research-article

"Voluntweeters": self-organizing by digital volunteers in times of crisis

Authors:

Leysia PalenAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '11: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1071 - 1080

https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979102

Published: 07 May 2011 Publication History

Abstract

This empirical study of "digital volunteers" in the aftermath of the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake describes their behaviors and mechanisms of self-organizing in the information space of a microblogging environment, where collaborators were newly found and distributed across continents. The paper explores the motivations, resources, activities and products of digital volunteers. It describes how seemingly small features of the technical environment offered structure for self-organizing, while considering how the social-technical milieu enabled individual capacities and collective action. Using social theory about self-organizing, the research offers insight about features of coordination within a setting of massive interaction.

References

[1]

Cavallo, E, Powell, A, & Becerra, O. Estimating the Direct Economic Damage of the Earthquake in Haiti. February 2010. IDB Inter-American Development Bank.

[2]

Dynes, R. R. Organized Behavior in Disaster. Heath, 1970.

[3]

Fischer III, H. W. Response to Disaster: Fact Versus Fiction & Perpetuation, 2nd ed. Univ Press of America, NY, 1998.

[4]

Fritz, C. E. & Mathewson, J. H. Convergence Behavior in Disasters: A Problem in Social Control, Committee on Disaster Studies, National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Washington DC, 1957.

[5]

Guy, M., Earle, P., Ostrum, C., Gruchalla, K. & Horvath, S. Integration and Dissemination of Citizen Reported and Seismically Derived Earthquake Information via Social Network Technologies. Advances in Intelligent Data Analysis IX, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 6065(2010), 42--53.

Digital Library

[6]

Honeycutt, C. & S. C. Herring. Beyond Microblogging: Conversation & Collaboration via Twitter. HICSS 2009, 1--10.

Digital Library

[7]

Hughes, A., L. Palen, J. Sutton, S. Liu, & S. Vieweg. "Site-Seeing" in Disaster: An Examination of On-Line Social Convergence. Proc. of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Conference (ISCRAM) 2008.

[8]

Kendra, J. M. & Wachtendorf, T. Reconsidering Convergence and Converger: Legitimacy in Response to the World Trade Center Disaster, Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas: Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 11, (2003), 97--122.

[9]

Kreps, G. A. & Bosworth, S. L. Organizing, Role Enactment, and Disaster: A Structural Theory. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1994.

[10]

Liu, S. Iacucci, A. A., & Meier, P. Ushahidi Haiti & Chile: Next Generation Crisis Mapping. American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) Bulletin, August 2010.

[11]

Mendoza, M., B. Poblete & C. Castillo. Twitter Under Crisis: Can we trust what we RT? 1st Workshop on Social Media Analytics. SOMA '10 (Washington, DC, July 25, 2010).

Digital Library

[12]

Messina, C. Twitter Hashtags for Emergency Coordination and Disaster Relief. Oct 22, 2007. Blog in: FactoryCity. http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/10/22/twitter-hashtags-for-emergency-coordination-and-disaster-relief.

[13]

Messina, C. Stowe Boyd Launches Microsyntax.org. May 16, 2009. Blog in: FactoryCity. URL: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/05/26/stowe-boyd-launches-microsyntax-org.

[14]

New York Times. Haiti Earthquake of 2010. Sept 23, 2010. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/info/haiti-earthquake-2010.

[15]

Okolloh O. Ushahidi, or 'testimony': Web 2.0 tools for crowdsourcing crisis information. Participatory Learning and Action 59 (2009): 65--70.

[16]

Palen, L. & Liu, S. B. Citizen Communications in Crisis: Anticipating a Future of ICT-Supported Participation, Proc. of CHI 2007, 727--736.

Digital Library

[17]

Qu, Y., Wu, P. & Wang, X. Online Community Response to Major Disaster: A Case Study of Tianya Forum in the 2008 China Earthquake. In Proc 42nd Hawaii Int'l Conf. on System Sciences, 2009, 1--11.

Digital Library

[18]

Starbird, K. & Stamberger, J. Tweak the Tweet: Leveraging Microblogging Proliferation with a Prescriptive Syntax to Support Citizen Reporting. Proc. of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) 2010.

[19]

Starbird, K., Palen, L., Hughes, A. & Vieweg, S. Chatter on The Red: What Hazards Threat Reveals about the Social Life of Microblogged Information. Proc. of CSCW 2010, 241--250.

Digital Library

[20]

Tierney, K., Lindell, M., & Perry, R. W. Facing the Unexpected: Disaster Preparedness and Response in the United States. John Henry Press, Washington, DC, 2001.

[21]

Vieweg, S., Hughes, A., Starbird, K., & Palen, L. Micro-Blogging during Two Natural Hazards Events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness Proc of CHI 2010, 1079--88.

Digital Library

Cited By

Moussavou J(2024)Social media and citizen mobilization in times of crisis: lessons from the ‘Makers’ movement against the COVID-19 pandemicManagement & Prospective10.3917/g2000.403.0088Volume 40:3(88-100)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3917/g2000.403.0088
Moussavou J(2024)Médias sociaux et mobilisation citoyenne en période de crise : les leçons du mouvement « Makers » face à la pandémie de la Covid-19Management & Prospective10.3917/g2000.403.0074Volume 40:3(74-87)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3917/g2000.403.0074
Huang XWang SYang DHu TChen MZhang MZhang GBiljecki FLu TZou LWu CPark YLi XLiu YFan HMitchell JLi ZHohl A(2024)Crowdsourcing Geospatial Data for Earth and Human Observations: A ReviewJournal of Remote Sensing10.34133/remotesensing.01054Online publication date: 22-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.34133/remotesensing.0105
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

"Voluntweeters": self-organizing by digital volunteers in times of crisis
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

Chatter on the red: what hazards threat reveals about the social life of microblogged information
CSCW '10: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work

This paper considers a subset of the computer-mediated communication (CMC) that took place during the flooding of the Red River Valley in the US and Canada in March and April 2009. Focusing on the use of Twitter, a microblogging service, we identified ...
Microblogging during two natural hazards events: what twitter may contribute to situational awareness
CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We analyze microblog posts generated during two recent, concurrent emergency events in North America via Twitter, a popular microblogging service. We focus on communications broadcast by people who were "on the ground" during the Oklahoma Grassfires of ...
Finding community through information and communication technology in disaster response
CSCW '08: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work

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 ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '11: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2011

3530 pages

ISBN:9781450302289

DOI:10.1145/1978942

General Chair:
Desney Tan
Microsoft Research
,
Program Chairs:
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
Vienna University of Technology
,
Carl Gutwin
University of Saskatchewan
,
Bo Begole
PARC
,
Wendy A. Kellogg
IBM Research

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 May 2011

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CHI '11

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '11: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 7 - 12, 2011

BC, Vancouver, Canada

Acceptance Rates

CHI '11 Paper Acceptance Rate 410 of 1,532 submissions, 27%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

CHI '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

340
Total Citations
View Citations
2,901
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)151
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)14

Reflects downloads up to 21 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Moussavou J(2024)Social media and citizen mobilization in times of crisis: lessons from the ‘Makers’ movement against the COVID-19 pandemicManagement & Prospective10.3917/g2000.403.0088Volume 40:3(88-100)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3917/g2000.403.0088
Moussavou J(2024)Médias sociaux et mobilisation citoyenne en période de crise : les leçons du mouvement « Makers » face à la pandémie de la Covid-19Management & Prospective10.3917/g2000.403.0074Volume 40:3(74-87)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3917/g2000.403.0074
Huang XWang SYang DHu TChen MZhang MZhang GBiljecki FLu TZou LWu CPark YLi XLiu YFan HMitchell JLi ZHohl A(2024)Crowdsourcing Geospatial Data for Earth and Human Observations: A ReviewJournal of Remote Sensing10.34133/remotesensing.01054Online publication date: 22-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.34133/remotesensing.0105
Karhu MRantasila AOlsson THäkkilä J(2024)Understanding animal-oriented social media collaboration in Australia’s 2019–20 bushfire crisisFrontiers in Communication10.3389/fcomm.2024.14403119Online publication date: 12-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1440311
Humayun HMalik MGhazali M(2024)Analysis of Motivational Theories in Crowdsourcing Using Long Tail Theory: A Systematic Literature ReviewInternational Journal of Crowd Science10.26599/IJCS.2023.91000108:1(10-27)Online publication date: Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.26599/IJCS.2023.9100010
Kaufhold M(2024)Exploring the evolving landscape of human-centred crisis informatics: current challenges and future trendsi-com10.1515/icom-2024-000223:2(155-163)Online publication date: 6-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1515/icom-2024-0002
Kanjilal MMalik KKapoor P(2024)Fostering resilience: Community radio and disaster communication in Odisha, IndiaMedia, Culture & Society10.1177/01634437241282243Online publication date: 25-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437241282243
Bhimdiwala AAdavi KArif A(2024)Fighting for Their Voice: Understanding Indian Muslim Women's Responses to Networked HarassmentProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36410058:CSCW1(1-24)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641005
Johnson IVlachokyriakos V(2024)Socio-digital Rural Resilience: An Exploration of Information Infrastructures Within and Across Rural Villages During Covid-19Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36374008:CSCW1(1-30)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637400
Yin YGuo LThebault-Spieker J(2024)Productivity or Equity? Tradeoffs in Volunteer Microtasking in Humanitarian OpenStreetMapProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373908:CSCW1(1-34)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637390
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents