New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts

The Role of Information and Social Networks - The theme of the report is the tension between the potential benefits to humanitarian efforts from harnessing new communication technologies and the risks they pose to relief efforts and media coverage.  The report examines how authorities and humanitarian aid organizations can best balance the opportunities and challenges of exploiting different technologies at key stages on the timeline of crisis.  These key stages include: early warning and preparedness, immediate humanitarian relief, and reconstruction and long-term development.

The report begins by citing the example of the 2009 political protests in Iran.  On June 13th 2009, thousands of Iranians protested against what they felt was a flawed election.  The Iranian regime in power attempted to suffocate any opposing information by restricting internet access and by not allowing journalists to cover the protests.  Texting, Twitter and Facebook became vital in keeping the protests organized and spreading the happenings to foreign media.  In fact the US Government actually had twitter reschedule a network upgrade.  that would've shut the site down for a few hours.  There were little checks and balances to the information coming out of Iran and both both hoaxers and Iranian government took advantage of that by posting false information.   The event was dubbed "Twitter in Tehran" and it demonstrated both the opportunities and challenges of having these communication technologies readily available.  Unfortunately false information did spread and receive attention but just as importantly true information was allowed to do the same and it created global awareness to the events.

Recently there is a trend that proves Humanitarian crisis is on the rise.  Human attacks such as terrorism and natural disasters caused from climate change are the main culprits.  The impact of these crisis is most felt on the least developed countries.  These countries also have the weakest communication infrastructure and this poses significant problems to governments and aid agencies looking to help.  During a crisis there must be a an early warning response and it needs to be one-way communication that is quick and accurate.  During the warning response and beyond information flows must be two-way to be effective.  With cell phones and Twitter/Facebook, information from the external world to the affected and from affected to agencies that want to help is readily available and must be utilized.  For this information to help helpful it must be accurate and trusted, thus authentication is a key challenge.  To improve two-way accuracy developed and underdeveloped countries must be educated on the proper usage of social networks.       

Social Media aids humanitarian efforts and causes divergent coverage of Japan Quake

How social media is helping -The role of social media during international and national disasters is now widely acknowledged globally and the result is social media being placed highly on crisis communication agendas.  During the earthquake crisis in Japan social media has helped three distinct groups.  First there are the victims of the earthquake.  US Google Developer created Person Finder for families looking to discover the whereabouts of friends and family.  It was created after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and is now helping those affected in Japan.  At last count, Person Finder contains 306,600 names and has been instrumental in helping victims.  News Outlets have tapped into social media to improve their coverage of natural disasters such as the earthquake in Japan.  In Japan traditional methods of communication (television, telephone lines, radio etc.) were lost immediately after the earthquake but social media wasn't affected.  Only an hour after the earthquake tweets coming out of Tokyo reached 1,2000 a minute.  Just a few hours after tags like prayforJapan and earthquake were tweeted thousdands of times a second.  Twitter gave victims a voice to be heard – news stations like CNN utilized user-generated information like images and accounts from ground-zero to raise awareness of the crisis.  Finally there is the Relief Aid.  With such a large scale disaster, getting charitable donations and relief aid to affected areas is critical, costly and difficult.  With the help of Twitter, Facebook and text messaging, Relief Aid foundations are able to raise awareness rapidly and make it easier for people to make donations.
How social media has been disruptive - There is a stark contrast between the way in which foreign and Japanese media have covered the earthquake.  Western Media has focused on the nuke scare and has been running sensationalistic headlines.  This, and the fear of the unknown, has lead to foreigners in Japan receiving phone calls from family and friends pleading with them to leave Japan.  That differs from the way Japanese media is covering the situation and actual gravity of the situation.  Most Japanese citizens are going about their daily lives and routines as normal.  Most children are back in school and playing outside.  Most businesses have resumed operations.  Many attribute this gap in attitude to the differing information people are receiving from their media sources.  Hiroshi Ishikawa, the general manager of the National Press Club in Japan says that "deep down, the Japanese media has a view that the situation will be resolved but that the foreign media is portraying the situation as getting out of control."

From Innovation to Revolution

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67325/malcolm-gladwell-and-clay-shirky/from-innovation-to-revolution

Summary: Do the tools of social media make it possible for protesters to challenge their governments? Malcolm Gladwell argues that there is no evidence that they do; Clay Shirky disagrees.

 

From Innovation to Revolution -  Malcolm Gladwell states that just because innovations in communications technology happen doesn't mean that they make a real difference.  He believes that new communication technologies and social mediums only make a real difference is if they solve a problem that was actually a problem in the first place.  Malcolm isn't ignorant to the fact that some recent protests have used the tools of social media but he doesn't see where that in the absence of social media, those uprisings wouldn't have been possible.  

  Shirky responds to Gladwell's argument that the internet and social media have altered the competitive landscape.  The internet and other communication technologies have enabled insurgents and protesters to play by different rules than incumbents.  Social media has allowed insurgents to adopt new strategies and that those strategies have always been crucial.  Digital networks have eased and increased in range public speech by citizens.  Social mediums have increased the speed and scale of group coordination.     

The Political Power of Social Media

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media

Summary: Discussion of the political impact of social media has focused on the power of mass protests to topple governments. In fact, social media's real potential lies in supporting civil society and the public sphere -- which will produce change over years and decades, not weeks or months.

CLAY SHIRKY is Professor of New Media at New York University

The Political Power of Social Media - Over the last two decades the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to billions.  Social media is now an innate part of life for civil society worldwide.  Global communication is now more intimate than ever and has more participants than ever.  It is easier than ever to have your voice heard and hear the voices of others.  The immediacy and fluidity of social media allows citizens to create change in the present but its long term scope is beginning to show as well.   In 2001, Philippine President Joseph Estrada was on trial for impeachment.  Loyalists in the Philippine Congress voted to exclude key evidence against Estrada.  Just hours after the decision was announced thousands of angry Filipinos protested at a major crossroad in Manila.  The protest was arranged by a forwarded text message reading, "Go 2 EDSA.  Wear blk."  In the end over a million people arrived and the public's ability to coordinate such a rapid and massive response forced the country's legislators to allow the critical evidence to be presented.  Estrada was impeached just days later.  This protest marked the first time that social media helped force out a national leader but as we've seen recently it wasn't the last.  Social media has given people more opportunities to engage in public speech and undertake collective action.  Social media has increased our ability to coordinate public demand change. 

It takes a village to find a phone

The ongoing saga a lost phone in a New York City cab caused speaks to the power and effects of new social mediums.  

1. Technology itself isn't powerful.  Technology only becomes powerful when there is ready participation from a large, distributed group.  Groups can be very powerful when given the right tools.  When the phone thief Sasha said "I never thought a phone would cause me so many problems," she was inaccurate.  It was the unified group on the other end of the line that caused her so many problems.
2. Social mediums such as texting, emails and message boards allow us to be connected with one another but it also could lead to us being scrutinized in public if we are not careful.   
3. We can now be judged morally not just by our intimate peers but also on a global scale because of the internet.  Returning lost items for example.  It's easy to keep something such as a dollar bill we find a street because we don't have the knowledge of where and who it came from.  But, it's difficult not to return a wallet with an ID inside.  We used to just have to bat these feelings of guilt inside or ourselves but now it's possible that we can be judged for these decisions on a large public scale.
4. Technology today makes it easy for someone to get our thoughts and it's also easy to put them into a database.  What we text or email can stick with us for a long time and can hurt us down the road.  The story in this chapter detailed how Sasha and her families' lies came back to haunt them.  Readers of the website had a detailed database to go through that spotlighted all the lies and how their stories simply didn't add up.
5. A unified group of citizens with diverse expertise can cause change.  Users of content used to just take what they could get but now it's a two-way street.  Users feedback steers the content they are receiving.  User feedback can also cause change when coming from a united front.  The police initially labeled this case as the phone being lost, but public out cry eventually got the police to treat the case as theft.

 

Clay Shirky: Review

Clay Shirky encapsulated the current state of modern social devices and their influences on the social world.  Social devices such as cell phones with picture and video messaging, Twitter, and Facebook are enabling users to report news as it happens.  Shirky uses the massive earthquake that recently happened in China as an example.  Citizens reported news on the earthquake as it happened by uploading videos and photos onto the internet for all of the world to see.  Breaking news coming from Twitter is a new, developing trend but it doesn't mean the end of professional journalism.  We still need professionally trained journalists to interpret events and gain access to and publicize information that an amateur cannot.  If anything, these amateur reports coming from Twitter and other social media will only push the professional journalists to be more proactive and creative, which will lead to enhanced news coverage for the audience.  These social devices also have an influence on companies outside of the journalist market.  Companies and even politicians now must understand that users can not only communicate back to the company but they can also communicate with each other.  This type of innovation can happen anywhere and innovation now moves through the world.

Clay Shirky: How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history