How crowdsourcing is used during a crisis.
Social media is responsible for many changes in today’s society and the way we communicate as a whole. It has many positive traits and possibly just as many negative traits. The words ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘social media’ make for an interesting subject, especially in times of a crisis. Over recent years and because of way too many disasters and crisis situations users of social media have played a major role in communicating information through their posts, imagery and videos to the world as a whole and specifically to family and friends of loved ones in need.
Source: Maranoa Regional Council 2011
Crowdsourcing also has the ability to assist in supporting imperative decision-making, especially in time poor crisis situations (Callaghan 2016, p. 238). As an example, in the South East QLD floods of 2011, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook were used extensively to communicate and disseminate information and updates from authorities and residents (Bruns et al. 2012, p. 1). Twitter played a major role in ‘crisis communication’ with the hashtag #qldfloods being used as the main communicating tool (Bruns et al. 2012, p. 12).
News media outlets such as the ABC realise the value and importance of utilising social media as a way to quickly broadcast information and to tap into community supplied material such as images and video (Posetti & Lo 2012). This is especially true during a disaster, these witnesses are on the ground and their imagery is often imperative into understanding the scope of the situation. While the latter poses a risk mainly due to the trustworthiness and timeliness of the information received or available, the ABC believe crowdsourcing is highly valuable, especially given that people of today want to receive up to date information, particularly in a crisis situation (Posetti & Lo 2012).
With the advances in technology and social media platforms, information collected during a disaster is often used in social mapping (Callaghan 2016, p. 240). This information is geotagged with coordinates and through the use of inspection and authentication, it is integrated into a central map allowing disaster recovery efforts to be underpinned by the practice of crowdsourcing (Callaghan 2016, p. 240). Again there are risks involved with how authentic the information is and crisis-mapping platform Ushahidi is testament to this issue as they try and verify information received during disasters (Dietrich & Pawlak 2013, p. 1).
Bruns, A, Burgess, J, Crawford, K & Shaw, F 2012, ‘#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods’, ArcCentre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, viewed 2 February 2017, <http://www.cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf>.
Callaghan, CW 2016, ‘Disaster management, crowdsourced R&D and probabilistic innovation theory: Toward real time disaster response capability’, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, vol. 17, pp. 238-250.
Dietrich, C & Pawlak, P 2013, ‘Crowd-sourcing – crisis response in the digital age’, European Union Institute for Security Studies, November 2013, vol. 39, pp. 1-2.
Idisaster 2012a, ‘Brisbane city Qld Twitter post’ [image], in idisaster, Worpress, viewed 3 February 2017, <https://idisaster.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/brisbane41.png>.
Idisaster 2012b, ‘Brisbane - Ushahidi map’ [image], in idisaster, Worpress, viewed 3 February 2017, <https://idisaster.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/brisbane.png>.
Maranoa Regional Council 2011, ‘Roma2 – Floods’ [image], in Woolly Days, Wordpress, viewed 3 February 2017, <https://woollydays.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/roma2.jpg>.
Postetti, J & Lo, P 2012, ‘The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication’, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 34-39.
