The document discusses the open source software platform Ushahidi, which allows crowdsourcing of information through various means such as SMS, email, and web forms. It provides a history of Ushahidi's development in Kenya and discusses its worldwide implementations for social causes and crisis mapping. The paper then proposes two models for implementing Ushahidi in India - Citizen Reporting at 737678 for non-emergency reporting and Pin Pointed Advertising for targeted local advertising. It analyzes the effectiveness of Ushahidi through a case study and discusses challenges of the platform.

1. WELINGKAR INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
SPECIALISATION PROJECT
ON
HOW ‘USHAHIDI’ CAN CHANGE THE FACE OF CROWDSOURCING, CRISIS
MANAGEMENT AND INCIDENT REPORTING
(“Study and Non-Profit Business Model Proposition”)
BY
NITIN GAOPANDE
PGDM E-BIZ 2008 – 10 (MARKETING)
ROLL NO 27
PROJECT FACULTY GUIDE
PROF. DR. GITHA HEGGDE

2. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
STUDENT DECLARATION
I, Nitin Gaopande, student of PGDM E-Biz (2008-2010) Batch have completed
project on the topic “How ‘Ushahidi’ Can Change The Face Of Crowdsourcing,
Crisis Management And Incident Reporting” under the guidance of Prof. Dr.
Githa Heggde, Dean, Marketing Department, Welingkar Institute of Management
Development and Research, Bangalore Campus. This project has been submitted in
partial fulfillment of PGDM E-Biz program. The said project report has not been
submitted to any other University/Institution for the award of any other
degree/diploma.
Nitin Gaopande
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3. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
PROJECT COMPLETION CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that project titled “How ‘USHAHIDI’ Can Change The Face Of
Crowdsourcing, Crisis Management And Incident Reporting “is successfully
done by Mr. Nitin Gaopande in partial fulfillment of his / her two years full time
course ‘Post Graduation Diploma in Management’ recognized by AICTE through
the Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research,
Electronic City, Bangalore.
This project in general is done under my guidance.
___________________________
(Signature of Faculty Guide)
Name: ______________________
Date: ______________________
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4. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
It is my immense pleasure that I place on record my deep sense of gratitude to
almighty and to all who have contributed to the successful completion of my project
work by sharing their valuable knowledge, views and by helping me on various
occasions.
I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Githa Heggde, for her valuable guidance and inputs
throughout this project.
I will be failing in my duty if do not express my deep sense of gratitude to my family
and friends for the warmth, love, constant encouragement extended to me, so as to
fulfill my dreams and ambitions.
Nitin Gaopande
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5. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
Table of Contents
1 Executive Summary ............................................................................................7
2 Introduction .........................................................................................................7
3 History of Ushahidi .............................................................................................9
3.1 Development ..................................................................................................9
3.2 Technology ..................................................................................................10
3.3 How Ushahidi Works...................................................................................10
4 World Wide Implementations ..........................................................................12
4.1 UnitedForAfrica ...........................................................................................12
4.2 Democratic Republic of Congo ...................................................................13
4.3 The Crisis Map of Haiti ...............................................................................14
4.4 Vote Report India.........................................................................................15
4.5 Wild Life Tracker ........................................................................................18
5 Proposed Models ...............................................................................................19
5.1 Citizen Reporting @ 737678 (REPORT) ....................................................20
5.1.1 Concept........................................................................................................... 20
5.1.2 What is different with CR@737678 ............................................................... 21
5.2 Pin Pointed Advertising ...............................................................................23
5.2.1 Concept........................................................................................................... 23
5.2.2 How Pin Point Advertising works .................................................................. 23
6 How Do We Know It Works ............................................................................24
6.1 Case Study ...................................................................................................24
6.2 Findings .......................................................................................................25
7 Challenges ..........................................................................................................27
8 References ..........................................................................................................28
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6. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
List of Figures
Page
S.No Figure Name No
1 Fig 3.1 Diagrammatic representation of Ushahidi Implemented Server 11
2 Fig 4.1 UnitedForAfrica 12
3 Fig 4.2 Tracking the Eastern Congo Conflict using Ushahidi 13
4 Fig 4.3 The Crisis Map of Haiti 14
5 Fig 4.4 Vote Report India 15
6 Fig 4.5 Reported Incidents 16
7 Fig 4.6 Dashboard in Ushahidi Implementation 16
8 Fig 4.7 Report Approval Dashboard 17
9 Fig 4.8 Wild Life Tracker 18
10 Fig 6.1 Incident Reporting for Kenyan Crisis Mapping Project - Graph 26
List of Tables
Page
S.No Table Name No
1 Table 5.1 Proposed Sightings/Incidences for reporting 21
2 Table 6.1 Incident Reporting for Kenyan Crisis Mapping Project 26
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7. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
1 Executive Summary
This report aims to put across the various implementations of an innovative
crowdsourcing software application platform called Ushahidi, and the benefits that
have been realized out of it. Worldwide implementations of the platform for social
causes are discussed. It further also looks at the Indian perspective and the
implementation of the said platform in an Indian scenario. The effectiveness of the
platform as a whole is discussed using a case study involving empirical data. At the
end, the paper also put across two India specific implementation models (Non-profit
and For-profit) utilizing Ushahidi platform and create value out of it for the crowd.
Few of the challenges and limitations of Ushahidi are also discussed. The aim of this
report is to pu
2 Introduction
Perhaps the best way to generate awareness amongst people is not an FM radio or
TV channel or to create a centralized real time database is not a limited set of people
finding out information and then collating it. Perhaps the best way is to source it
from the crowd itself.
CrowdSourcing is not a buzz word but it is one of the most effective ways to
generate intel from a huge population that has got it, but may not have the means to
share it.
And it is said that Necessity Is the Mother of Invention. This is quite true in case of
an open source software platform called as USHAHIDI. Ushahidi is a Swahili word
meaning “Testimony”. The software has evolved from a website with the same name
that was developed in the aftermath of Kenyan Elections 2007. The website was a
result of a necessity to report acts of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout.
Over the last few years this has developed and grown into intelligent software to map
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8. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
citizen reporting on a huge scale. It is natural that Kenya, where m-Pesa was
launched first to enable money transfer from mobile-to-mobile using mobile
currency, would be the country to gift the world another innovation called Ushahidi.
This research paper aims to put across various models that have been based upon the
Ushahidi platform and have been successfully implemented to source various type of
info from the crowd. The paper also aims to highlight the singular implementation of
Ushahidi in India viz. www.votereport.in and aims to put across possible models
that can be implemented. We also propose a model similar to ones implemented for
Chile and DRC(Democratic Republic of Congo) in the domain of disaster and crisis
management.
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9. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
3 History of Ushahidi
3.1 Development
Ushahidi is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in
Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi's roots are in
the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website
was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country
based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. This initial deployment of
Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for us realizing there was a
need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world
Ushahidi uses the concept of crowdsourcing for
social activism and public accountability,
serving as an initial model for what has been
coined as 'activist mapping' - the combination of social activism, citizen journalism
and geospatial information. Ushahidi provides a mechanism for local observers to
submit reports using their mobile phones or the internet, while simultaneously
creating a temporal and geospatial archive of events. In simple words the testimonies
or reports by citizens are put up on a Google Map or any other geospatial archive of
event (simply a map with a parameter)
Ushahidi has grown into a non-profit organization whose Vision is
To create a platform that any person or organization can use to
set up their own way to collect and visualize information
One of the most striking feature about Ushahidi is that it is completely in-house built
technology. The site was initially developed and run by several bloggers and
software developers, all current or former residents of Kenya: Erik Hersman, Juliana
Rotich, Ory Okolloh and David Kobia
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10. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
3.2 Technology
Ushahidi is built on the Kohana web framework, a fork of the CodeIgniter
framework. It includes built-in support for Clickatell SMS gateways, and the official
Ushahidi-hosted websites use the commercial service. Ushahidi provides the option
of using OpenStreetMap maps in its user interface, but requires the Google Maps
API for geocoding.
Emerging Technologies that Ushahidi is currently trying to integrate are
• Timeline and Map work
• Frontline-SMS integration and extension
• Geocoding Accuracy
• Bayesian Modeling: for use in automatic classification (finding the right
category) of reports
• Sahana integration
• Heatmapping: Depending upon the elevation view of the map, heatmapping
(polygons) will be used instead of point data
• News and Incident Clustering: figure out how to cluster both citizen reports
and mainstream news reports.
• Charts and Graphs: Beyond mapping and timelines, data should be able to be
seen in charts and graphs
• Authentication: Background credibility scores based on past information/reports
sent in by individuals. Ability to manually set this in the admin panel.
3.3 How Ushahidi Works
Ushahidi is a gift to the silicon valley1. Ushahidi enables you to send an anonymous
message about an incident occurring at the location where you are. This can be sent
using multiple input sources like SMS, Twitter, Email or a Web Form. This depends
1
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/weekinreview/14giridharadas.html
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11. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
upon the available input process for the particular implementation. Ushahidi.org in
itself is not responsible for the implementation. Ushahidi may provide with
Infrastructure and Hosting space, and independent NGO’s and software developers
come together to create a specific implementation with a certain objective.
Below is a simple block diagram of how Ushahidi implementation works. The “map
interface” is an optional aspect which can be configured using the compatible API.
Fig 3.1 Diagrammatic representation of Ushahidi Implemented Server
There can either be a long number or a short number (4636 as in case of Haiti), that
can be configured to be sent SMS to. Citizens can send SMS reports and incidences
to this number. Specific codes can be configured in the system to simplify the type of
incident to be reported.
The general pattern to report the code is
votereport #TOWN (or PIN-CODE) #CATEGORY DETAILS SOURCE
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12. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
4 World Wide Implementations
4.1 UnitedForAfrica
The pioneer implementation of Ushahidi happened for South Africa, to report
individual incidents of low to higher fatality rate. The citizens can send an sms to
31864 or 31972 (as shown in the figure below. As shown the filter can be done by
categories. Real time incidences are recorded and mapped on to the particular
location.
Fig 4.1 UnitedForAfrica
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13. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
4.2 Democratic Republic of Congo
Tracking the Eastern Congo Conflict using Ushahidi. This is similar to the pioneer
project in South Africa.
Fig 4.2 Tracking the Eastern Congo Conflict using Ushahidi
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14. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
4.3 The Crisis Map of Haiti
The Crisis Map of Haiti represents the most comprehensive and up-to-date crisis
map available to the humanitarian community. The information here is mapped in
near real time and gathered from reports coming from inside Haiti via: SMS, Web,
Email, Radio, Phone, Twitter, Facebook, Television, List-serves, Live streams,
Situation Reports
Volunteers at Ushahidi's Situation Room at the Fletcher School, in Washington DC,
Geneva, London and Portland are mapping the majority of the reports submitted to
Ushahidi in near real-time. The volunteers then identify GPS coordinates for the
reports and geo-tag the reports on the Ushahidi map. Each report is first read at least
once by Situation Room before being published on the map. This Ushahidi
deployment represents a joint initiative with members of the International Network
of Crisis Mappers (CM*Net).
Fig 4.3 The Crisis Map of Haiti
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15. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
4.4 Vote Report India
Vote Report India Vote Report India (votereport.in) is a collaborative citizen-driven
election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian general elections. Users contribute
direct SMS, email, and web reports on violations of the Election Commission’s
Model Code of Conduct2. The platform will then aggregate these direct reports with
news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all
relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map.
Vote Report India will not only increase transparency and accountability in the
Indian election process, but also provide the most complete picture of public opinion
in India during the elections.
Fig 4.4 Vote Report India
2
eci.nic.in/eci_main/Model_Code_Conduct.pdf
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16. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
Reported Incidents are also shown on the website in the following format. The
reports are updated real time and are constantly available to the public.
Fig 4.5 Reported Incidents
The dashboard to the administrators will look like this. The Ushahidi platform also
supports language translation. So supposing the SMS is in local language the
interface will translate it to English (desired language) to display on the website
board.
Fig 4.6 Dashboard in Ushahidi Implementation
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17. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
It is also possible to approve incoming reports source wise.
Fig 4.7 Report Approval Dashboard
At the same time, one of the most important feature is to reply back to the sender of
the message which exactly is what a Crisis Management support system should do.
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18. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
4.5 Wild Life Tracker
Ushahidi has also been used to implement a wildlife tracking project called the
“Wild Life Tracker” by the NGO wildlifedirect.org.
Fig 4.8 Wild Life Tracker
The full list of Ushahidi implementations can be found on this link
http://www.ushahidi.com/work
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19. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
5 Proposed Models
Ushahidi is just not crowdsourcing aggregator software. It’s a revolution. It can be a
global solution builder or supporter to global problems. Ushahidi platform can be
collaborated with already up and running platforms to create a web of opportunity
for social change as well business development.
Ushahidi has been implemented in India only as one single project, as discussed in
previous sections. Votereport as a pioneering success, with the project being
endorsed by various communities as follows:
• National Network for India (NNFI) is a non-profit organisation with a
primary focus on electoral reforms and ridding Indian politics of criminals.
• The Liberty Institute is an independent, non-profit think tank that leads
“Empowering India,” an initiative that attempts to empower voters with
information to promote transparency and accountability in politics.
• Citizens for Justice and Peace is dedicated to the promotion of communal
harmony, and promote values that will encourage the development of peace,
justice and reconciliation in every sphere of society.
• Women’s Political Forum is an enterprise aimed at identifying potential
women leaders and developing a talent pool so that it can serve as a resource
centre for future women politicians.
India has its own set of problems to solve. They range from natural calamities to
corruption, poverty to child labor, domestic violence to reducing number of tigers.
The question to ponder is whether Ushahidi help in some of these problems.
I would like to propose the following models, which are specific to problems in India
and can be implemented either non-profit or for-profit.
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20. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
5.1 Citizen Reporting @ 737678 (REPORT)
5.1.1 Concept
Citizen Reporting @ 737678 (which is REPORT typed on a T9 phone) aims to create
citizen reporters from the huge population of India. The problems that this project
aims to tap are ones which have always been creating tensions for Indians. These are
very specific sightings/incidences which are not often reported because the platform
where they should be reported are either not present or they are numerous and not
integrated.
For example to report illegal tree cutting incident, in the city of Bangalore, there is a
support group called ESG (Environment Support Group). It is nicely explained how
one needs to find out whether a tree being cut is illegal or not, and whether there has
been a sampling planting done for the tree being cut.
But the complaint has to be lodged at different locations, with different offices3. (as
below)
• District Forest Officer (Bangalore Urban Div) Office: Phone - 3343464 / Fax - 3344686
(Contact persons Sumana and Jagdish)
• Range Forest Officer (Malleshwaram) - 3343543 (office) / 36766720 (Personal mobile of Mr
Jeelani Pasha)
• Range Forest Officer (Ulsoor) - 94480-82889
• Range Forest Officer (BTM Layout) - 94482-01406
• RFO Kaggalipura - Srinivas: 9448088811
• RFO Bangalore North Range (Peenya to Hessarghatta, Mekhri Circle to Vidhan Soudha) -
Chinappa: 9845210780
• RFO Banashankari - Govindraj: 9845832690
This is what demotivates a citizen to report such a complaint. Similar demotivators
exist when reporting incidents pertaining to other problems.
3
http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/Tree%20felling/action.html
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21. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
Citizen Reporting @ 737678 would be an implementation of Ushahidi to report the
following sightings or incidences.
Sighting/Incidence #CODE
Child Labor Sightings (CHLD)
Illegal Tree Cutting (TREECUT)
Pothole Sightings (POTHOLE)
Garbage In Open (GRBG)
Overflowing Sewers (SWER)
Broken Water Pipes (BRPIPE)
Contaminated Water (BADWATR)
Absent Nurses/Doctors (NODOC)
Domestic Violence Incidences (VIOL)
ATM not working (ATMN)
Table 5.1 Proposed Sightings/Incidences for reporting
5.1.2 What is different with CR@737678
The basic Ushahidi concept will eventually be fulfilled. What we achieve using
CR@737678 is listed as follows:
1. Never before done spatial distribution of above mentioned problems. The spatial
distribution for the problems mentioned above can help in the long run to know
the correlation between occurring and location specific data.
2. The service being anonymous and pertaining to long running problems in India
will attract huge number of users.
3. Collaborations with atleast 2 community service groups working on each of the
above mentioned problems. The collaboration will be of the following type
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22. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
3.1. Direct notification sending to the authorities which are allocated to the
specific area. This is due to the reason that it is not so easy to change the
way the system has been built. Taking the same example of illegal tree
cutting, it is not very easy to make sure a centralized reporting office for any
such incident irrespective of the location.
Hence CR@737678 will ensure that based on the location, found using the
co-ordinates of origin, the notification will go to concerned authorities.
3.2. In case of child labor sighting, notification will be sent to
3.2.1. Ministry of Labour & Employment, Govt. of India
(www.labour.nic.in)
3.2.2. UNICEF India - Child protection (www.unicef.org/india)
3.3. Pothole Sightings, Garbage In Open, Overflowing Sewers, Broken Water
Pipes, Contaminated Water will be reported to Municipal Corporation for
the location where the pothole sighting has been reported.
3.4. Absent Nurses/Doctors reporting will be notified to PHFI : Public Health
Foundation of India (www.phfi.org)
3.5. Domestic Violence Incidences reports will be immediately notified to
nearest police station superintendent. Every police superintendent will be
required to have his mobile registered with CR@737678
3.6. Broken down ATM incidents will be notified to respective bank customer
care. Code: #ATMNO #<bank name> Source
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23. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
5.2 Pin Pointed Advertising
5.2.1 Concept
The concept of this kind of service is to create a for-profit business model by
reversing the way Ushahidi works. A person utilizing this service will be able to
know all the offers that are available to him in shops, stores, malls in the radius of 1
km around her. This is virtually a Location-Based Advertising model which may not
be unique but is unique in the way it is implemented.
By sending an SMS in the format “PPA #category” to a specific number 737772,
the sender will be able to get information through sms about all the current offers
related to the “category”
The category can range from apparel, food, restaurants, exhibitions, beauty, clinic,
hospitals, pubs, buffet, rockshow etc.
5.2.2 How Pin Point Advertising works
1. PPA will have advertising inputs from shops, stores and malls in the city. The
offers will be entered into the implemented system directly by the owners
exhibiting the offer, or will be entered indirectly.
2. Since PPA is based on the Ushahidi platform, real time snapshot of where the
shoppers are currently present can be found out.
3. The advertisers would also be given liberty to have real time offers entered
into the system through SMS medium.
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24. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
6 How Do We Know It Works
6.1 Case Study
We see here that Ushahidi is an extremely potent solution for Crisis Mapping. HHI
or Harvard Humanitarian Initiative is largely recognized as the principal founder of
the Crisis Mapping field as it is know today. Launched in 2007, HHI's Program on
Crisis Mapping and Early Warning (CM&EW) set out to connect an active
community of Crisis Mappers and to formalize the field of Crisis Mapping. Between
2007 and 2009, HHI's Program documented best practices and lessons learned
through the lens of new technologies and methodologies
Ushahidi is a major partner with HHI and continues to collaborate with the initiative
to help improve their crisis mapping platform. The major projects discussed and
elaborated in section 4 above fall in the field of Crisis Mapping.
Patrick Meier, PhD, Co-Director of Crisis Mapping Program, alongwith his
subordinates conducted an empirical study to measure the effectiveness of these
projects. Kenyan Elections was chosen as a case study to assess the role of citizen
journalists in crisis environments as compared to the mainstream media. Event-data
analysis was used to code reports of violent and peaceful events as documented by
about a dozen citizen journalist bloggers between December 27, 2007 and January
27, 2008.
Similarly for mainstream media, data ranging from print media (national
newspapers) to radio and television program was analyzed. Ushahidi data was also
included to carry out a three way comparison between mainstream news media,
citizen journalism and a dedicated crowdsourcing platform.
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25. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
6.2 Findings
The findings of the study were in the form of incident reporting for Mainstream
media vs Citizen Journalists (CJ) and Ushahidi (U). The data is as follows
MAINSTREAM CITIZEN
DATE NEWS JOURNALIST USHAHIDI TOTAL
1 Thursday, Dec 27, 2007 5 6 0 11
2 Friday, Dec 28, 2007 1 0 1 2
3 Saturday, Dec 29, 2007 12 29 3 44
4 Sunday, Dec 30, 2007 12 11 7 30
5 Monday, Dec 31, 2007 4 9 6 19
6 Tuesday, Jan 1, 2008 3 14 7 24
7 Wednesday, Jan 2, 2008 13 12 3 28
8 Thursday, Jan 3, 2008 12 27 4 43
9 Friday, Jan 4, 2008 36 20 6 62
10 Saturday, Jan 5, 2008 4 13 6 23
11 Sunday, Jan 6, 2008 0 1 0 1
12 Monday, Jan 7, 2008 9 3 1 13
13 Tuesday, Jan 8, 2008 8 6 0 14
14 Wednesday, Jan 9, 2008 6 3 4 13
15 Thursday, Jan 10, 2008 19 4 6 29
16 Friday, Jan 11, 2008 8 3 1 12
17 Saturday, Jan 12, 2008 2 4 4 10
18 Sunday, Jan 13, 2008 3 0 0 3
19 Monday, Jan 14, 2008 18 1 4 23
20 Tuesday, Jan 15, 2008 9 2 4 15
Wednesday, Jan 16,
21 2008 15 12 20 47
22 Thursday, Jan 17, 2008 12 4 17 33
23 Friday, Jan 18, 2008 27 1 12 40
24 Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 14 8 5 27
25 Sunday, Jan 20, 2008 3 3 6 12
26 Monday, Jan 21, 2008 11 2 1 14
27 Tuesday, Jan 22, 2008 12 2 3 17
Wednesday, Jan 23,
28 2008 26 0 3 29
29 Thursday, Jan 24, 2008 14 2 1 17
30 Friday, Jan 25, 2008 9 1 2 12
31 Saturday, Jan 26, 2008 10 3 1 14
32 Sunday, Jan 27, 2008 15 2 6 23
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26. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
33 Monday, Jan 28, 2008 0 0 3 3
34 Tuesday, Jan 29, 2008 0 0 7 7
Wednesday, Jan 30,
35 2008 0 0 4 4
36 Thursday, Jan 31, 2008 0 0 6 6
Table 6.1 Incident Reporting for Kenyan Crisis Mapping Project
The above data can be visualized as follows
Incident Reportings
150
100
50
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1213 1415 1617 1819 2021 222324 2526 2728 2930 3132 3334 3536
DATE MAINSTREAM NEWS CITIZEN JOURNALIST USHAHIDI TOTAL
Fig 6.1 Incident Reporting for Kenyan Crisis Mapping Project - Graph
It is noticeable from the graph that during the peak of total reporting, the mainstream
media is almost always lagging behind the citizen journalist and Ushahidi reporting.
Major findings that were derived from this study were as under:
1. Mainstream media reported actual death count before citizen journalists;
however, on many accounts, mainstream media did not report on incidents
leading to actual deaths, i.e., early warning signs;
2. Citizen journalist reports and Ushahidi reports did not overlap geographically
with mainstream media reports
3. Citizen journalists tended to report as soon as violence started, well before
mainstream media
4. The number of comments on citizen journalist blogs increased during the 30-
day period, or during particular periods of violence
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27. Winter Project – Ushahidi, Crowdsourcing and Crisis Mapping
5. The comment section was also used as a medium for real-time updating
6. Many citizen journalist bloggers used real-time updates sent to them via
SMS, primarily from rural areas
7. Citizen journalism reports declined after the launch of Ushahidi
8. Ushahidi reports document an important number of violent events not
reported by the mainstream media and citizen journalists
9. Contrary to news media and citizen journalist reports, Ushahidi data always
had specific location information
10. Ushahidi reports also covered a wider geographical area than both
mainstream news and citizen journalist bloggers.
7 Challenges
Ushahidi is an innovative crowdsourcing platform and the way it tries to collect
information from the crowd is novel. However there are few obstacles and
challenges in front of Ushahidi. Below are some of them.
1. Data validation and Accuracy: The reporting that Ushahidi gets can be
subjected to the question that whether the report is an authentic one or not.
Possibility of the report being one to pose as a rumor starting one cannot be
neglected.
2. Reverse of Crowdsourcing is Crowdfeeding: Being freely available, the
same platform can be utilized by anti-social groups to crowdfeed wrong and
unrest causing information
3. Control: Even though an open innovation based ideology, it may not be
very clear with whom does lie the control and responsibility. Misuse of
information is one critical aspect that will need to be taken care of.
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8 References
1. "The Role of Mobiles in Disasters and Emergencies", December 2005, GSM
Association
2. Meier, Patrick and Kate Brodock (2008). “Crisis Mapping Kenya’s Election
Violence: Comparing Mainstream News, Citizen Journalism and Ushahidi.”
(Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, HHI, Harvard University: Boston).
3. http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/mapping-kenyas-election-
violence
4. http://www.pmforum.org/library/RegionalReports/2009/PDFs/may/INDIA-
Rao.pdf
5. http://votereport.in
6. http://www.vdomck.org/2010/03/nytimes-on-why-crowdsourcing-with.html
7. http://www.ushahidi.com
8. http://wildlifetrackers.wildlifedirect.org
9. http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/Tree%20felling/action.html
10. http://twitter.com/Ushahidi
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