices to emerge that
challenge the old status quo (Sellnow & Seeger, 2013). Solnit (2010) argues that during this liminal
phase communities often ‘reset’ from a state of socially stratified isolation and calculated self-interest
to one marked by pro-social attitudes and behaviours, such as altruism, participation and
purposefulness. As such, disasters constitute an opportunity for activists to facilitate the development
of networks of cooperation and communication between different community groups, potentially
linking up marginalized groups. The ability to access and contribute to crisis information and response
activities helps communities develop the situational awareness they need in order to effectively
organize their own localized response on the basis of their (remaining) assets and capabilities – and
coordinate their efforts with those of formal humanitarian responders. This builds these groups’ social
capital, enabling their agency and boosting their resilience in the face of future calamities. However,
vulnerable communities often face barriers that (partially) cut them off from such networks and
information flows, limiting both their agency and their visibility.
The response to the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal
In the spring of 2015, Nepal was hit by two large earthquakes, which occurred 17 days apart. As a
result, close to 9000 people died and a large number of public and private properties were severely
damaged, rendering over half a million people homeless. When a major disaster unfolds, the national
government is responsible for the coordination of humanitarian action. However, if the national
government is unable to take on this role – as was the case in Nepal – the United Nations takes on this
responsibility, addressing the disaster in partnership with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and
international organizations (IOs), such as the Red Cross. The United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) activates a number of relevant groups or ‘clusters’,
each focusing on a different top-level area of humanitarian importance, such as health and shelter.
These clusters function as points of contact for different humanitarian actors working in these fields.
It also provides them with a clear physical – and also virtual – space to get together, learn about each
other’s plans and activities and potentially partner or coordinate their activities. In addition to the UN
cluster system, in Nepal other formal coordination mechanisms were also activated, such as the NGO
federation of Nepal, which has local branches or ‘chapters’, and brings together both national and
international NGOs working in the same geographic area. (I)NGOs and IOs identified and choose
suitable partners to work with through these established mechanisms. At district level, they
cooperated closely with local Nepalese authorities. The number of different stakeholders involved in
the response was enormous. When we conducted fieldwork in Nepal, six weeks after the second
earthquake had struck the region, hundreds of NGOs were active in the country (Boersma et al., 2016).
In addition to formal humanitarian initiatives, we observed local community-led mutual assistance as
well as nation-wide grassroots initiatives, some of which were organized around online community
platforms. However, only representatives of formal humanitarian organizations tended to be present
5. 5
at the official coordination mechanism meetings described above – or be included in their
communications.
Citizen involvement through open data and crowdsourcing
Integrating the efforts and knowledge of local community groups and formal humanitarian agencies
could help the latter in their efforts to deliver aid on the basis of need and help prevent self-organized
groups receiving far less support than groups with lesser needs but better connections. The
importance of maximizing the strengths inherent in localized response systems – as opposed to forging
standardized responses in a top down manner – has been recognized for over thirty years (e.g.
Drabek,1983). The ability to contribute to – and access – information about an unfolding crisis helps
communities develop the situational awareness they need in order to effectively organize their own
localized response on the basis of their (remaining) assets and capabilities – and coordinate their
efforts with those of formal humanitarian responders ((Palen et al. 2010; Baharmand et al,
forthcoming). Open data activists hold that the public should have access to the raw data that informs
the policies, strategies and actions that affect them – and be given the opportunity to be actively
involved in the decision making process (Baack, 2015). Indeed, capitalizing on citizen-based
information could enable humanitarian agencies to become more adaptive to the situation on the
ground, reducing the vulnerability of local communities, while also improving the relevance and
delivery of response (Boersma et al., 2014). In this context the inclusion of the most vulnerable is of
paramount importance: they have the fewest assets and capabilities to respond to a crisis, yet, like
most communities affected by a disaster, they have to take the lead on coordinating the immediate
local response because formal organizations take time to become active. Access to timely, relevant
and reliable information and connections would enable vulnerable communities to foster their own
resilience in the immediate aftermath of a crisis by building on their remaining assets and capabilities
and coordinating their efforts effectively with those of formal organizations. As such, they might
continue to be able to play an active leading role in the coordination of relief, allowing for a grassroots’
led response – instead of a top-down approach. The rise of Web 2.0, with interactive websites and
online community platforms, has facilitated a broader public participation in crisis responses (Palen
and Liu 2007; Hughes et al. 2008; Palen et al. 2009). Open data activists have created civic technologies
to facilitate citizen participation through crowdsourcing and “make raw data accessible to the wider
public” (Baack, 2015: 6). These technologies have great potential in that they are easily scalable,
require few resources, and rely on volunteers. They can open up opportunities to participate to
previously disengaged groups (Resor, 2015).
Some of the earliest documented cases of citizen participation in creating and using crisis data through
social media was during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (2005). Affected citizens used online
community platforms to find and share information, connect with loved ones and grieve (Procopio
and Procopio 2007; Shklovski et al. 2010). Furthermore, people used social media to raise and collect
funds, locate missing individuals and find shelter for people who had lost their houses (Torrey et al.
2007; Macias et al. 2009). Another early example of using social media for collective-intelligence and
crowdsourcing is students’ use of Facebook during the Virginia Tech school shooting in 2007 to locate
their friends and share experiences (Vieweg et al. 2008; Palen et al. 2009). A defining moment in online
community participation in crises was the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Prior to this event, citizen
involvement through social media consisted mainly of informal, peer-to-peer assistance (Hughes and
Tapia, 2015). At this point in time, crowdsourcing for social ends was already well-established, but
fairly marginal to humanitarian relief work in disaster settings. However, the deployment of
crowdsourcing platforms, especially Open Street Maps (OSM) and Ushahidi, during the immediate
aftermath of the Haiti earthquake gave this approach enormous momentum. Open Street Maps
(OSM), known as ‘the Wikipedia of maps’, is a volunteer-driven platform that aims to make
6. 6
crowdsourced geospatial data accessible to all for free. The Ushahidi platform was created in 2008 to
enable the mapping of crowdsourced information about the violence that followed the 2007-08
elections in Kenya. The platform enables the datafication of information pulled from online
community platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs, as well as information received via text
message. On the basis of this data, reports can be created that can be categorized on the basis of their
content. In the direct aftermath of the Haiti crisis, using these platforms and open source tools,
volunteers based around the word worked around the clock to extract crisis relevant information from
social media and embed this information into online maps (Norheim-Hagtun and Meier 2010; Zook et
al. 2010). These platforms addressed a significant crisis information gap that up to that point had
remained unfilled. At the time, the online crisis map created through the Ushahidi platform was
proclaimed by the US Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) as the “the most
comprehensive and up-to-date source of information on Haiti for the humanitarian community” (as
reported in Heinzelman, 2010: 9).
Open data and crowdsourcing in post-earthquake Nepal
QuakeMap
In 2012, the World Bank supported the initiation of the ‘Open Cities Kathmandu’ project. The short-
term aim of this project was to map the health services and schools in the Kathmandu valley area
using OSM (Soden, 2014; World Bank, 2014). The project’s longer term aim was to develop a local
OSM community, build local OSM capacity, and create local ownership of the OSM data. This way, the
local community would be able to maintain and improve the dataset after the Open Cities project was
finished. In so doing, the project aimed to improve the disaster resilience of the people of Kathmandu
for when the earthquake would inevitably strike (Soden, 2014). When the health services and schools
in the Kathmandu valley area had been mapped and the Open Cities Kathmandu project ended, the
people working on the project, most of them Nepali, formed the NGO Kathmandu Living Labs (KLL).
They continued to map the Kathmandu valley area but had only partially completed their work when
the first earthquake hit Nepal in April, 2015. When this happened, thousands of remotely located
volunteers from the Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) came online to rapidly complete the maps
created by KLL and the local Nepali OSM community, using satellite imagery.
In the immediate aftermath of the first earthquake, KLL quickly rolled out QuakeMap, a civil
technology that ran on the Ushahidi Platform. QuakeMap was an open data platform that aimed to
connect people affected by earthquakes with responding organisations. KLL crowdsourced
information on local needs: affected people could report their requirements via a hotline, SMS or
through an online form. KLL then checked this data (often by telephone) and created a crisis data
report, which it categorized and placed on a map. Both data reports and map were freely accessible
online. It was possible to view the website in English, Nepalese and Hindi. However, the reports were
in English and were not translated. A screenshot of QuakeMap is depicted in figure 1 below.
7. 7
Figure 1: Screenshot of QuakeMap – most crisis reports came from and were about digitally literate Kathmandu Valley; not
the worst hit regions
Figure 1 shows that most crisis reports were geo-tagged as in the Kathmandu valley. It is important to
highlight that this was not the worst hit area and that the adjacent rural regions were affected far
worse: Gorkha, Dhading, Nuwakot, Rasuwa, Kavrepalanchok, Dolakha and Sindhupalchok (OSOCC,
2015). The Kathmandu valley area is more densely populated and its inhabitants are more educated
and digitally literate. In many rural areas of Nepal, the basic literacy rate is only 40%, and the digital
literacy rate is marginal at best. The result of this is a community crowdsourced crisis map that focuses
the attention on the area with the highest concentration of people who are able to voice their needs
through ICT. As such, it does not highlight which communities are most in need. Based on this map,
people without much knowledge of Nepal’s digital landscape are likely to draw the conclusion that aid
should be targeted at the Kathmandu valley area.
Digital divides
The example of QuakeMap above shows that crowdsourcing of crisis information can result in datasets
that reflect existing inequalities, especially digital divides (Crutcher & Zook, 2009; Elwood 2007;
Goodchild, 2007). Therefore, some raise concerns that crowdsourced crisis data can result in societal
inequalities being replicated, especially if marginalized communities are underrepresented by or
excluded from data (Crutcher & Zook, 2009; Elwood, 2007). In the immediate aftermath of the first
earthquake in Nepal, both traditional and social media focused predominantly on the damage suffered
in the Kathmandu area. This is likely to have contributed to the fact that formal responders, such as
government bodies, (I)NGOs and IOs, initially focused their aid efforts in this area. The logistical
challenges involved in reaching remote mountainous villages meant that some of the worst hit
communities had to wait weeks before their needs were assessed and aid was given. The people at
QuakeMap had done much to make their platform accessible: in addition to their website they also
processed information by phone and by text message. They actively sought to link back to the people
who had originally provided the data. They checked the accuracy of the data not only at the opening
and closing of a report by telephone, but also phoned local people who had provided information
whilst a data report was still open, to check if filed data was correct and up to date. Nevertheless, they
were unable to alter Nepal’s ICT infrastructure. Some communities in the worst hit regions (e.g.
Dhading) barely had any cell phone reception during the aftermath of the crisis.
8. 8
In addition to physical access to cyberspace, there are also numerous barriers within cyberspace that
prevent marginalized communities to a greater or lesser extent from broadcasting their needs to the
wider world and accessing important crisis-related information online. There is not one cyberspace.
Rather, there are numerous cyberspaces that are separated by virtual divides (Graham, 2011). These
divides may be cultural or linguistic in nature. People are generally restricted to those sections of
cyberspace that are available in a language they can read. As mentioned, the actual crisis reports on
QuakeMap were only available in English. Logging the reports in English made sense because it made
them accessible to international humanitarian responders who did not speak Nepali. This had the side
effect however that QuakeMap became a crisis dataset and map that – even though they were open
access – could not be read and therefore used by local Nepalis who didn’t speak English (see also
Sutherin, 2013 for the same observation about crowdsourced crisis data during the aftermath of the
2010 earthquake in Haiti). Virtual divides also result from knowledge and skills gaps. Marginalized
communities may lack access to sources and connections that could inform them of the existence of
online platforms through which they could share and access crisis information. A lack of knowledge of
the existence of certain cyberspaces clearly constitutes a barrier to participation. Varying levels of
literacy and digital literacy further influence people’s ability to participate.
Bridging digital divides
Barriers to accessing and sharing crisis data prevent marginalized communities from using
crowdsourced information to develop the situational awareness they need in order to organize their
own response actions in coordination with formal humanitarian organizations. Their lack of knowledge
about the state of the response renders their own activities less efficient as they don’t know when
they can expect what type of aid. In the aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, a number of
projects attempted to set up two ways flows of information between affected communities and the
humanitarian response at the national level in order to ensure that aid was targeted at the most
vulnerable. Code for Nepal and Mobile Citizen Helpdesks, for example, used open data platforms and
crowdsourcing to “close the loop on information related to the earthquake response to ensure relief
efforts reach those most in need” (Mobile Citizen Helpdesks, 2015).
Code for Nepal
Code for Nepal (‘Code’) is a small NGO that lobbies for open data and aims to address the digital
divides that mark that country. When the first earthquake struck Nepal, it was the perception of the
team at Code that the humanitarian response focussed almost exclusively on the Kathmandu valley
area. In order to turn the attention of responders to other regions that were also badly affected, the
team at Code turned to crowdsourcing, deliberately using a low-tech digital approach in order to lower
barriers to participation. The non-profit relied on commonly used digital tools (e.g. Google Docs) and
popular mainstream social media (e.g. Facebook). Anyone with moderate digital literacy and
familiarity with Google Docs could contribute: no additional training or specialist ICT knowledge was
required. In order to connect with people on the other side of the numerous digital divides that mark
Nepal, the core team sought to recruit volunteers based in specific geographical locations. It was
hoped that these focal points would use their digital know-how to act as bridges, linking their off-line
(often rural) communities to what was happening online. Because it was a relatively small-scale
project, affected people were able to communicate directly with Code volunteers (e.g. using Viber),
informing them about the situation on the ground and checking on what was being done. Code
volunteers would also proactively get in touch with people who had shared information to provide
them with updates on what had been done and to verify the information they had received. Twenty
so-called ’super-users‘ had been identified and tasked with checking and managing the crowdsourced
information. Code also translated and mapped district government data to make this information
available to affected people and responders. Here it is worth noting that most information on Code’s
9. 9
website and Facebook page is in English and not in Nepali. Hence, a significant access barrier
remained. However, people who did speak English and who did have moderate ICT skills (i.e. who
knew how to use email, Facebook, Twitter and Google Docs) were able to contribute their local
knowledge, gain access to this information, and monitor how it was being used.
Mobile Citizens Helpdesks
Mobile Citizen Helpdesks aimed to provide a platform for communities affected by the recent
earthquakes in Nepal, emergency responders and volunteers to report gaps at the last mile of
humanitarian relief distribution. The project was a joint initiative by the international charities
Accountability Lab and Local Interventions Group, both members of the OpenGov Hub. The project
was supported by a 1234 hotline, manned by volunteers based at the Nepalese Home Ministry. It was
also supported by a SMS toll free platform managed by a private company (Sparrow SMS). The actual
Mobile Citizen Helpdesks were run by volunteers in Kathmandu and the 10 worst hit districts in Nepal.
They were led by district coordinators. The aim of the project was to facilitate a two-way flow of
information: Mobile Citizen Helpdesks monitored the overall response and gathered information at
the local level. They then used these insights to help local people obtain information they needed
and/or to explain the decisions donors and the Nepalese government had taken. By looking at
resource mobilization and spending at the hyper-local level, and by helping individuals and
communities solve specific problems as and when needed, the project aimed to build accountability
from the bottom-up over time.
Formal responders and crowdsourced crisis data
In the aftermath of a disaster, responders need to develop the situational awareness required to
target their actions effectively at those most in need. This means that they need access to up-to-date
information on the population, the physical lay-out of the affected areas and the location of vital
infrastructure and services. It also means that they need information on what assistance is required
where and what has already been done (Stanton et al., 2001). International NGOs and IOs tend to
carry out their own assessments, often with the aid of local organizations. However, doing so takes a
lot of time. When we conducted fieldwork in Nepal, six weeks after the earthquakes had struck, we
found that there were still areas that had not yet been assessed. Official records are not always
available, complete or up to date. In many developing countries urban areas morph rapidly and
organically, often without formal registration or in ways that do not correspond with official planning.
As such, official maps of affected areas - and datasets listing services by location - tend to go out of
date quickly. Furthermore, official datasets may also reflect local societal inequalities. Vulnerable
communities may never have formally registered their existence with local government bodies and,
as such, be absent from official records (Boersma et al., 2016). During our fieldwork in Nepal, we found
that members of the Dalit or ‘untouchable’ community were absent from some of the local
government records (I)NGOs used to organize the distribution of aid.
Given the potential shortcomings of official records and the time it takes to carry out independent
assessments, crowdsourced crisis data could play a vital role in helping formal responders develop the
situational awareness they need during the early phases of a response (Hughes and Tapia, 2015).
Formal responders have recognized this potential but sociotechnical difficulties have so far prevented
them from adopting crowdsourced data into their practice (Sutton 2010; Latonero and Shklovski 2011;
Hughes and Palen 2012; Tapia and Moore 2014). One important problem is the fact that the policies
and procedures of formal humanitarian organizations are generally not designed to incorporate an
overwhelming flow of data from outside their networks (United Nations Foundation 2011).
Humanitarian organizations have established routines for collecting and processing crisis data.
Crowdsourced crisis data often does not ‘fit’ naturally into these processes: it is not provided at the
10. 10
time or in the format organizations need (Hughes and Tapia, 2015). Given the high stakes and short
time frame for making decisions in the aftermath of a disaster, many responders end up relying on
data processes that are familiar (Darcy et al., 2013; Zook et al., 2010). Some grassroots open data
activists have sought to address this through the semi-formal organization of crowdsourcing
volunteers (e.g. requiring people to sign-up prior to volunteering) or through the use of mediators
(persons or organizations) that seek to link the efforts of volunteers with those of formal organizations
(Hughes and Tapia, 2015).
Another major issue that has stopped many formal responders from adopting crowdsourced crisis
data into their practice is the belief that this information is too unreliable to inform humanitarian
decision making (Mendoza et al. 2010; Vieweg et al. 2010; Tapia et al. 2011, 2013; Hughes and Palen
2012; Tapia and Moore 2014; Dailey and Starbird 2014). Emergency responders find it challenging to
verify and trust crowdsourced crisis data. Social media exchanges can, after all, result in the spread of
rumours. Rumours are especially likely to emerge when people in a crisis situation do not have access
to situational information that is timely, unambiguous and location specific (Oh et al., 2013). However,
social media exchanges have also the potential to be self-rectifying whereby ‘the crowd’ triangulates
and checks the data it collectively produces. Indeed, many crowdsourcing volunteers and open data
activists regard the work of identifying, challenging and correcting misinformation (and coaching
others to do the same) as a core task of online volunteer efforts in crises (Starbird and Palen, 2013).
Triangulation is done through both technical and organizational means, for example by ranking
contributors’ level of trustworthiness on the basis of the frequency and quality of their previous posts,
or on the basis of their affiliation to larger social networks (Palen et al. 2009; Mendoza et al. 2010).
Another approach is the use of ‘visible scepticism’ whereby community platform moderators do not
block - but publicly question - the reliability of crisis-information, using the crowd to triangulate its
validity (Dailey and Starbird, 2014). The capability to facilitate the use crowdsourcing for the ongoing
triangulation of crisis data is one of the strongest potential contributions of social media platforms to
a humanitarian response, for this would enhance the reliability of crisis datasets (Vieweg et al., 2008).
However, if people with relevant knowledge about affected regions can’t check the data that has been
posted about these areas due to physical and virtual barriers to access, the validity of the data-set as
a whole is negatively affected. This point highlights again the importance of ensuring that all affected
communities – including marginalized groups - are able to access and contribute to online crisis data.
Discussion
The 2015 earthquakes in Nepal temporarily destabilized established power structures in Nepal.
Hundreds of foreign NGOs and international organizations flocked to the country to channel donor aid
into humanitarian relief work. The coordination of all these humanitarian actors was managed by the
United Nations as the national government was initially unable to take on this role. The aftermath of
the disaster constituted a liminal period during which time these (inter)national NGOs and
(inter)national organizations (re)discovered and (re)negotiated their national and local positions of
power vis a vis the established power structures through which they were required to carry out their
work. In this situation of ongoing change and flux, affected communities had to organize their own
local response and locate external aid, both as informal responders and as people in need of
assistance.
Humanitarian organizations aim to target aid on the basis of need alone “regardless of the race, creed
or nationality of the recipients and without adverse distinction of any kind”, as outlined in the Red
Cross Code of Conduct1
, to which 587 humanitarian organizations are signatories. In practice this
means that most humanitarian agencies aim to identify those most in need and target their (always
1 The Code of Conduct can be viewed here: http://www.ifrc.org/Global/Publications/disasters/code-of-conduct/code-english.pdf
11. 11
limited) resources at these groups. As such, the temporary shift in power from established power
structures to the NGOs and (inter)national organizations that sometimes occurs in the aftermath of a
major disaster, could in theory create the political space needed to empower marginalized groups.
This potential is further strengthened by the perceived absence of social divisions between affected
groups during this liminal period. When a major disaster strikes all socio-economic groups tend regard
themselves as part of the same ‘disaster community’ and break out of their socially stratified isolation
(Solnit, 2010). We learned that in the immediate aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal,
Kathmandu families from very different socio-economic backgrounds had lived in the same tents,
sharing their experiences and helping each other.
During this liminal period it might hence be possible to forge enduring connections between different
communities and link marginalized groups up with (online) networks. This would build their social
capital and boost their resilience in the face of future calamities. As such, disasters offer an
opportunity for building the assets and capabilities of marginalized groups. However, the remnants
and legacy of the old status quo present a number of real barriers and obstacles that make
empowerment at times of crisis far from straight forward. In the example of Nepal, we found that
even though formal power structures had been shaken and were in a state of flux, historic socio-
economic inequalities persisted and influenced the humanitarian response. Inequalities in resources,
skills and connections meant that marginalized groups were disproportionately underrepresented in
crisis data sets, be they government data sets, NGO data sets or crowdsourced data sets. This absence
meant that there were less visible to responders and hence less likely to be targeted with aid. Historic
processes of in and exclusion meant that even in the absence of fixed formal power structures,
marginalized groups still faced barriers that prevented them from accessing resources and information
that – to all intents and purposes - was intended for them. After all, humanitarian organizations
wanted to target those most in need and open data platforms wanted their information to be
accessible to all. The challenge reformers faced was to use the opportunity provided by the collapse
of the old status quo to overcome and address vulnerabilities that were the product of the old power
structures.
In spite of the challenges involved in including marginalized groups in the creation and use of online
crisis information – and in getting formal responders to systematically include this data in their
information processes - social media remains a strong tool for rectifying historic vulnerabilities and
enabling the agency of affected communities. Access to information and contacts makes it possible
for local people to take a leading role in organizing their own self-help and organizing relief work
within their local communities. This is vital because at times of crisis people are often forced to be
self-reliant, especially in the developing world where governments may lack the capacity to provide
assistance to all affected communities. This paper includes examples of concrete ways in which people
have attempted to address the issue of physical and virtual divides, i.e. by using low-tech ICT tools and
through the use of local focal points and community outreach volunteers.
Crowdsourcing crisis data through social media allows for the rapid creation of data sets that contain
‘live’ information about the changing situation and needs on the ground. This is of great value, as it is
an enormous challenge to satisfy the information needs of humanitarian responders in the aftermath
of a major crisis. As outlined above, official data sets are not always complete or up to date and
carrying out independent assessments takes a long time. Crowdsourced crisis data could addres this
information gap. It could also play a vital role in enabling formal responders to evaluate, interpret and
contextualize other (developing) datasets especially during the early phases of a response (Hughes
and Tapia, 2015). Community crowdsourcing platforms have not yet been incorporated into the
information processes used by humanitarian responders. However, many are looking for ways to
12. 12
incorporate this innovation in their approach (e.g. OCHA, UNICEF (Batty 2010), the UN Logistics Base
and the IOM (Soden, 2014)). It is important to flag up that the shared efforts of formal responders and
open data activists to systematically include crowdsourcing data in their information processes, will
only enable responders to identify and target those most in need – and boost the resilience of
vulnerable groups – if proactive efforts are made to enable the participation of marginalized
communities in the creation and sharing of crisis data.
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