Crowdsourcing in Times of Crisis
In light of natural disaster and crisis, social media appears to dictate how the global community understands and interacts with current issues. Mainstream news and emergency services often encourage the public to become engaged and involved in times of crisis that may require donations and support. This process is called ‘crowdsourcing’, and is defined as the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet. This type of outreach was employed throughout the course of the Haiti earthquake, Japan tsunami, Queensland floods and Black Saturday bushfires.
Although popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube consistently behave as the networked structure for crowdsourcing activity, the popularity of this kind of communication has resulted in the outburst of sites and services such as Kickstarter that offer a platform for community-based involvement and donations. Kickstarter asks that users ‘explore creative projects and help bring bold new ideas into the world’ by navigating through a range of proposals and committing money to these areas of design and strategy. Many of these projects are entirely creative, some exist for the purpose of sheer humour, while others are centred around charity and crisis.
Social media has encouraged the public to become involved with crisis whether it be through the process of providing donations, sharing opinion through comment and conversation, publishing various creative works such as articles, memes and images which draw attention to current issues, releasing captured footage or personal experiences of relevance or simply by reading updates and information to become informed.
Referencing
Ford, H 2012, ‘Crowd Wisdom’, Index on Censorship, pp 33-39