AID POLICY: Hitching social media to humanitarian assistance
NAIROBI, 17 July 2012 (IRIN) - From Tweets in Egypt to blogs in Syria and
Facebook campaigns in Sudan, the world has witnessed an unprecedented
upsurge in citizen journalism, which played a major part in the 2011 "Arab
Spring", a series of revolutions that saw long-term leaders in Egypt, Libya,
Tunisia and Yemen deposed. But citizen journalists say social media's impact
is not limited to political rabble-rousing and that it can also be a useful
tool in humanitarian emergencies.
"Bloggers or citizen journalists are always within a community and have the
advantage of being part of what is going on. If it is a protest, a blogger
is part of that protest, if you have people marooned by floods, as a blogger
you can relay that instantaneously, because you are at the centre of the
action," said Raymond Palatino, a member of The Philippines House of
Representatives and the South Asia editor for Global Voices, an
international community of bloggers which recently held its annual media
summit in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
He added that while mainstream media often reported on the news of a
disaster, citizen journalists were able to provide valuable background
information that could impact humanitarian policy. "Reporting a disaster or
an emergency is as critical as reporting the events leading to it. How did
people react just before it happened and so on," Palatino said.
He noted that while social media was gaining popularity, it remains more
useful when used in conjunction with mainstream media than on its own.
"Citizen journalism is complementary to mainstream media but they can never
be competitors. They all have a role to play in their own way... In places
of conflict, mainstream media organizations have relied heavily on bloggers
to get information," he added. "Ours is to enrich what mainstream media or
aid organizations have."
Faisal Kapadia, a Pakistani online social activist who co-founded
<
http://www.sarelief.com> SA Relief, a platform established in the aftermath
of the 2005 Earthquake in South Asia to help coordinate and disseminate data
on disasters in and around South Asia, says during emergencies, information
needs to be transmitted using methods and language that is accessible to
those affected.
"If everybody can't access a computer, a majority of people can access a
mobile phone. Innovative ideas like transferring messages from platforms
like Twitter into people's phones as SMS text messages and in a language
they understand can help in times of disaster," he said. "During the [2010]
Pakistani floods for instance, we were able to track real-time the
distribution of food. In humanitarian situations, we are able to ask people
what they need in a language they understand and get that information to aid
organizations or to the world."
Fundraising, psychological benefits
Social media has also been used to
<
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/93633/HORN-OF-AFRICA-Thinking-outside-the-tr
aditional-funding-box> raise money for emergencies; a 2011 campaign started
by a Kenyan Twitter user, <
http://twitter.com/#%21/ahmedsalims> Ahmed
Salim, gained some popularity among internet users using the Twitter hashtag
#FeedKE; a similar campaign, <
http://www.kenyans4kenya.co.ke> Kenyans for
Kenya, raised over US$8 million through corporate sponsors and Mpesa, a
mobile phone money transfer service run by telecoms firm Safaricom.
According to the authors of a 2011
<
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21466029> study on the use of social
media for humanitarian purposes, the "peer-to-peer" nature of social media
offers psychological benefits to vulnerable populations.
"Disaster victims report a psychological need to contribute, and by doing
so, they are better able to cope with their situation," they said. "Affected
populations may gain resilience by replacing their helplessness with
dignity, control, as well as personal and collective responsibility."
Anne-Marie Schryer-Roy, advocacy and communications officer at Adeso, a
humanitarian organization working in the Horn of Africa, told IRIN, social
media is becoming an important tool in the work of her organization. "One of
social media's greatest attributes is the ability to have a two-way dialogue
with the communities that are being affected by emergency situations.
Communities can share updates about what is happening in real-time and about
their pressing needs, which in turn can help inform our interventions," she
said.
Challenges
The study also pointed to a number of challenges for social media in the
humanitarian field, including the tendency for public officials to view
peer-to-peer communications as "backchannels" with the "potential to spread
misinformation and rumour". In addition, in the absence of normal checks and
balances that regulate traditional media, privacy rights violations can
occur as people use social media to describe personal events and
circumstances.
Another challenge is the possibility of loss of mobile phone signal or
Internet access during major disasters, effectively cutting off social media
communication.
Kapadia noted there was still much to do to ensure that social media made a
real impact on humanitarian assistance during disasters. "It is important to
interrogate why the impact is at times never felt," he said.
Adeso's Schryer-Roy said it would be important to address the issue of high
volumes of unverified information being transmitted via social media to
ensure it could be used more effectively. "There is need to harness social
media to better serve humanitarian interests, especially in developing
countries where affected populations might have little access to it," she
said. In Ethiopia, for example, with a
<
http://foweb.unfpa.org/SWP2011/reports/EN-SWOP2011-FINAL.pdf> population of
close to 85 million, just
<
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ier2011_en.pdf> 8 percent of
people have access to a mobile phone.
"We need to find ways to ensure we involve those populations and tailor our
communications based on their needs. In the end, it will help us improve how
we deliver humanitarian assistance," she added.
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Received on Tue Jul 17 2012 - 10:19:03 EDT
