Blog 5 â Crowdsourcing in times of crisis
  The broad definition of crowdsourcing is "the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers" (Merriam Webster Online 2014)
This week we have looked at the value of crowdsourcing, particularly in a crisis as a means to distribute information instantly via written messages and pictures. Whether it be a natural disaster, political crisis or human rights violations, it certainly appears crowdsourcing through social media has allowed an instant flow of information and particularly in times of crisis has fast become very valuable in keeping updated on a situation.
The example of the South East Queensland floods of 2011 clearly showed social media played an important role in crisis communication and management, delivering instant updates and images from many locations during the crisis and enabling resources to be deployed where urgently needed. However, the use of social media communication during a crisis is still developing and to date its use is ad hoc (Bruns et. al, 2012). It has been recommended that emergency services develop more comprehensive strategies and staff training for the use of social media during crisis. (Bruns et. al, 2012).
We also looked at Ushahidi which emerged in 2007 and gave ordinary citizens a platform to report human rights abuses during the Kenyan presidential elections. This platform has now been developed to allow anyone to start their own social mapping website and enable the public to post reports, videos and photos which are grouped to it. It has been hailed by Professor Larry Diamond at Stanford University as a âliberation technologyâ, while Professor Clay Shirky at New York University has described it as a catalyst for social movements (Ford, H 2012).
Concerns regarding social mapping platforms centre around the authenticity and integrity of information. The ABC identifies the key risks in using tools like Ushahidi as being trustworthiness and timeliness of information submitted as conditions during a crisis or emergency tend to change constantly (Posetti & Lo 2012). In summary though, I can see the use of crowdsourcing platforms will continue to grow and develop with the enormous advantages still outweighing some of the current disadvanges of data verification and timeliness.
Bruns, A, Burgess, J, Crawford, K & Shaw, F 2012, #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods, Arc Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, pp 7-10, viewed 17 September 2014, <http://www.cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf>.
'crowdsourcing entry' 2014, Merriam Webster, viewed 20 January 2015, <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcing>.
Ford, H 2012, 'Crowd Wisdom', Index on Censorship, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 33-39.
Postetti, J & Lo, P 2012, The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 34-39.
