Following Monday’s attack on the Boston Marathon, here are a few more posts that looked at the role that social media played in the aftermath.
Archive for the ‘Information Management’ Category
My girlfriend and I have personal connections to Boston, so we obviously followed the developments of April 15 quite closely from afar. Here are my impressions, particularly concerning the role of social media.
Facebook has started to roll out a new search that can potentially endanger people who are already being persecuted or are suffering from discrimination. Teaching people how to use Facebook safely needs to become a priority for protection staff and human rights organizations.
It has been a month since Hurricane Sandy passed over the Caribbean and hit the US East Coast, and a lot of people have written excellent posts about the role social media played for either the affected population or the responders. Here are the articles that I found most interesting.
I have come across two reports that I’d like to share with you. Both give excellent and free advice on how to choose a blogging platform or content management system (CMS) for you non-profit website.
I just came across this TED-Talk by Sanjay Pradhan from the World Bank. It’s about how open data can improve international development. I particularly like his point how digitization of information makes information not only public but also accessible – and he illustrates very nicely why this is not the same thing.
While almost everbody agrees that online volunteers can bring valuable skills and resources to disaster response operations, things become more complicated when established humanitarian organizations try to work with the Volunteer and Tech Community (V&TC). A new guide is trying to improve how both sides can work together.
Social media dashboards aim to inform people about what is going on in a disaster zone. That raises some interesting questions: is there a “duty of care” when relaying information? Is there a moral and/or legal responsibility when people take bad decisions based on incorrect information that you provided?
