Irina Shklovski

Finding community through information and communication technology in disaster response

Disasters affect not only the welfare of individuals and family groups, but also the well-being of communities, and can serve as a catalyst for innovative uses of information and communication technology (ICT). In this paper, we present evidence of ICT use for re-orientation toward the community and for the production of public goods in the form of information dissemination during disasters. Results from this study of information seeking practices by members of the public during the October 2007 Southern California wildfires suggest that ICT use provides a means for communicating community-relevant information especially when members become geographically dispersed, leveraging and even building community resources in the process. In the presence of pervasive ICT, people are developing new practices for emergency response by using ICT to address problems that arise from information dearth and geographical dispersion. In doing so, they find community by reconnecting with others who share their concern for the locale threatened by the hazard.

Technology Adoption and Use in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans

Disasters are threatening and highly dynamic situations, marked by high levels of information need and low levels of information availability. Advances in communication technologies have given people more ways to seek information and communicate—a redundancy that can help people cope with disaster situations and support subsequent recovery. This article presents results from a longitudinal study of New Orleans musicians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The authors found that in the immediate aftermath, musicians used cell phones and the Internet to locate family and friends and obtain information unavailable in broadcast news reports. Seeking and redistributing information resulted in the creation or discovery of online spaces that became virtual instantiations of the physical environments from which the musicians were barred. For those who had to leave New Orleans, these online spaces helped them maintain connection with their local communities. As recovery continued, many musicians discontinued or adjusted their use of technologies that did not fit the cultural and social context of their everyday lives. Those who returned to New Orleans focused their energies on rebuilding, often eschewing mediated communication for New Orleans—style in-person interaction. Those who remained away found that digital connections to the New Orleans community were insufficient to maintain a sense of belonging.

Emergency Management, Twitter, and Social Media Evangelism

This paper considers how emergency response organizations utilize available social media technologies to communicate with the public in emergencies and to potentially collect valuable information using the public as sources of information on the ground. The authors discuss the use of public social media tools from the emergency management professional’s viewpoint with a particular focus on the use of Twitter. Limited research has investigated Twitter usage in crisis situations from an organizational perspective. This paper contributes to the understanding of organizational innovation, risk communication, and technology adoption by emergency management. An in-depth longitudinal case study of Public Information Officers (PIO) of the Los Angeles Fire Department highlights the importance of the information evangelist within emergency management organizations and details the challenges those organizations face engaging with social media and Twitter. This article provides insights into practices and challenges of new media implementation for crisis and risk management organizations.

The Internet and Social Participation: Contrasting Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analyses

The Internet opens new options for communication and may change the extent to which people use older communication media. Changes in the way people communicate are important, because communication is the mechanism people use to develop and maintain social relationships, so valuable for their physical and mental health. This paper uses data from a national panel survey conducted in 2000 and 2001 to examine the influence of Internet use on communication and on social involvement. In doing so, it contrasts the conclusions one can draw from cross-sectional and longitudinal data on these issues. Longitudinal analyses provide stronger evidence of the causal effects of using the Internet than do the cross-sectional ones. The longitudinal data show that heavy use of the Internet is associated with reductions in the likelihood of visiting family or friends on a randomly selected day. Cross-sectional analyses show high correlations between the frequency with which respondents communicate with specific family members by visits, phone calls and email, suggesting that communication in one medium stimulates the others. In contrast, longitudinal analyses suggest that the links between communication media are asymmetric: visits drive more email communication and phone calls drive more visits, but email drives neither phone calls nor visits.

Leakiness and creepiness in app space: perceptions of privacy and mobile app use

Mobile devices are playing an increasingly intimate role in everyday life. However, users can be surprised when informed of the data collection and distribution activities of apps they install. We report on two studies of smartphone users in western European countries, in which users were confronted with app behaviors and their reactions assessed. Users felt their personal space had been violated in creepy ways. Using Altmans notions of personal space and territoriality, and Nissenbaums theory of contextual integrity, we account for these emotional reactions and suggest that they point to important underlying issues, even when users continue using apps they find creepy.

Keeping in touch by technology: maintaining friendships after a residential move

Many observers have praised new communication technologies for providing convenient and affordable tools for maintaining relationships at a distance. Yet the precise role of mediated communication in relationship maintenance has been difficult to isolate. In this paper, we treat residential moves as natural experiments that threaten existing social relationships and often force people to rely on mediated communication to maintain their old relationships. Results from a 3-wave survey of 900 residential movers describing 1892 relationships shows that email and the telephone play different roles in social relationships. Email helps maintain social relationships, in the sense that relationships decline when email drops after the move. However increases in email are not associated with increases in the depth of the relationship or exchanges of support. In contrast, phone calls help movers grow relationships and exchange social support.

The commodification of location: dynamics of power in location-based systems

Location-based ubiquitous computing systems are entering mainstream society and becoming familiar parts of everyday life. However, the settings in which they are deployed are already suffused with complex social dynamics. We report on a study of parole officers and parolees whose relationships are being transformed by location-based technologies. While parolees are clearly subjects of state discipline, the parole officers also find themselves subject to new responsibilities. This study highlights the complexities of power in sociotechnical systems and what happens when location becomes a tradable, technological object.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Urban Computing--Navigating Space and Context

As computing moves from the personal desktop into the world around us, the problems of design and usability go beyond technical considerations to contend with preexisting social structure and cultural norms associated with public spaces.

Exploring technology adoption and use through the lens of residential mobility

One of the outcomes of massive adoption of technology is that much of daily technology use and consumption is embedded into unremarkable daily life routines. Occasionally, these routines undergo major shifts, often in conjunction with major life events such as marriage, birth of a child, or a residential move. We propose a model of settling into a new location as a function of balance between the pull of the things left behind and the demands of the new and unknown. It is through this experience of being unsettled that we explore the processes of behavior adjustment and re-evaluation of old patterns of technology use as it relates to the old location and the demands of the new location.

Disclosure, ambiguity and risk reduction in real-time dating sites

While social network capabilities are proliferating on many online services, research has focused on just a few popular social network sites. In this note, we consider a different kind of social network site, explicitly designed to support particular types of risky sexual activity among men who have sex with men (MSM). We consider the role of ambiguity built into the interface in how users manage self-disclosure and its association with articulating more friends-only or sexual connections on the site. Despite the sites explicit orientation toward risky sexual practices, we find indications that users mitigate potential public health issues through the practice of sero-sorting. We discuss how design considerations that may allow for easier entrance into a community can cause problems for long-term users, or generate potential public health issues.