February 7, 2008
Violence in Kenya, as seen by Web2.0
Ushaidi goes from strength to strength, it seems, while Mashada closes down, which is an interesting trend path. As a Web2.0 social mash-up affair takes off, an old-school bulletin board project collapses - and for exactly the same reasons, the increase in violence in Kenya. The need for security-related information sharing has increased, leading to more support for something like Ushaida; but as the social divisions within Kenya increase discussions on the bulletin boards became more fractious and unmanageable.

What does this tell us? The virtual world isn’t resistant to real-world pressures, and it doesn’t necessarily overcome social divisions - hence the problems with the bulletin board. These pressures can be managed, but it’s no easy thing - but would Ushaidi be any less resistant to hijacking by people intent on promoting social divisions? I guess not - but people are using Ushaidi far less than bulletin boards, so it’s less of a target.

I was hoping to draw some lessons from this, but I can’t remember what they were. I like Ushaidi, though, and I think the call for a global version of Ushaidi is well worth pursuing - but raises lots of issues around what you’d actually do with it. Is it for advocacy? Security? Monitoring? I guess that these are my usual questions, since I had exactly the same feeling about BrightEarth when it started, and I’m still no further along the path of working out what my answers are.
Filed under Kenya, Web by Paul Currion
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humanitarian.info » Violence 2.0: some lessons from Ushahidi @ 2:29 pm
[…] 8, 2008Violence 2.0: some lessons from Ushahidi Because Paul’s claiming to be too confused to write up some lessons learned from Ushahidi, I’ll have a […]