Bearing in mind my previous post, I’d like to take on Patrick – in fact, I’d like to take on his entire Global Voices love-in. First, though, a word from our sponsors!
Global Voices Online, Ushahidi and the range of similar projects using the web in novel ways are fantastic initiatives that have already started to transform the way in which we do things. Blogging and other forms of internet-mediated communication point towards a radical shift in the way information is transmitted and consumed. The impact of the information revolution on the problem sciences – particularly in areas such as humanitarian action, human rights work and conflict prevention and resolution – will be comprehensive, radical and unpredictable.
It’s precisely because these impacts will be comprehensive, radical and unpredictable that I am wary of gazing into the crystal ball and telling everybody exactly how the game will end. Similarly Patrick isn’t in the game of hype – his critique of conflict prevention mechanisms is unflinching – but when I read his recent posts about global voices think that he’s become over-excited based on the good intentions and winning personalities of the people involved.
Most people, most of the time, in most places are nonviolent. Social extremes are by definition minorities. Global Voices are more informed and moderate. Giving a voice to these Global Voices online is likely to diminish the impact of extremists.
As far as I can tell, there’s no basis in fact for this conclusion. Not only is the media – including the web – skewed towards extreme positions1 but human cognition is also skewed towards extreme positions. We tend to take more notice of things that are at the edges, especially if those things make us uncertain or afraid. The echo chamber effect of the internet also suggests to me that it doesn’t matter much how many “moderate” voices2 you present to the world – the extreme voices will still be in the headlines.
More pointedly, I’m still failing to see what the impact of these projects are in the field of humanitarian and human rights action. Let’s take human rights monitoring as an example for which there are two main rationales – advocacy and legal action. In terms of advocacy, projects such as BrightEarth and Ushaidi both have a role to play; but the question of how to leverage their visibility into effective campaigning activity is not one that is well-defined. In terms of legal action, they have no utility at all, nor are they likely to on their own terms. More to the point, the high visibility of these projects runs the risk of creating a public priority that skews towards advocacy (which is important) and away from legal action (which is more important – and is also what the advocacy should be leading towards).
At one point, Patrick writes
Global Voices is a far more effective local information and response network than FAST ever was. [Emphasis Patrick's.] … Bloggers at Global Voices are directly linked to local social and political networks… As more of the irregularities of the voting [in Kenya] surfaced, bloggers quickly found themselves as citizen reporters, using twitter, photoblogging and other tools to document and respond to the escalating violence.
I can’t quite see how blogging is a “response” in any significant sense. One of Patrick’s key arguments is that current early warning systems – such as FAST, referenced here – are not sufficiently linked to policy and operational decision-making structures. With the case of the Kenyan blogging community, that charge is surely doubled – not only are they not linked to decision-making structures but there are no decision-making structures in sight. That’s not a criticism of “citizen journalism”, which is a worthwhile endeavor on its own terms – but let’s not pretend that its something it’s not.
There are several dangers here. One is that if people who get involved in projects like these don’t see a return on their investment, they are unlikely to come back again – they’ll put their energies somewhere else. Another is that there’s a limited amount of resources out there, and resources placed into one project don’t go into another project. Yet another is that the power of the web skews towards those with the best access, which means that organisations that might be doing better work suffer from not being as visible. Yet another is that by trying to move into a new – and admittedly sexy – area, projects like GVO will start to suffer from mission creep, diluting those elements which made them useful and attractive in the first place. And finally the peer-based nature of this interaction – which is fantastic in and of itself – but which does not necessarily reinforce the institution-based action which is essential for human rights framework.
Now I’m mad for emergent social processes, and the aggregation of all this geospatial data collection, blogging activity and general intertwingling is likely to produce some pretty interesting developments. I wouldn’t want to tell people that they should stop doing things that they feel are worthwhile3 but one of the things that humanitarian organisations struggle with is measuring impact rather than output – basically, did we help versus in what ways did we help. We have a clear idea of the outputs of these projects – in fact some of the projects are just outputs – but not good metrics for their impact, and that means we can’t judge whether they are worth continuing or not.
Participation without purpose creates fatigue – see how quickly the efforts after Hurricane Katrina disappeared as people went back to their everyday lives. Visualisation without intent creates nice pictures – but doesn’t necessarily have the impact in the real world that we might think it does if we spend a lot of our time online, where our efforts will be amplified and run straight back to us. I sometimes feel like a lone and unwelcome voice (well, not lone – my co-blogger Tom has similar feelings) but that’s because I believe that the workings of the Web can help us take this work forward. I just need to be convinced – not just by discussing the possibilities, but actually seeing them working.
POSTSCRIPT: Patrick is entirely correct when he states
the conflict early warning field is still in the middle ages when it comes to the use of emerging information communication technologies
and that’s something that we need to fix. But he then goes on to say that
these factors are antithetical to the observation made by Rupesinghe exactly 20 years ago (!) vis-a-vis conflict early warning and response systems: “a democratic flow of information is the first condition for a democratic and open system of warning and resolution.” Stress on democratic and flow. It is high time we in the humanitarian community pay more attention to Global Voices.
Now while Global Voices definitely fits the requirement for information flow, I’d be very, very careful about calling it democratic. Global Voices is not a representative body; it’s not an accountable body; it’s not even a “body” as such. We like Global Voices because it reflects our own values – but democracy is not supposed to reflect our values only, it’s supposed to reflect everybody’s values.
Related posts:
So, from the title, can I assume that you’ve read Clay Shirky’s new book? One of my favorite books this year.
Okay, here are the rambling thoughts that this post, and Patrick’s, triggered…
A couple thoughts on GVO and Ushahidi. The ideas behind decentralized, bottom-up style communication mechanisms are both intriguing and disruptive. Due to that decentralization it seems difficult to measure impact. The power behind blogging on Global Voices and anonymous reports/messaging for Ushahidi is the fact that it’s open to anyone. How do you measure impact in an ongoing way? Sometimes you get anecdotal stories of connections and sometimes you don’t get anything. Part of that is due to not baking in the right follow-up mechanisms, and some of it is due to the free-for-all systems that they’re built on.
Is the power also in “letting go” of the system? Letting people use the platforms for a number of different things and seeing what happens. Isn’t that where Wikipedia took off? The first iteration of their idea stunk because of rigid control mechanisms and an older way of thinking about who should have the right to say something.
As we’re building the Ushahidi engine into a platform, I think a lot about what you said to us way back in February. One of my takeaways was to realize that we’re neophytes in this arena. Our goal since then has been to recreate the engine as a free and open source tool, with a goal of releasing that to the world with the ability to customize and adjust it as needed in different situations.
One of my thoughts is this; we don’t have the answers, but what if we can build a platform that allows those with answers to tweak it in a way that works for them? Let’s use plugins and extensions to allow customization of a core system. The best get baked into the platform in future iterations. (think WordPress)
Another thought is that I continue to wonder if the lack of technology use by organizations in disaster/crisis/humanitarian situations is due to lack of simple tools to use, or if it’s that technology is not the answer. I’m not sure on this yet, but the technologist in me would like to believe that it’s due to not having the right tools available in the simplest format.
As Clay Shirky says in his book, only when technology becomes boring to technologists does it become widespread in society. (my paraphrase) Is that the problem here? Are many of the technologies that we see as useful just too new to this particular space?
Lastly, I wonder how so many early warning organizations and experts have not utilized the power and intelligence of the people. As I’ve begun to read more and understand this space a little better, it seems that people think only established organizations can really help with early warning or disaster recovery. Why? Why can’t tools be built to help in using, organizing and informing people on the ground, and those distributed around the world, who care about a particular situation?
We’re seeing bloggers step up to say something, actively organize and document events during crisis/disaster scenarios. What happens when you empower everyone else to do the same?
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Hash: Thanks for responding and giving me more to think about. I’ll try to respond to all of your points here, with a bit more detail and a bit more grounding – I’m aware that this post was quite abstract. (And no, I haven’t read the Shirky book yet – just summaries, extracts and responses. Unsurprisingly it hasn’t appeared in my part of the world…)
The ideas behind decentralized, bottom-up style communication mechanisms are both intriguing and disruptive. Due to that decentralization it seems difficult to measure impact. The power behind blogging on Global Voices and anonymous reports/messaging for Ushahidi is the fact that it’s open to anyone. How do you measure impact in an ongoing way?
I agree that it’s difficult to measure impact, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not important to measure impact. You guys started Ushaidi because you wanted to have an impact – what impact did you want to have? Do you feel you’ve achieved that impact? What evidence do you have that you’ve achieved that impact? There’s a trail of questions that we can follow to get to a point where we can start to measure impact – although it’s likely we’ll never be as certain as we would like about these things.
One of my thoughts is this; we don’t have the answers, but what if we can build a platform that allows those with answers to tweak it in a way that works for them? Let’s use plugins and extensions to allow customization of a core system. The best get baked into the platform in future iterations.
This is exactly the development process that Sahana has followed, so I agree with the approach completely. However one of the things to be aware of is that the platform must necessarily contain its own parameters, and by its very nature those parameters will define what questions will be asked, let alone what answers will be found. In the context of Sahana, I see a tension between what I would like (a tool for empowering communities in disaster management) versus what we actually have (a largely government-deployed disaster co-ordination platform); but we can’t have both, and the development process and the platform will reinforce each other down one path (or fork, but I find that less likely).
Another thought is that I continue to wonder if the lack of technology use by organizations in disaster /crisis /humanitarian situations is due to lack of simple tools to use, or if it’s that technology is not the answer. I’m not sure on this yet, but the technologist in me would like to believe that it’s due to not having the right tools available in the simplest format.
I believe that technology is not the answer. The problem is the lack of processes within these organisations to adopt and adapt technology for their own uses, particularly in the field. This is changing (slowly) and it doesn’t mean that developing new technology has no place – we should encourage and enable more projects to get started and see which of them survive.
Lastly, I wonder how so many early warning organizations and experts have not utilized the power and intelligence of the people.
I think it’s mainly because you can’t trust people. Nobody is independent in a conflict situation (or incipient conflict), there are soooooooo many reasons for people to misrepresent the situation, and humans are frequently just plain wrong. The role of experts should be to adjust for bias and filter out the signal from the noise; frequently of course they don’t do that, partly because they have interests of their own.
As I’ve begun to read more and understand this space a little better, it seems that people think only established organizations can really help with early warning or disaster recovery. Why?
I’ll limit my answer to disaster response, which is what I know most about and in which the answer is simple. Organisations provide economies of scale; they provide a framework for skill matching; they act as a broker between those with needs and those with resources; they provide continuity of purpose that goes beyond individual intent. Remember, people don’t form organisations just for fun; if organisations didn’t serve a useful purpose, people wouldn’t form them at all.
The big disaster response NGOs, for example – the Oxfams and CAREs of this world – came out of exactly the same process as you’re undergoing now – people coming together to take collective action. The main difference now is that the internet provides a wider range of tools and a wider scope for this collective action, at a lower cost. However if that collective action is limited to the web, then what is the impact in the real world – where the problems are actually located?
I don’t think it’s fair to say that people think only those organisations can help, however; there’s a clear acknowledgement in the sector that most of the heavy lifting in a disaster is done by the individuals and communities affected. In addition, many of those organisations do have grassroots networks in the forms of their ongoing country programmes.
Why can’t tools be built to help in using, organizing and informing people on the ground, and those distributed around the world, who care about a particular situation? We’re seeing bloggers step up to say something, actively organize and document events during crisis/disaster scenarios. What happens when you empower everyone else to do the same?
They can be built, and they should be built, and they will be built – because the demand is there. Yet the questions remain for me – how are projects like Ushaidi organising people on the ground? Who has access to the information provided by Ushaidi? What is the goal of documenting those events, and documenting them in this particular way? These are the questions that come to my mind, and I know they come to yours as well.
As to what happens when you empower everyone else – I simply don’t know. The question is, what are you really empowering them to do?
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