Citizen Journalism, Citizen Activism, and Technology

1
Citizen Journalism, Citizen Activism, and
Technology

• Positioning Technology as a Second Superpower
  in Times of Disaster and Terrorismby Sharon
  Meraz

2
Context

• How can the new power of the Internet be
  leveraged in times of
• Disasters
• Terrorism
• How has technology been shaped and utilized by
  citizens to frame
• Disaster response management
• Citizen journalism
• Global Web initiatives
• Self help, self organizing, emergent networks
• Collective wisdom

3
Social Computing

• Not a new phenomenon
• Way back in 1940s to Memex (Allen, 2005)
• BBSs, Usenets, IRC (Rheingold, 1993)
• Current enthusiasm due to
• Web 2.0 as collaboration/sharing
• Architected for participation (SOA)
• Toolkit for lightweight apps (AJAX, APIs, RSS)
• Rapid application development (Web services)
• Mounting interest in social computing
• Blogs, wikis, social software, mobile
  technologies

4
Social Computing

• Allows users to participate more (BYOC)
• Visible spirit of collaboration/generosity
• Gift economy, p2p development, bazaar design,
  hacker ethic
• Technologies of Cooperation (Saveri et al)
• Trigger network effects in vulnerable times
• Emergent
• Spontaneous
• Citizen-led
• Citizen-shaped

5
(No Transcript)
6
Theoretical Model

• Interdisciplinary approach
• Science Studies Theories
• Science, technology, capitalism, control, power
• Technological determinism vs social shaping
• Emergence in Networks (Spontaneous)
• Distributed, decentralized, bottom-up
• The Wisdom of crowds (James Suroweicki)
• The Power of many (Christian Crumlish)
• Small pieces loosely joined (David Weinberger)
• Linked The science of networks (Albert-Laszlo
  Barabasi)

7
Events

• 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake
• Tsunamis affecting Southeast Asia and Africa,
  over 175,000 deaths
• July 2005 London Bombings
• Dubbed 7/7
• August 2005 US Hurricane Katrina
• New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama, over 1,400
  deaths

8
Methodology

• How was social software/technology used/shaped
  for disaster management?
• 3 pronged with snowball sample.
• Used technorati for tag-based searching
• Multiple user-generated tags for each event
• Monitored A-list blogs for information on
  media/c-journalism happenings
• Searched Lexis Nexus for Big Media reports
• In addition for Hurricane Katrina (live)
• Monitored c-journalism/A-list blogs in RSS reader

9
Results

• MSM reports on Citizen Journalism
• Indian Ocean Earthquake
• Unanticipated event
• Vivid, immediate reporting from blogs
• Accidental, unintentional, incidental
  c-journalists
• London Bombings
• Gap between amateur/professional shrinking
• Democratization of news
• Sea change in journalism practice (genie out of
  bottle)
• Hurricane Katrina
• MSM and C-Journalism as different/shared
  perspectives
• Complementary vs oppositional relationship

10
Results

• Mobile Technologies
• SMS used to post to
• Blog, send text messages for relief/aid/fundraisin
  g coordination, find missing (Morquendi)
• Phone cameras/video
• 7/7 incident, 20,000 emails, 1000 photos to BBC,
  20 videos, used on Sky News, BBC, Guardian, AP
• Less in Hurricane Katrina
• Possibly less of a mobile phone culture
• More of the poor left stranded in region
• Infrastructure wiped out

11
(No Transcript)
12
Results

• Blogs as inside eyes/ears of disaster
• Rise of video blogging in 2004
• Global connections (SEA-EAT blog)
• 21,000 visitors in 24 hrs, 10th most visited
  humanitarian site on Internet
• Photo blogging growth, Flickr pools
• First hand reporting (Brian Oberkirch, Slidell
  Hurricane Damage Blog, Michael Barnett, The
  Interdictor)
• Relief coordination
• 1,347,493 (right), 200,000 (left)

13
Results

• Wiki journalism--can this work?
• Exchange of resources, safety bulletin boards,
  missing persons reports/registry
• Wikipedia entry on 7/7 incident edited 5,000
  times
• Global, transparent connections
• Group collaboration
• Skype phone banks
• Shelters/Databases for the missing
• Virtual lightposts
• Recovery 2.0 wiki after Katina
• Clearinghouse for disaster recovery efforts

14
Results

• Tech Development
• Global in Scope Taran Rampersad and Dan Lane on
  Alert Retrieval Cache (ARC) built in one night
• Responsiveness of citizen-initiatives
• Jonathan Mendez/Greg Stoll using Google Maps API
  for housing damage mapping
• Katrina, Rita, Wilma

15
Results

• KatrinaPeopleFinder Project
• Correct problems of distributed redundancy
• Create a central database
• David Geilhufe, Ethan Zuckerman, Zack Rosen, Jon
  Lebowsky
• Volunteer programmers, project leaders, data
  entry volunteers
• Data entry chunks of 25 records with over 3,000
  volunteers, 620,000 records
• PeopleFinder Interchange Format (PFIF)
• Need tactics to swarm better (Jeff Jarvis)

16
Conclusion

• Social software significant to
• Emergent alternative journalism
• Citizen disaster management response
• Self organization, smart, networked mob
• Citizen Paparazzi (Sousveillance)
• Many little brothers and sisters
• See, snap, send impulse (Spy, Scoopt, Cell J)
• Private/public space boundaries
• Accessibility of the technology
• Needs a smart network with focal nodes