Social Media Use in Crisis and Risk Communication: Emergencies, Concerns and Awareness

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Access Book edited by Harald Hornmoen and Klas Backholm: ” This book is about how different communicators – whether professionals, such as crisis managers, first responders and journalists, or private citizens and disaster victims – have used social media to communicate about risks and crises. It is also about how these very different actors can play a crucial role in mitigating or preventing crises. How can they use social media to strengthen their own and the public’s awareness and understanding of crises when they unfold? How can they use social media to promote resilience during crises and the ability to deal with the after-effects? Moreover, what can they do to avoid using social media in a manner that weakens the situation awareness of crisis workers and citizens, or obstructs effective emergency management?

The RESCUE (Researching Social Media and Collaborative Software Use in Emergency Situations) project, on which this book is based, has sought to enable a more efficient and appropriate use of social media among key communicators, such as journalists and government actors involved in crisis management. Through empirical studies, and by drawing on relevant theory, the collection aims to improve our understanding of how social media have been used in different types of risks and crises. Building on our empirical work, we provide research-based input into how social media can be used efficiently by different communicators in a way appropriate to the specific crisis and to the concerns of the public.

We address our questions by presenting new research-based knowledge on social media use during different crises: the terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011; the central European floods in Austria in 2013; and the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014. The social media platforms analysed include the most popular ones in the affected areas at the time of the crises: Twitter and Facebook. By addressing such different cases, the book will move the field of crisis communication in social media beyond individual studies towards providing knowledge which is valid across situations….(More)”.

Emerging Labour Market Data Sources towards Digital Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Nikos Askitas, Rafik Mahjoubi, Pedro S. Martins, Koffi Zougbede for Paris21/OECD: “Experience from both technology and policy making shows that solutions for labour market improvements are simply choices of new, more tolerable problems. All data solutions supporting digital Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) will have to incorporate a roadmap of changes rather than an unrealistic super-solution. The ideal situation is a world in which labour market participants engage in intelligent strategic behavior in an informed, fair and sophisticated manner.

Labour market data captures transactions within labour market processes. In order to successfully capture such data, we need to understand the specifics of these market processes. Designing an ecosystem of labour market matching facilitators and rules of engagement for contributing to a lean and streamlined Logistics Management and Information System (LMIS) is the best way to create Big Data with context relevance. This is in contrast with pre-existing Big Data captured by global job boards or social media for which relevance is limited by the technology access gap and its variations across the developing world.

Network effects occur in technology and job facilitation, as seen in the developed world. Managing and instigating the right network effects might be crucial to avoid fragmented stagnation and inefficiency. This is key to avoid throwing money behind wrong choices that do not gain traction.

A mixed mode approach is possibly the ideal approach for developing countries. Mixing offline and online elements correctly will be crucial in bridging the technology access gap and reaping the benefits of digitisation at the same time.

Properly incentivising the various entities is critical for progression, and more specifically the private sector, which is significantly more agile and inventive, has “skin in the game” and a long-term commitment to the conditions in the field, has intimate knowledge of how to solve the the technology gap and brings a better understanding of the particular ambient context they are operating in. To summarise: Big Data starts small.

Managing expectations and creating incentives for the various stakeholders will be crucial in establishing digitally supported TVET. Developing the right business models will be crucial in the short term and beyond, and it will be the result of creating the right mix of technological and policy expertise with good knowledge of the situation on the ground….(More)”.

Crowdsourced social media data for disaster management: Lessons from the PetaJakarta.org project

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

R.I.Ogie, R.J.Clarke, H.Forehead and P.Perez in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems: “The application of crowdsourced social media data in flood mapping and other disaster management initiatives is a burgeoning field of research, but not one that is without challenges. In identifying these challenges and in making appropriate recommendations for future direction, it is vital that we learn from the past by taking a constructively critical appraisal of highly-praised projects in this field, which through real-world implementations have pioneered the use of crowdsourced geospatial data in modern disaster management. These real-world applications represent natural experiments, each with myriads of lessons that cannot be easily gained from computer-confined simulations.

This paper reports on lessons learnt from a 3-year implementation of a highly-praised project- the PetaJakarta.org project. The lessons presented derive from the key success factors and the challenges associated with the PetaJakarta.org project. To contribute in addressing some of the identified challenges, desirable characteristics of future social media-based disaster mapping systems are discussed. It is envisaged that the lessons and insights shared in this study will prove invaluable within the broader context of designing socio-technical systems for crowdsourcing and harnessing disaster-related information….(More)”.

United Nations accidentally exposed passwords and sensitive information to the whole internet

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Micah Lee at The Intercept: “The United Nations accidentally published passwords, internal documents, and technical details about websites when it misconfigured popular project management service Trello, issue tracking app Jira, and office suite Google Docs.

The mistakes made sensitive material available online to anyone with the proper link, rather than only to specific users who should have access. Affected data included credentials for a U.N. file server, the video conferencing system at the U.N.’s language school, and a web development environment for the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Security researcher Kushagra Pathak discovered the accidental leak and notified the U.N. about what he found a little over a month ago. As of today, much of the material appears to have been taken down.

In an online chat, Pathak said he found the sensitive information by running searches on Google. The searches, in turn, produced public Trello pages, some of which contained links to the public Google Docs and Jira pages.

Trello projects are organized into “boards” that contain lists of tasks called “cards.” Boards can be public or private. After finding one public Trello board run by the U.N., Pathak found additional public U.N. boards by using “tricks like by checking if the users of one Trello board are also active on some other boards and so on.” One U.N. Trello board contained links to an issue tracker hosted on Jira, which itself contained even more sensitive information. Pathak also discovered links to documents hosted on Google Docs and Google Drive that were configured to be accessible to anyone who knew their web addresses. Some of these documents contained passwords….Here is just some of the sensitive information that the U.N. accidentally made accessible to anyone who Googled for it:

  • A social media team promoting the U.N.’s “peace and security” efforts published credentials to access a U.N. remote file access, or FTP, server in a Trello card coordinating promotion of the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. It is not clear what information was on the server; Pathak said he did not connect to it.
  • The U.N.’s Language and Communication Programme, which offers language courses at U.N. Headquarters in New York City, published credentials for a Google account and a Vimeo account. The program also exposed, on a publicly visible Trello board, credentials for a test environment for a human resources web app. It also made public a Google Docs spreadsheet, linked from a public Trello board, that included a detailed meeting schedule for 2018, along with passwords to remotely access the program’s video conference system to join these meetings.
  • One public Trello board used by the developers of Humanitarian Response and ReliefWeb, both websites run by the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, included sensitive information like internal task lists and meeting notes. One public card from the board had a PDF, marked “for internal use only,” that contained a map of all U.N. buildings in New York City. …(More)”.

To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Social Science Research Council: “For decades, the social sciences have generated knowledge vital to guiding public policy, informing business, and understanding and improving the human condition. But today, the social sciences face serious threats. From dwindling federal funding to public mistrust in institutions to widespread skepticism about data, the infrastructure supporting the social sciences is shifting in ways that threaten to undercut research and knowledge production.

How can we secure social knowledge for future generations?

This question has guided the Social Science Research Council’s Task Force. Following eighteen months of consultation with key players as well as internal deliberation, we have identified both long-term developments and present threats that have created challenges for the social sciences, but also created unique opportunities. And we have generated recommendations to address these issues.

Our core finding focuses on the urgent need for new partnerships and collaborations among several key players: the federal government, academic institutions, donor organizations, and the private sector. Several decades ago, these institutions had clear zones of responsibility in producing social knowledge, with the federal government constituting the largest portion of funding for basic research. Today, private companies represent an increasingly large share not just of research and funding, but also the production of data that informs the social sciences, from smart phone usage to social media patterns.

In addition, today’s social scientists face unprecedented demands for accountability, speedy publication, and generation of novel results. These pressures have emerged from the fragmented institutional foundation that undergirds research. That foundation needs a redesign in order for the social sciences to continue helping our communities address problems ranging from income inequality to education reform.

To build a better future, we identify five areas of action: Funding, Data, Ethics, Research Quality, and Research Training. In each area, our recommendations range from enlarging corporate-academic pilot programs to improving social science training in digital literacy.

A consistent theme is that none of the measures, if taken unilaterally, can generate optimal outcomes. Instead, we have issued a call to forge a new research compact to harness the potential of the social sciences for improving human lives. That compact depends on partnerships, and we urge the key players in the construction of social science knowledge—including universities, government, foundations, and corporations—to act swiftly. With the right realignments, the security of social knowledge lies within our reach….(More)”

Satellite Images and Shadow Analysis: How The Times Verifies Eyewitness Videos

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 Christoph Koettl at the New York Times: “Was a video of a chemical attack really filmed in Syria? What time of day did an airstrike happen? Which military unit was involved in a shooting in Afghanistan? Is this dramatic image of glowing clouds really showing wildfires in California?

These are some of the questions the video team at The New York Times has to answer when reviewing raw eyewitness videos, often posted to social media. It can be a highly challenging process, as misinformation shared through digital social networks is a serious problem for a modern-day newsroom. Visual information in the digital age is easy to manipulate, and even easier to spread.

What is thus required for conducting visual investigations based on social media content is a mix of traditional journalistic diligence and cutting-edge internet skills, as can be seen in our recent investigation into the chemical attack in Douma, Syria.

 The following provides some insight into our video verification process. It is not a comprehensive overview, but highlights some of our most trusted techniques and tools….(More)”.

The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Lee H. Humphreys: “How sharing the mundane details of daily life did not start with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube but with pocket diaries, photo albums, and baby books.

Social critiques argue that social media have made us narcissistic, that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are all vehicles for me-promotion. In The Qualified Self, Lee Humphreys offers a different view. She shows that sharing the mundane details of our lives—what we ate for lunch, where we went on vacation, who dropped in for a visit—didn’t begin with mobile devices and social media. People have used media to catalog and share their lives for several centuries. Pocket diaries, photo albums, and baby books are the predigital precursors of today’s digital and mobile platforms for posting text and images. The ability to take selfies has not turned us into needy narcissists; it’s part of a longer story about how people account for everyday life.

Humphreys refers to diaries in which eighteenth-century daily life is documented with the brevity and precision of a tweet, and cites a nineteenth-century travel diary in which a young woman complains that her breakfast didn’t agree with her. Diaries, Humphreys explains, were often written to be shared with family and friends. Pocket diaries were as mobile as smartphones, allowing the diarist to record life in real time. Humphreys calls this chronicling, in both digital and nondigital forms, media accounting. The sense of self that emerges from media accounting is not the purely statistics-driven “quantified self,” but the more well-rounded qualified self. We come to understand ourselves in a new way through the representations of ourselves that we create to be consumed…(More)”.

The Promise and Peril of the Digital Knowledge Loop

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Excerpt of Albert Wenger’s draft book World After Capital: “The zero marginal cost and universality of digital technologies are already impacting the three phases of learning, creating and sharing, giving rise to a Digital Knowledge Loop. This Digital Knowledge Loop holds both amazing promise and great peril, as can be seen in the example of YouTube.

YouTube has experienced astounding growth since its release in beta form in 2005. People around the world now upload over 100 hours of video content to YouTube every minute. It is difficult to grasp just how much content that is. If you were to spend 100 years watching YouTube twenty-four hours a day, you still wouldn’t be able to watch all the video that people upload in the course of a single week. YouTube contains amazing educational content on topics as diverse as gardening and theoretical math. Many of those videos show the promise of the Digital Knowledge loop. For example, Destin Sandlin, the creator of the Smarter Every Day series of videos. Destin is interested in all things science. When he learns something new, such as the make-up of butterfly wings, he creates a new engaging video sharing that with the world. But the peril of the Digital Knowledge Loop is right there as well: YouTube is also full of videos that peddle conspiracies, spread mis-information, and even incite outright hate.

Both the promise and the peril are made possible by the same characteristics of YouTube: All of the videos are available for free to anyone in the world (except for those countries in which YouTube is blocked). They are also available 24×7. And they become available globally the second someone publishes a new one. Anybody can publish a video. All you need to access these videos is an Internet connection and a smartphone—you don’t even need a laptop or other traditional computer. That means already today two to three billion people, almost half of the world’s population has access to YouTube and can participate in the Digital Knowledge Loop for good and for bad.

These characteristics, which draw on the underlying capabilities of digital technology, are also found in other systems that similarly show the promise and peril of the Digital Knowledge Loop.

Wikipedia, the collectively-produced online encyclopedia is another great example. Here is how it works at its most promising: Someone reads an entry and learns the method used by Pythagoras to approximate the number pi. They then go off and create an animation that illustrates this method. Finally, they share the animation by publishing it back to Wikipedia thus making it easier for more people to learn. Wikipedia entries result from a large collaboration and ongoing revision process, with only a single entry per topic visible at any given time (although you can examine both the history of the page and the conversations about it). What makes this possible is a piece of software known as a wiki that keeps track of all the historical edits [58]. When that process works well it raises the quality of entries over time. But when there is a coordinated effort at manipulation or insufficient editing resources, Wikipedia too can spread misinformation instantly and globally.

Wikipedia illustrates another important aspect of the Digital Knowledge Loop: it allows individuals to participate in extremely small or minor ways. If you wish, you can contribute to Wikipedia by fixing a single typo. In fact, the minimal contribution unit is just one letter! I have not yet contributed anything of length to Wikipedia, but I have fixed probably a dozen or so typos. That doesn’t sound like much, but if you get ten thousand people to fix a typo every day, that’s 3.65 million typos a year. Let’s assume that a single person takes two minutes on average to discover and fix a typo. It would take nearly fifty people working full time for a year (2500 hours) to fix 3.65 million typos.

Small contributions by many that add up are only possible in the Digital Knowledge Loop. The Wikipedia spelling correction example shows the power of such contributions. Their peril can be seen in systems such as Twitter and Facebook, where the smallest contributions are Likes and Retweets or Reposts to one’s friends or followers. While these tiny actions can amplify high quality content, they can just as easily spread mistakes, rumors and propaganda. The impact of these information cascades ranges from viral jokes to swaying the outcomes of elections and has even led to major outbreaks of violence.

Some platforms even make it possible for people to passively contribute to the Digital Knowledge Loop. The app Waze is a good example. …The promise of the Digital Knowledge Loop is broad access to a rapidly improving body of knowledge. The peril is a fragmented post-truth society constantly in conflict. Both of these possibilities are enabled by the same fundamental characteristics of digital technologies. And once again we see clearly that technology by itself does not determine the future…(More).

Is the Government More Entrepreneurial Than You Think?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 Freakonomics Radio (Podcast): We all know the standard story: our economy would be more dynamic if only the government would get out of the way. The economist Mariana Mazzucato says we’ve got that story backward. She argues that the government, by funding so much early-stage research, is hugely responsible for big successes in tech, pharma, energy, and more. But the government also does a terrible job in claiming credit — and, more important, getting a return on its investment….

Quote:

MAZZUCATO: “…And I’ve been thinking about this especially around the big data and the kind of new questions around privacy with Facebook, etc. Instead of having a situation where all the data basically gets captured, which is citizens’ data, by companies which then, in some way, we have to pay into in terms of accessing these great new services — whether they’re free or not, we’re still indirectly paying. We should have the data in some sort of public repository because it’s citizens’ data. The technology itself was funded by the citizens. What would Uber be without GPS, publicly financed? What would Google be without the Internet, publicly financed? So, the tech was financed from the state, the citizens; it’s their data. Why not completely reverse the current relationship and have that data in a public repository which companies actually have to pay into to get access to it under certain strict conditions which could be set by an independent advisory council?… (More)”

Technology Run Amok: Crisis Management in the Digital Age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Ian I. Mitroff: “The recent data controversy with Facebook highlights the tech industry as a whole was utterly unprepared for the backlash it faced as a result of its business model of selling user data to third parties. Despite the predominant role that technology plays in all of our lives, the controversy also revealed that many tech companies are reactive, rather than proactive, in addressing crises.

This book examines society’s failure to manage technology and its resulting negative consequences. Mitroff argues that the “technological mindset” is responsible for society’s unbridled obsession with technology and unless confronted, will cause one tech crisis after another. This trans-disciplinary text, edgy in its approach, will appeal to academics, students, and practitioners through its discussion of the modern technological crisis…(More)”.