Andrea H. Tapia

Good Enough is Good Enough: Overcoming Disaster Response Organizations' Slow Social Media Data Adoption

Organizations that respond to disasters hold unreasonable standards for data arising from technology-enabled citizen contributions. This has strong negative potential for the ability of these responding organizations to incorporate these data into appropriate decision points. We argue that the landscape of the use of social media data in crisis response is varied, with pockets of use and acceptance among organizations. In this paper we present findings from interviews conducted with representatives from large international disaster response organizations concerning their use of social media data in crisis response. We found that emergency responders already operate with less than reliable, or “good enough,” information in offline practice, and that social media data are useful to responders, but only in specific crisis situations. Also, responders do use social media, but only within their known community and extended network. This shows that trust first begins with people and not data. Lastly, we demonstrate the barriers used by responding organizations have gone beyond discussions of trustworthiness and data quality to that of more operational issues.

Social Media in Crisis: When Professional Responders Meet Digital Volunteers

Abstract In this paper, we examine the socio-technical impact that social media has had on coordination between professional emergency responders and digital volunteers. Drawing from the research literature, we outline the problem space and explore ways to improve coordination and collaboration between these two groups. Possible improvements include mediators, revisiting trust, emergency policy and process changes, a bounded social environment, digital volunteer data as context, and computational solutions. As the space matures and collaboration improves, we predict that professional responders will begin to rely on the data and products produced by digital volunteers. Volunteer groups will be challenged to mature as well, to develop volunteer management systems, permanent staff, data management practices, and training for new volunteers to ensure consistent response to professional responders as needed.

Mapping auroral activity with Twitter

Twitter is a popular, publicly-accessible, social media service that has proven useful in mapping large-scale events in real-time. In this study, for the first time, the use of Twitter as a measure of auroral activity is investigated. Peaks in the number of aurora-related tweets are found to frequently coincide with geomagnetic disturbances (detection rate of 91%). Additionally, the number of daily aurora-related tweets is found to strongly correlate with several auroral strength proxies (ravg ≈ 0.7). An examination is made of the bias for location and time of day within Twitter data, and a first order correction of these effects is presented. Overall, the results suggest that Twitter can provide both specific details about an individual aurora and accurate real-time indication of when, and even from where, an aurora is visible.

Coordinating humanitarian information: The problem of organizational and technical trajectories

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine two humanitarian information coordination bodies. The goals of both coordination bodies are the same, to find mechanisms for multiple organizations, engaged in humanitarian relief, to coordinate efforts around information technology and management. Despite the similarity in goals, each coordination body has taken a different path, one toward defining the problem and solution in a more technical sense and the other as defining the problem and solution as more organizational in nature.Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops case studies of two coordinating bodies using qualitative methodologies.Findings – The data suggest that coordination bodies which pursue problems requiring low levels of organizational change are more likely to have visible successes. Coordination bodies that pursue a more challenging agenda, one that aims for information management or management of information technology in ways that require organizational change, are likely to face greate...

Crowdsourcing Investigations: Crowd Participation in Identifying the Bomb and Bomber from the Boston Marathon Bombing

In this paper we illustrate the ethical dilemmas that arise when large public investigations in a crisis are crowdsourced. We focus the variations in public opinion concerning the actions of two online groups during the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing. These groups collected and organized relief for victims, collected photos and videos taken of the bombing scene and created online mechanisms for the sharing and analysis of images collected online. They also used their large numbers and the affordances of the Internet to produce an answer to the question, who was the perpetrator, and what kind of bomb was used? We view their actions through public opinion, through sampling Twitter and applying a sentiment analysis to this data. We use this tool to pinpoint moments during the crisis investigation when the public became either more positively or negatively inclined toward the actions of the online publics. We use this as a surrogate, or proxy, for social approval or disapproval of their actions, which exposes large swings in public emotion as ethical lines are crossed by online publics.