Social Media, Social Networking and Complex Emergencies: Issues Paper

"Numerous humanitarian organisations are now working to exploit the vast potential of social networking and social media, placing them at the heart of how they organise, design, deliver and monitor assistance. This is, however, not an easy task and is fraught with constraints and risks."

This paper is one of the outputs of the Communication and Complex Emergencies Project, which is a collaboration between the University of Adelaide's Applied Communication Collaborative Research Unit (ACCRU) and the Australian Civil-Military Centre (ACMC). The project's main objectives are to highlight the role of communication, including new and social media, in complex emergencies and in support of humanitarian assistance.

Each of the case studies includes: activities, outcomes, limitations, links to further information, and source URLs.

Contents include:

1. Social networking and social media: why do they matter? - "In focusing on the functions and applications of social networking and social media, the paper identifies the following:
   • Social networking platforms and the social media they promote offer an important mechanism for political participation, for freedom of expression and for social action (Lim 2012).
   • Social networking and social media can have an important role in 'witnessing' and communicating human rights abuses to a wider public. Citizen journalists are turning to social networking platforms to disseminate user-generated content that might otherwise not be read, heard or seen (Comninos 2011).
   • Social networking and social media are used to communicate information about reconstruction and post-conflict development and change (Borges & Vivacqua 2012).
   • Social networking and social media are being used to monitor processes such as elections and the delivery of humanitarian assistance. They offer the ability to collect information quickly and in real time.
   • Social networking and social media are increasingly being used to target specific groups and the wider public to deliver messages about conflict prevention and reduction, disarmament, peace building and reconciliation.
   • Social networking and social media can have an important role in information management and the collective generation of knowledge at an organisational level - that is, through collaborative tools such as wikis.
   • Social networking and social media can help humanitarian agencies carry out rapid crisis mapping for disaster preparedness, response and targeting through the gathering, organising, analysis and presentation of data (Cameron et al. 2012)"
   • Case study 1: Syria Deeply - In brief, this "independent digital media project...presents a new model of storytelling and information dissemination. It is designed to provide a comprehensive description of the Syrian conflict from a variety of angles and acts as a continuous and consistent means of covering a chaotic conflict."
   • Case study 2: Monitoring dangerous speech - "The first real test of the SwiftRiver platform came in the form of the UMATI project, which was prompted by the increasing incidence of hate speech in Kenya in recent years. The UMATI project was designed to feed data into the Uchaguzi platform, which was to be used to monitor and provide information about election polls. Using SwiftRiver to collect data streams from various online sources and aggregate them into a uniform platform, the UMATI project seeks to set a definition of hate or dangerous speech, forward instances of dangerous speech to the Uchaguzi platform, define a process for election monitoring that is capable of replication, and improve civic education about hate speech."
   • Case study 3: Social platforms and the Mumbai bombing - Social media tools and strategies are described here in response to the July 14 2011 bombings at 3 separate locations in Mumbai. For example: "A social media curation tool, Storyful, was...used to generate a Mumbai terrorist attack page and integrated reports from Indian television stations, Google Maps and Twitter accounts. Storyful works by integrating still images, videos and social media into a single storyboard. The storyboard was able to gather reports from bystanders and eyewitnesses that journalists were unable to reach."
2. Social networking and social media for action - "This section looks at how citizens are using social networks and social media, particularly during complex emergencies characterised by political unrest or conflict, or both. There is value in investigating citizens' use of these technologies because, being a trusted communications medium, social media have considerable influence, which can be positive or negative. If humanitarian agencies are serious about expanding the amount of information provided at times of crisis, they must take a serious look at how social networks and social media are used, what their limitations are, and what possibilities there are for working more closely with citizens to promote conflict reduction, monitor violence and increase dialogue for peace."
   • Case study 4: Monitoring the Egyptian transition - "In 2010 Ushahidi launched the U-Shahid project for Egypt (ushahidi means 'testimony' in Swahili), enabling the Development and Institutionalization Support Centre to use Ushahidi software to crowdsource election monitoring during the nation's democratic transition."
   • Case study 5: Uchaguzi and the Kenyan elections - "Through the Uchaguzi platform, citizens can report any incidents or concerns related to the electoral process by SMS [text message], Twitter, Facebook, email or using an online form. The reports are then edited, translated and mapped by a team of volunteers before they are distributed to observers and agencies in the field. The platform thus facilitates collaboration between citizens, election observers, humanitarian response agencies, civil society, community-based organisations and law enforcement agencies to monitor elections in real time."
   • Case study 6: DadaabNET high-speed network - "Between 2011 and 2012 NetHope, Cisco and Inveneo designed and installed a local high-speed internet network at the [Dadaab refugee camp] complex to enable humanitarian relief organisations to communicate, coordinate, share and generally increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their work in the region."
   • Case study 7: The Standby Task Force and the Libya Crisis Map - "The Standby Task Force (SBTF) is a volunteer platform and a shared space designed to assist crisis-affected communities through the use of technology. In response to crises in Haiti, Chile and Pakistan, it was conceived as a means of streamlining online volunteer support for crisis mappers and providing an interface for the humanitarian community."
3. Humanitarian assistance, social networks and social media - Lessons learned outlined in this section include:
   • "Social networks and social media are giving rise to new ways of working, collaboration, data gathering, and knowledge generation and dissemination.
   • The relevance of social networking and social media to humanitarian organisations and assistance processes is related to the increasing availability of and connectivity through new communication technologies throughout the developing world.
   • User-generated social media content can provide first-hand accounts of events as they occur. Having access to this information can increase the situational awareness of agency staff.
   • When effectively collated and mapped, socially mediated crisis information can help humanitarian organisations target assistance more effectively and more promptly.
   • New software tools are being developed to help agencies 'mine' social media to provide early warning of events as they unfold.
   • Humanitarian organisations do, however, face the risk of information overload, which has damaging consequences.
   • Within the existing cluster system humanitarian staff are still largely unable to deal with large inflows of digital data because of structural difficulties associated with how communication and information are currently handled within the system...
   • Few mechanisms exist for making shared data of direct use to emergency responders. In addition, mechanisms are required for the sharing of data between agencies with competing priorities, even in the absence of direct collaboration. The information that is voluntarily submitted by crisis mappers and the public, combined with the speed with which the data flow, serve only to exacerbate the sense of overload felt by information managers.
   • Expectations about what should be known in emergency response operations have dramatically increased, partly as a result of the data received from volunteers....There is now an almost instant contribution of information to emergency responses as a consequence of crisis mapping, but this should not diminish the role of preparedness and context mapping - for example, of the communication environment - before events occur.
   • The experience from recent crowdsourcing and crisis-mapping efforts highlights a need for greater coordination between all humanitarian actors and agencies and for a rethink of how humanitarian clusters interact with volunteer groups and affected communities."
   • Case study 8: The Pakistan floods and CrisisCommons - CrisisCommons draws on and supports CrisisCamps, which seeks to "connect global networks of volunteers through the use of creative problem solving technologies such as wikis to help communities during times of crisis. "During the floods a PakReport site and map were created to provide up-to-date, verified data from the affected areas. The CrisisCamps contributed reports to this site and offered coding support, as well as producing a step-by-step document on how to use PakReport. CrisisCamps volunteers worked to ensure that the imagery being added to the map was the latest, as well as plotting the geographic locations of SMSs from people asking for assistance (geocoding)."
   • Case study 9: Google Crisis Response tools - These tools, which have been used by "a number of organisations in their response to global crises" include: "resource pages with up-to-date emergency information, a 'person finder' web application to find missing people and connect friends and loved ones, and an online crisis map displaying geographic information, storm warnings, shelter locations and the locations of power outages."
   • Case study 10: Information management wikis - "ICT4Peace operates through a number of initiatives, including crisis information management wikis. The wikis collate vital information from government and UN [United Nations] systems in disaster- or crisis-stricken areas alongside other information. They have been used in response to the Libyan conflict, the Mali crisis, the Pakistan floods and the Haiti earthquake. ICT4Peace also operates to promote cyber-security and develop a safe, secure internet."
   • Case study 11: Ushahidi and the Haiti earthquake - "The Ushahidi platform plots incidents, feeds news from various sources, and is navigable via the map. It provides an immediate and accessible summary of emerging humanitarian assistance priorities, evolving rapidly and offering a data collection capacity and functionality that is far superior, when compared with face-to-face modes of data collection."

A conclusion and two appendices follow - one focused on crisis mapping and crowdsourcing social networks and one focused on crisis mapping and crowdsourcing software resources. The paper concludes with a list of references.