Social Media 4 Good

One of the most promising uses of social media in disasters is for remote assessments of situations on the ground. “Geofeedia” just made this job easier.

Keeping track of all the blogs and websites you find interesting can be difficult. That’s why you can now subscribe to Social Media 4 Good by email!

Like many consultants, I spend a lot of time reading articles and blog posts from around the web. Here are some posts I found particularly interesting. This time they are about data journalism, crisis mapping, Twitter and a creative YouTube video.

I suppose getting your blog/website hacked s another rite of passage that is now behind me. What had made this so scary for me was that I myself couldn’t see the hack since the malware that had been snuck into the code only displayed text and links selectively to users and my IP, language preference or browsers didn’t meet these criteria.

Greenpeace UK is starting an interesting experiment: for the next six weeks, their main Twitter account will be open to all staff members.

Robert Kirkpatrick from the UN’s Global Pulse team is talking about how United Nations agencies would like to use big data to search for crises in real-time. It’s a fascinating talk about how his team has been using data mining techniques to monitor food prices and what more could be done.

A photographer is suing AFP and Getty Images for 120 million US Dollars over photos that he had taken in Haiti after the earthquake and which he had shared on Twitter.

Back from my vacation I had the opportunity to listen to a live webcast on “Social Media as a Tool for Humanitarian Protection” that was organized by Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR).