Process Workflow in Crowdsourced Digital Disaster Responses

Abstract

This paper examines the workflow and sense-making activities of digital volunteers, showing how they acquire, assess, process and scrutinise crowdsourced information to warrant confidence that the data satisfies the standard of engagement, production and analysis. We do so by studying a digital disaster response organisation -Humanity Road -through fifteen response operations across thirteen countries using digital ethnography over a period of sixteen months. This paper reports on the findings of this study, using a range of sources such as Skype chat logs, field notes, social media postings, and official documents. This paper also introduces a framework that offers a consistent and structured workflow for the communities of practice related to social media and data aggregation communities within the domain of Digital Humanitarian Networks. Our findings suggest practical implications for both the digital humanitarian organisations and government of the disaster-prone countries.

Harnessing social and collaborative tools in digital disaster response work: Implications for design and practice

“…It is worthy of mentioning that studies on digital disaster response are interdisciplinary. Hence, there is a lack of unanimity from the literature on the nomenclature upon which these groups are named (Abdulhamid, Perry and Kashefi, 2018). Against this background, this study takes a cue from a previous study (ibid.)…”

“…Understanding how people appropriate technologies in an organisation has, for a long time, remained a central concern for researchers in social and collaborative computing domains (Dourish, 2003;Mark and Semaan, 2008). This concern has more recently become especially relevant as organisations and groups have adopted the use of social and collaborative platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, GoogleDocs, and Skype into their work practices (Starbird andPalen, 2010, 2013;Abdulhamid, Perry and Kashefi, 2018). Recent use of these technologies during mass shootings in the US, the 2011 England riots, and in several disasters have triggered further academic interest regarding their use (Reuter and Mentler, 2018;Reuter, Hughes and Kaufhold, 2018).…”