Using social media for social problems: from dog poo to Ebola Dr Julia Meaton

Social Media and Mobile Technology • Increasing numbers of individuals, groups, businesses and organisations use social media to collaborate and share various types of information • The number of people carrying a device capable of capturing images and connecting to the Internet is increasing

Citizen Reporters • The combination of the above result in a large number of potential ‘reporters’ each with a far reaching internet audience • These new ‘Citizen Reporters’ are greater in number and represent a far wider geographical area than traditional media reporters

Sharing Information • This new power to capture information and share it in real time has been demonstrated during : • Disasters such as Haiti, Fukushima • Social and political change such as the 2007 elections in Kenya and Arab uprisings

Kenyan Elections • 3 Kenyans (deputy prime minister, head of civil service and police commissioner) charged with crimes against humanity • 1,300 deaths in violence following 2007 presidential election • Web and mobile phones brought the activities to global attention

• Violence erupted when incumbent Kibaki was declared winner in face of charges of vote rigging by his challenger Odinga • Violence spread to remote regions beyond the reach of national or international media • Ushahidi (witness in swahili) crowdmapping – kenyans reported violence via mobile phones • Thousands of witnesses complied online map of violence

Birth of Ushahidi • ‘an ad hoc group of technologists and bloggers hammering out software in a couple of days trying to figure out a way to gather more and better information about the post-election violence’ • ‘any techies out there willing to do a mash up of where the violence and destruction is occurring’ blogpost in 2007

Arab Spring

Haiti

Fukushima

Sharing Information • Images captured at the scene of an incident and shared in real time are powerful in many ways: – During incidents public actively seek information – images shared via social media can help them to make sense of an event – They provide information to those responding to an incident before they arrive at the scene – The images can be requested as evidence – The image itself can become a community where people come together to comment on the content

Hudson River Crash

Crowdmapping • Collecting information via social media in relation to a specific topic is often termed as Crowdsourcing. This information can be made into a more powerful tool through a process called Crowd Mapping • A visual, geographic representation of the information • E.g. Google Maps (and others) used to display the source of information as points on a map • An early example of this was following a large explosion in Oregon, a web developer who heard the ‘boom’ created a Google Map and asked people to plot a coloured pin on the map based on the intensity of the noise (red being the loudest) • The police used the map and based their search around the highest concentration of red pins. They discovered the remnants of an exploded pipe bomb.

Crowd Mapping • Wikification of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) by the masses (Kamel Boulos, 2005) • OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org) • GoogleEarth (www.google.com/earth/index.html) • www.ushahidi.com • Crowdsourced wikipedias of the earth • Millions of users contributing their own layers to GE, photos, videos,notes

The Hunt for MH370 • DigitalGlobe, Inc., launched a crowdsourcing campaign to allow anyone to help look for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 by combing through satellite images for clues of its whereabouts. • The search drew so many participants on its first day March 17, that it crashed the company’s website, with 500,000 visitors wanting to help find the missing Boeing 777. • Anyone could search the satellite images, tagging anything that looks suspicious. Each pixel on a computer screen represents half a meter on the ocean’s surface.

Health and Emergency Planning Applications • Carrying a device capable of capturing and sharing information also makes the user an audience for targeting information • This can be useful at all stages, for example: – Health messages can be targeted to specific online communities – Communities of Interest, or Communities of Practice can be targeted to share best practice, training and lessons identified

Emergency Planning • The potential for using social media in the field of EP is broad and far reaching as it can assist during the mitigation, response and recovery stages • Flu mapping/disease monitoring/outbreak reporting – bird flu • Within the UK Field there is little evidence of it being utilised to its full potential • But already being used elsewhere -

Ebola

More recently… • Digital jedis – super typhoon ruby, December 2014

And the more local….

Other applications for local environmental use • • • • • • • • • •

Footpath monitoring Illegal waste disposal Identifying tree diseases – ash die-back disease Wildlife tracking – elephants and lions – but also red squirrels and rare British species – Springwatch? Coffee mapping in Ethiopian forests Sites for collecting baboon/civet coffee Air quality Flooding – historic and real time Accidents – rta Ice on roads etc

Crime Incidents Locally produced community mapping Sightings of suspects Local Facebook sites – naming and shaming! Sexual harrassment (Egypt HarrassMap) Police generated maps – comparisons with crowd sourced • War reporting – 2009 Gaza war (al Jazeera) • Local Facebook sites – naming and shaming! • Etc etc……. • • • • •

Crowd sourcing - Business potential • Commodity costs in stores – milk, beer and lettuce prices in New York • Availability of items in stores at Christmas – Frozen toys! • Logo designs – 99designs • Name a brand – namethis • Product design – Ponoko • Funding generation – films, projects, charity initiatives…..poo fairies?

Huddersfield University • • • • • •

Crowd map of international activity Research Recruitment Contacts Conferences To drive internationalisation strategy

Professional failure to engage • Emergency planning – research on Local Resilience Forums – sporadic engagement/ability • Local authorities – slow on uptake • Academia – largely failing to explore the methodology (except in Geography) • Need to focus on what young people are using or we become dinosaurs playing catch up...