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Jocelyn Workman

Conflict and Disaster Management in a Hyper-connected World - 18 views

Collins article is a useful resource as it discusses the need to increase hyper-connectivity in civil-military responses, with government and non-government organisations engaging with the wider ne...

Net308_508 collaboration social media disaster volunteering crisis movements microvolunteering communication twitter texting technology

started by ruenhongo on 23 Mar 12 1 follow-up, last by Jocelyn Workman on 07 Apr 12
Tamlin Dobrich

Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? - 8 views

www.time.com/...0,9171,1924492,00.html

Net308_508 collaboration community Crowd Wikipedia participatory

shared by Tamlin Dobrich on 25 Mar 12 - Cached
  • Tamlin Dobrich on 25 Mar 12
     
    Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? is an article which suggests Wikipedia's achievement level has reached its peak and eventually will see its downfall. The article looks in depth at the potential causes for Wikipedia's slowing growth and how these elements could possibly lead to the community's eventual failure. It suggests one reason for Wikipedia's decelerating growth rate is simply that "the site has hit the natural limit of knowledge expansion" and the only possible remaining contributions are obscure topics and "janitorial" editing job such as formatting and fixing grammar. The article claims "Wikipedia's natural resource is emotion" and editors are motivated by the "rush of joy" they receive when contributing their unique wisdom to an audience of 300 million people. What this means is that as the need for significant edits diminishes, so too does participation enthusiasm. Additionally, as Wikipedia has grown, so too has the bureaucracy and complex laws of Wikipedia, resulting in a community that has become unwelcoming to novice Wikipedians. The article discusses how Wikipedia editors are made up of a narrow class of participants dominated by young males from wealthy countries and academic backgrounds. The Wikipedia author-base is not as broad and diverse as first thought and it seems "the encyclopedia is missing the voices of people in developing countries, women and experts in various specialties that have traditionally been divorced from tech". This too is given as a reason for Wikipedia's imminent downfall.
  • ...5 more comments...
  • Dean Strautins on 25 Mar 12
     
    An interesting topic of diminishing contributors and a conclusion I had already theorised must be happening for the exact theories stated in the article. I think this article will be good to reflect on in future years. Maybe a future article will be on If You Do Not Innovate Then You Die. I see Wikipedia only having to start including a genealogy aspect where everyone can geo tag relatives grave sites and stories about then and their relatives and what they achieved in their life to see a boom in contributors and tie all the history in Wikipedia to real every day people. So when I read in Wikipedia about a civil war or history of a country I can also choose to see who's firends relatives were there at that time etc. Later DNA results can further be added. So I do not see Wikipedia dying if it Innovates.
  • Emily Lloyd on 06 Apr 12
     
    Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success? is an interesting article, as it suggests that since 2007, the number of people contributing to Wikipedia has decreased (Manjoo, 2009, para. 2). This is further reinforced by the following graph from the Wikipedia website (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMFArticlesVsContrib.png), which also shows that the number of contributors is plateauing (Bridgestone Partners, 2009). Farhad Manjoo's explanation for this - that the encyclopedia has "hit the natural limit of knowledge expansion" and the only editing jobs left are 'janitorial' - seems plausible (Manjoo, 2009, para. 6). Personally, this is what I have found through my own use of Wikipedia, that while there are areas which need some work, they are generally topics and jobs which are rather mundane. The success of collaborative projects does rest on ensuring the contributors are enthusiastic about what they are doing, in order for them to continue to produce quality contributions (Anthony, Smith & Williamson, 2007). One of the resources I chose for this assignment further reinforces this. Katherine Ehmann, Andrew Large and Jamshid Beheshti in Collaboration in Context: Comparing Article Evolution among Subject Disciplines in Wikipedia find that through their research, an average of 90.3 percent of the initial Wikipedia article text remained over time (Ehmann et al., 2008, para. 40). Therefore, it seems that contributors are less inclined to change a great deal of the original entry, and if Manjoo's suggestions are correct, and Wikipedia does already cover the majority of the topics required by users, there is less chance that contributors will continue to go back and edit these existing entries. As Dean Strautins suggests in the comment above, Wikipedia may need to look into new ways of continuing to engage their contribu
  • Emily Lloyd on 06 Apr 12
     
    References Anthony, D., Smith, S.W., & Williamson, T. (2007) The Quality of Open Source Production: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia. Dartmouth Computer Science Technical Report TR2007-606. Retrieved from http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/TR2007-606.pdf Bridgestone Partners. (2009). File: WMFArticlesVsContrib.png. Retrieved from http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMFArticlesVsContrib.png Ehmann, K., Large, A., & Beheshti, J. (2008). Collaboration in Context: Comparing Article Evolution among Subject Disciplines in Wikipedia. First Monday, 13(10). Retrieved from: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2217/2034 Manjoo, F. (2009, September 28). Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1924492,00.html
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 06 Apr 12
     
    This article is related to my topic and starts with a brief summary of Wikipedia's start. Wikipedia started its work in 2001 and allowed Wikipedians to contribute and share their articles with others through it. Wikipedia increased its article slowly, in 2008 there were about 2200 articles being added to the Wikipedia every day and in 2009 Wikipedia had about 3 million articles in English. So, Wikipedia broken the record held by Chinese Yongle encyclopedia, which was the famous encyclopedia. The article mentioned, there are thousands of active volunteers who are editing articles or publishing new articles, volunteers check articles to correct them and make them more valid. In addition, in Wikipedia some topics absorb large number of people, for example, subject like "Barack Obama" has large number of viewers, however, other articles which are about other ordinary people do not have that much viewers, and this is a big hole for Wikipedia, because it needs to update these kind of subjects too. The article mentions, In Wikipedia's early days volunteers could be easily be staff of Wikipedia and editing or publishing the articles was not hard, but now volunteers should obey some rules and volunteers must gather some credit to get permission from Wikipedia to publish their articles, so, volunteers may think why should they contribute in Wikipedia and these rsule may decrease the volunteers of Wikipedia.
  • Mitchell Houwen on 07 Apr 12
     
    The change in the rate of publishing material does not determine the success of a project such as Wikipedia. New material will be sourced for Wikipedia because the world is constantly evolving. Wikipedia's only downfall is the amount of people that contribute. When Wikipedia articles are monitored by users the mediators can control their own page which they see as perfection because they have written majority of it. This is the exact reason why people have begun to shy away from adding or editing Wikipedia pages. Does this mean however that Wikipedia will fail at some point? I believe nothing could be further from the truth. I think Wikipedia will simply run in cycles as new topics are generated therefore new experts will be required to moderate and new people needed to add subject matter. As more people begin to collaborate on these pages more and more people will feel confident to edit themselves. Think of the Wikipedia cycle as one that is constantly changing with both highs and lows of activity. This current inactive period will not last long. This unit looks at the collaborative process that is being undertaken throughout the web and it is important to understand that without people adding their own pieces the puzzle is never going to be finished. Will Wikipedia run the cycle as my theory predicts?
  • michelangelo magasic on 08 Apr 12
     
    This article brings up a very interesting idea: the concept of an endpoint for Web 2.0 communities. As the author relates it, this would occur as a Malthusian collapse. Whilst at first glance this seems unfeasible given the infinite expanse of virtual pastures, the article makes some interesting points for consideration: the number of contributors on Wikipedia is dropping and it seems the we have run out of topics to write. It is interesting to compare the Wikipedia community to that of Bittorrent which has found renewed growth, and purpose, in the context of its struggle against copyright laws. Wikipedia has been hailed as a revolutionary form of knowledge democratisation, it is hard to imagine that wikipedians don't share a sense of purpose in their collaboration, and, perhaps even harder to imagine that we are running out of things to write about. Whilst this article is from a highly reputable source, its bias might be considered in following that of the conservative media toward copyleft, this is highlighted by phrases like 'Wikipedia's joyride' which suggests the growth of the site as frivolous. Considering the data it presents, the article is certainly very relevant to an understanding of online collaboration and thought provoking. I cannot help but think that there are still multitudes of topics to be written about, how many contributors, for example, have penned a page for themselves? Whilst ostensibly trivial, this might be the kind of interaction that sees renewed interest in the site and attracts the minority demographics which Gardner says the site needs to make its community richer (p.2). Perhaps the flagging interest in the site comes from the reason that the site is moving too close to the status quo, that as the BitTorrent community has seen, it needs to reminded of its position in an ideological shift.
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 10 Apr 12
     
    This article starts with a brief summary of Wikipedia's start. Wikipedia started its work in 2001 and allowed Wikipedia's to contribute and share their articles with others through it. Wikipedia increased its article slowly, in 2008 there were about 2200 articles being added to the Wikipedia every day and in 2009 Wikipedia had about 3 million articles in English. So, Wikipedia broken the record held by Chinese Yongle encyclopedia, which was the famous encyclopedia (Manjoo, 2009). According to my own studies, Wikipedia has different level of articles; they divided to low-, medium- and high quality and different people must play different roles, such as linking, editing and writing. For example, cleaning up other editor's mistake is a very important part, because some people do not add valuable information and some editors must come to increase articles quality and maybe the article needs another editor to correct the article again and this process may need to continue many times to increase quality of that article. However, that does not mean casual users work is not worthy, because, they can absorb more well-rounded contributors to make more valuable articles. To help contributors, University of Arizona suggested Wiki software, which guides contributors to know what should they do, for example, they will aware the article needs more link, references or it needs more editing and writing (Conger, 2010). Conger, C. (2010). Who writes Wikipedia articles? Retrieved from http://news.discovery.com/human/wikipedia-community-articles.html
Jocelyn Workman

http://www.usip.org/files/resources/SR252%20-%20Crowdsourcing%20Crisis%20Information%20... - 1 views

www.usip.org/...0Disaster-Affected%20Haiti.pdf

social media mobile phones Net308_508 collaboration crisis disaster Haiti Twitter Facebook

shared by Jocelyn Workman on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Jocelyn Workman on 25 Mar 12
     
    You Tube Need to Know | Crisis mappers: Mobile technology helps disaster victims worldwide | Uploaded by PBS . Retrieved 20 March 2012 http://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=xW7Vt5iunWE This YouTube presentation tells the story of how crisis mapping came to be a source of critical and timely support to Haitians requiring aid following the 2010 devastating earthquake. It is a remarkable example of resourcefulness, voluntary collaboration and use of social media to assist with the humanitarian aid response. The video includes a live interview with, Patrick Meier, head of Ushahidi, a not-for-profit organisation, who explains that within hours of the news of the quake reaching the world, he knew that it would be a real challenge to get information from people on the ground in Haiti. Based on the Haitians high mobile ownership (85%) he worked out that texting a message would be the best way to find out who needed help. He arranged for a local phone company to provide a number for emergency texts. The number is advertised on the radio as 90% of the population has radio access. A call was put out on Facebook to locate volunteers who could translate messages from Haitian Kreyol to English. These messages are then forwarded to Boston where a voluntary group of students plot the location on an online map. The online location is then forwarded to the US response group coordinating the distribution of aid. Within hours help is sent. I came across this video when sourcing materials and was impressed with the professional presentation, the inclusion of a Haitian recipients experience of receiving aid after texting the number he heard on the radio, and interviews with major stakeholders. Further searches of Patrick Meier verified the story. Crisis mapping was also used during the Libyan crisis to bring aid to victims. Crisis locations were extracted from posts for help on Facebook and Twitter and plotted by volunteers
  • Jarrad Long on 08 Apr 12
     
    (My commentary is actually against the PDF that's linked to, rather than the YouTube video. Reference at the end). This report, commissioned by the United States Institute of Peace, examines the role of Ushahidi, a crisis-mapping platform, in the relief effort following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It highlights the ability of crowd-sourcing to provide a more reliable account of what's happening in a disaster situation than traditional intelligence gathering means which don't engage the local population. It begins by describing the challenge that rescuers faced when sourcing their intelligence from media reports, which tended to focus on isolated incidents of violence, wrongly spreading the idea that violence was commonplace and leading the rescue teams to delay their rescue efforts. The report accuses the media of deliberately producing exaggerated reports, which may be true, but even the most ethical journalist can only report on what he or she experiences - if he or she sees or hears about a violent incident, the resulting report will almost certainly give the impression of violence. For the most objective and detailed picture of the state of a crowd, the largest possible portion of that crowd needs to have a voice - something an individual journalist could never facilitate. That's where Ushahidi proved a valuable tool. By aggregating SMS messages, email and social media communications from those in distress, it allowed rescuers to direct assistance appropriately. In addition to crowd-sourcing the conditions of those in distress, Ushahidi also incorporated other forms of crowd-sourcing - maps were sourced from the World Bank, Yahoo!, GeoEye and the U.S. government to provide geographic information, and staffing power was provided by a vast team of volunteers. This gives the case study a lot of depth. Heinzelman, J. and Waters, C. (2010) Crowdsourcing Crisis Information in Disaster-Affected Haiti Retrieved 2 April 2012 from http://www.us
ruenhongo

Crisis in a Networked World: Features of Computer-Mediated Communication in the April 1... - 9 views

This article relates to "Connected Giving" by Torrey et al. (2007) because they both talk about the two different kinds of communication. In this article, the authors discuss how an "unofficial bac...

Net308_508 collaboration community organisation Twitter Facebook Crisis Response Disaster Management

started by jessica_mann on 26 Mar 12 1 follow-up, last by ruenhongo on 02 Apr 12
Jocelyn Workman

Expecting the Unexpected: The Need for a Networked Terrorism and Disaster Response Stra... - 14 views

Stephenson and Bonabeau's article (2007) proposes an alternative strategic approach for emergencies that utilises the concepts of 'swarm intelligence' and 'netwar' (2007, p. 2), a combination of co...

Net308_508 collaboration community social media Twitter Wikipedia Disaster Management Crisis Response

started by jessica_mann on 26 Mar 12 2 follow-ups, last by Jocelyn Workman on 07 Apr 12
Velia Torres

FreeBSD - A pioneer of online development practices - 10 views

Watson, R. (2006). How the FreeBSD Project Works. Retrieved on March 20, 2012 from http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/2006eurobsdcon/eurobsdcon2006-howfreebsdworks.pdf This paper present...

FreeBSD OpenSource Wiki community developers JuryTheorem collaboration online quality Net308_508

started by Velia Torres on 24 Mar 12 no follow-up yet
ruenhongo

Connected Giving: Ordinary People Coordinating Disaster Relief on the Internet - 10 views

Torrey, C., Burke, M., Lee, M., Dey, A., Fussell, S., & Kiesler, S. (2007). Connected Giving: Ordinary People Coordinating Disaster Relief on the Internet. Human - Computer Interaction Institut...

Net308_508 collaboration social media technology community connected giving online internet volunteering donate support relief

started by ruenhongo on 23 Mar 12 no follow-up yet
jessica_mann

Japan's social safety net: Facebook's Disaster Message Board - 7 views

This article addressed similar themes to the articles that I included in my own research on collaboration and disaster management. Of particular relevance is the article titled, 'Crisis in a Networ...

Net308_508 collaboration social media technology volunteering disaster twitter facebook crisis mobile phones google Japan community victims

started by ruenhongo on 23 Mar 12 1 follow-up, last by jessica_mann on 11 Apr 12
Mitchell Houwen

What Wikipedia Can Teach Businesses About Collaborative Authoring - 15 views

www.cmswire.com/...aborative-authoring-008463.php

Wikipedia business tools usability collaboration

shared by Mitchell Houwen on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Mitchell Houwen on 25 Mar 12
     
    This is an extremely interesting article as it focuses on the ways in which wikis have excelled in enticing people into contributing and exciting them about making contributions. Businesses and organizations can learn a lot from this article as it also illustrates ways in which a wiki can be used to increase the rate, amount and quality of contribution. The precise nature of Wikipedia is one of the greatest advantages it has over other information sources. People looking for information find their topic and the information provided is in a formatted style that is maintained throughout the site. The limited security measures on Wikipedia allow people to contribute what they wish with minimal restrictions. The question is however can a wiki such as Wikipedia be used effectively to add value and increase collaboration within a business environment? Wikipedia does allow users to contribute information and remove the barriers and restrictions of both geographic and social status. This can allow bias or ill-informed information to be present in articles. Within a business structure there is little to no chance of purposely misleading information being presented to the articles. This does remove one of the major problems that Wikipedia faces as the integrity of information is assured. So with this in mind does a wiki remain a great resource for collaboration within a business environment?
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Dean Strautins on 25 Mar 12
     
    The paper seems idealistic. Presenting all the good points of Wikipedia as has applied to the the vast amount of contributors does not translate well to corporations. The paper does not mention the impact of business culture, hierarchies, specialist knowledge and a smaller base of contributors. I think if you want to destroy working relations in a company then deploying wikis would be a good start.
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 02 Apr 12
     
    This article related to my topic (Wikipedia). Wikipedia as one of the popular online collaborative encyclopedias allows everyone to write and read its article for free and there are large numbers of volunteers all around the world who edit and publish its articles. For most of the businesses doing something for free is painful, but in Wikipedia publishers enjoy to publish articles for free. The base structure of Wikipedia is each articles consist of some pieces, so, editors never face with file- lock during their editing, because, articles are chunking and editors can edit each part of an article in a same time, but they cannot work on the same piece of article in a same time. In addition, against HTML, which is a computer language that this technology cannot support chunked articles, XML largely can support chunked articles and Wikipedia created by XML technology to give permission to volunteer to edit article/articles in a same time. Moreover, XML allows writers to choose their desire heading level, for example, they can choose level-1 heading and the system will automatically obey it. Wikipedia's can also choose the format, text size, color and font of their text and XML will automatically add the number of each page in cross- references and make it nice for printing
  • Sian Cooper on 05 Apr 12
     
    Overall, this article provides a nice summary of how businesses and corporations can employ wikis in their knowledge production, highlighting some of the advantages and disadvantages and discussing some troubleshooting problems. Yeo (2010) notes that an added benefit of using wikis in businesses is that multiple people can work on a document at once, allowing multiple editors to work on different sections of the wiki at the same time. However where companies may struggle is with the layout and formatting of the page. Hasan and Pfaff (2006) note that IBM, the Disney Corporation, and British Telecommunications are just some of the major corporations that have successfully implemented the use of wikis into their business structure. The Shell Corporation is yet another business that has successfully employed the use of wikis in their organisation (Hendrix & Johannsen, 2008). Similarly, the revision history and ability to track editing changes made to pages is a common advantage running across all of these studies. Although this article offers a nice description of how wikis can be used in businesses, it does not delve into the world of knowledge management and using wikis as a knowledge sharing platform, as discussed by Hasan and Pfatt (2006). They also fail to provide strategies to motivate employees to make use of the wiki and participate in knowledge contribution, as mentioned by Hendrix and Johannsen (2008). Nevertheless, the article makes us aware about wikis and how they can be incorporated in businesses, noting some of the advantages and limitations. Additional References: Hasan, H., & Pfaff, C.C. (2006). The wiki: an environment to revolutionise employees' interaction with corporate knowledge. OZCHI. 11(24-26). Pp377-380. Retrieved 19th March 2012 from http://www.ozchi.org/proceedings/2006/sessions/short-papers/social/hasan-p377.pdf Hendrix, D., & Johannsen, G. (May 16th, 2008). A knowledge sharing and collaboration platform. Inside Knowledg
  • FARNAZ SHAMS on 10 Apr 12
     
    This article related to my topic discussed about how Wikipedia as one of the popular online collaborative encyclopedias allows everyone to write and read its article for free and there are large numbers of businesses all around the world who edit and publish its articles (Yeo, 2010). According to my own studies, Wikipedia will be good for small businesses? Wikipedia as a popular online community can help small businesses to have an article there. Of course, everyone can make a page in Wikipedia, but, having a page for businesses can bring more customers for them, for example, Zip's Drive-In has article in Wikipedia which gives information to people about its fast foods. Tekserve, sales Apple products in New York, has a Wikipedia article to gives beneficial information about their new products and absorb them on their own blog. Or even "Hollywood-based Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles" has article in Wikipedia (Mcgee, 2009). But why businesses want to have an article in Wikipedia? They can have great exposure of their new products: when a company has article in Wikipedia that means more people all over the world can read their information that brings them more exposure. They can manage their information and their through Wikipedia and people know Wikipedia as a trustable resource. Moreover, Wikipedia gives permission to businesses to update their articles, and with the help of Talk page they can read customers wishes and suggestion (Mcgee, 2009). However, businesses must aware there in Wikipedia there will be some angry customers and they may edit their articles, so, businesses should aware to correct any untruthful information which added by others and it is a truth that monitoring can be very time-consuming for them (Mcgee, 2009). Mcgee, M. (17 september 2009). Should a small business have a Wikipedia article? Available online at: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/should-small-business-have-wikipedia-article/2311/
Jocelyn Workman

Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options, and Policy Considerations - 17 views

This CRS (Congressional Research Service) Report for Congress by Lindsay, provides an organisational perspective of how social media have been and might be used to improve emergency response and re...

Net308_508 Twitter social media community collaboration Wikipedia Crowd

started by jessica_mann on 26 Mar 12 2 follow-ups, last by Jocelyn Workman on 07 Apr 12
Emily Lloyd

Statistical measure of quality in Wikipedia. - 49 views

Hi Farnaz, just letting you know that when I click on your link it comes up with 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied. Is there another way to view it?

Net308_508 collaboration quality Wikipedia

started by FARNAZ SHAMS on 15 Mar 12 2 follow-ups, last by Emily Lloyd on 20 Mar 12
Jocelyn Workman

Distributed Networks and Collaboration Following a Technological Disaster - 13 views

Sutton's article discusses the use of Twitter following a technological disaster on 22 December 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant where a coal waste containment p...

Net308_508 collaboration social media technology twitter community mobilization Wikipedia recovery crisis disaster management organisation microvolunteering

started by ruenhongo on 23 Mar 12 1 follow-up, last by Jocelyn Workman on 07 Apr 12
theresia sandjaja

Intellectual Property and the Cultures of BitTorrent Communities - 14 views

This reading emphasises that Intellect Property has now evolved from the issue of law, ethics and polities to the issue of culture. The shift of cultural model in consuming media online affects the...

Net308_508 collaboration BitTorrent

started by Paul Francis on 25 Mar 12 1 follow-up, last by theresia sandjaja on 09 Apr 12
Jocelyn Workman

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/vieweg_1700_chi2010.pdf - 1 views

www.cs.colorado.edu/...vieweg_1700_chi2010.pdf

social media situational awareness natural hazards emergency management Net308_508 twitter microblogging collaboration

shared by Jocelyn Workman on 25 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Jocelyn Workman on 25 Mar 12
     
    Vieweg, S., Hughes, A., Starbird, K & Palen, L. (2010). Microblogging During Two Natural Hazards Events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness. Retrieved 15 March 2012 from http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/vieweg_1700_chi2010.pdf Individuals affected by the emergency events of the Red River Floods and the Oklahoma Grassfires in North America during the Spring of 2009, posted information about their respective situations via the microblogging service, Twitter. In this study, the authors analyse "situational update" information tweeted by individuals experiencing these hazards 'on the ground' to see how these people used the tweets to inform and develop an awareness of the current situation within their community. Twitter is seen as a commonly used social tool increasingly used for emergency communications "because of its growing ubiquity, communication rapidity, and cross platform accessibility", and are "a place for "harvesting" information during a crisis event to determine what is happening on the ground". From the analysis of collected data, coding was allocated by geo-location, location referencing and situational update information. Findings indicated Tweeters broadcasted similar types of information in both emergency situations, and tweets of high Tweeterers during emergencies were 'content rich' and displayed 'big picture situational awareness', with retweets indicating important updates. This study confirms how individuals facing a crisis rely on social media for their own safety and use the tool for altruistic purposes by providing current awareness of the crisis. In addition, the authors developed a Microblog-Enhanced Situational Features for Emergency outline of information categories for use in emergency response. They suggest this outline be used to assist with the development of system s
  • ruenhongo on 02 Apr 12
     
    This article relates to the article by Sutton (2010) because it talks about how micro-blogging in the time of disasters is one of the easiest ways for individuals to retrieve, produce and spread information through social networking sites such as Twitter. Sutton (2010) states that Twitter can bring people together in disasters which not only prompts micro-blogging but also can involve micro-volunteering as well. Online communities such as Twitter are decentralized which brings about self-organization and mobilization of information. The two articles are linked in that they both discuss how micro-blogging during disasters is about how information such as warnings, evacuations and peoples locations is shared online by different individuals in the community. Both articles had images implemented to show the readers where the location was that they were discussing as well as graphs to compare the data that is being focused. This made it very reliable to the topic and the range of references also showed how different perspectives were used in this research. I found the article relevant in showing how Twitter had an impact in disaster management and how micro-blogging can actually make a huge effect on how people communicate during a crisis. The graphs and images in the article were very useful because that provided evidence which complemented the text. The article is very valuable for this project because it shows how Twitter is evolving from being used for just a social medium to disaster management. References: Sutton, N. J. (2010). Twittering Tennessee: Distributed Networks and Collaboration Following a Technological Disaster. Proceedings of the 7th International ISCRAM Conference. Retrieved from http://www.jeannettesutton.com/uploads/Twittering_Tennessee_FINAL.pdf (Accessed 16/03/2012)
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