Revolution 2.0

The last few weeks were full with reports on how social media applications, such as Twitter and Facebook, have contributed to the fall of governments in Tunisia and Egypt. We have seen protesters holding up signs like the following:

Or this one, implying that the Egyptian revolution was carried out through Twitter and Facebook:

A prominent Google marketing executive in the region, Wael Ghonim, has drawn a lot of attention to a Facebook group he has used to organize young people in Egypt. In his interviews with several US media outlets he highlights that the revolution started on Facebook – in June 2010. The government itself was apparently taken by surprise. Protesters organized and coordinated their actions using the #jan25 hashtag on Twitter – keeping the online movement alive. The Egyptian government quick shut down the internet and blocked access to Twitter and Facebook.

From a government perspective, criticism is popping up that social media is fueling the protesters – ignoring that the technology itself can’t spark a revolution. Instead, public managers need to be aware of what their citizens are talking about, where hot conversation topics are bubbling up, and how to make citizens feel that government is listening to their citizens’ needs.

What these so-called “social media revolution” also show is, that people don’t need a broadband connection to connect to each other – instead, cellphones are widely available, independent of income or education. What’s common to most of the governments that were overthrown or are under attack is that their citizens are disappointed or don’t feel that their government hears their wishes and complaints.

Also check out the Wallstreet Journal video discussion with Clay Shirky.

USGS asks citizen scientists on Twitter “What is happening?”

Yesterday, Kara Capelli, public affairs specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey, joined my “Government 2.0″ at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University via Skype video call. Kara shared her insights on the use of social media applications at USGS and specifically on the very innovative use of their Twitter accounts.

USGS’s social media strategy includes the use of Twitter, YouTube, RSS feeds and blogs, podcasts, photosharing on Flickr and Facebook accounts.

One account among the long list of social media accounts is especially remarkable: The USGSted account – Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED) – asks so-called “citizen scientists” what is happening in their geographic location. USGS automatically searches tweets for hashtags such as #earthquake and compiles the tweets on a Google Map mashup – geotagging tweets to understand where in the world citizens feel the earth shaking. The large number of tweets then makes it worthwhile to pay attention to specific geographic locations around the world where earthquake activities might happen. One example is the recent earthquake in Pakistan.

At USGS, the tweets are obviously not used as a scientific method – and will certainly never replace science. Instead, they are used as a way to collect citizen feedback, sentiments or indicators of potential damages. Going forward, the tool might have the potential to help emergency responders to find affected citizens, as a method to create social awareness among neighborhood networks, to understand how resilient citizens are or even as a tool for neighborhood responsiveness.

The USGSted account was recently selected as Twitter’s only government showcase (URL was removed from Twitter’s homepage this week, will update as soon as it is back online).

Additional press coverage:

Government Computer News: Earthquakes are something to tweet about

Business Insider: Twitter-based Earthquake Detection System in Development

Christian Science Monitor: Earthquake alerts: shake, rattle, and Twitter

SeeClickFix.com

The Boston Globe reports today the following article “Municipal complaint? There’s an app for that“  about a new Government 2.0 application: SeeClickFix.com which reminds me of FixMyStreet in the Great Britain.  Citizens can type in their complaint including a zip code. The complaint will be displayed on a Google Mashup and other citizens can comment or vote (e.g., “4 people want this fixed too”).  The results can be sent to Twitter.  Here is a screen shot of the app:

A new “Twitter Revolution”? Is social media helping or hurting the protesters in Iran?

FB_Mussavi_PRESIDENT2

Originally uploaded by Ines Mergel.

In the aftermath of the Iran elections, social media tools have played a signicant role in publishing citizens’ stories and pictures on tools such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

Mashable has posted a great overview of the number of posts published on blogs and micro-blogging tools that made it through the Internet blockage imposed by the Iranian government.

While it is not clear yet if Twitter really played an absolutely integral role and the traditional media channels didn’t play a role at all(see the Washington Post’s article on “Reading Twitter in Tehran: Sorry, but real revolutions exceed 140 characters” or the BusinessWeek “Iran’s Twitter Revolution maybe not yet“), the following picture shows a Facebook page Musavi’s supporters have set up for him. They label him here as the current “President” of Iran and I am wondering if this might hurt him more than it might actually help his cause.

See the post of the Institute on Ethics and Emerging Technologies on the dark side of Twitter in Iran.

Without any attribution or a source, I heard on Twitter that citizens should take out the batteries from their cellphones after they publish their messages and videos to social networking sites, so that the government won’t be able to geotrack them.

Government 2.0 enthusiasts worth following on Twitter

Cross-posting on “Shaping Network Society” blog:

I am a Twitter enthusiast and as one of those people who do spend a lot of time online, I noticed that Twitter is one of the information channels, that help me get access to information, that is otherwise not on my radar screen or I would not get access to.

Twitter – for me personally as a Government 2.0 researcher – therefore has the potential to bridge structural holes in the communication and information structure that I have built over the years.  In addition, I noticed that it is expanding my attention network of a) topics I should pay attention to, and b) people and their public conversation streams that are interesting to know.  In a new information paradigm of the US government to move from a need to know to a need to share strategy, I thought I would share a few interesting people whose information and conversation who might be interesting to listen in to.

Without trying to convince anyone of the power of public conversations happening on Twitter, I put together a list of people and organizations that might have helpful information for anyone interested in Web 2.0 in government:

@timoreilly: Tim O’Reilly is the found and CEO of O’Reilly Media, traditionally known for publishing IT-related books, is now a supporter of Government 2.0 and hosts conferences on the topic. Definitely worth following -> I learned a LOT!

@mcaffee: Andrew McAffee, a former professor at Harvard Business School, has coined the term Enterprise 2.0. Andy addresses corporate but also general Web 2.0 problems and is asking questions using the hashtag #andyasks -> add the tag to the new search function, so that you can revisit the information purring in every few days.

If you like tweets from space live from the repair team of the Hubble telescope, space astronaut Mike Massimino is tweeting his observations directly from the space shuttle: @Astro_Mike. NASA itself was one of the first twitter users within the US federal government: @NASA.

As the swine flu (H1N1) developed and the threat level has increased to a pandemic disease, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US has adopted a comprehensive Web 2.0 approach to reach potential groups that are at risk at the virtual locations they might be frequenting the most. I posted a blog entry on this on my blog with an overview of tools used. On Twitter: @CDCemergency).

There are tons of government agencies present on Twitter and BearingPoint has put together a huge list that can be found here:

I have selected a few government agencies I am following and find helpful:
-    Department of State: Official Blog of the U.S. Department of State @dipnote
-    White House @whitehouse
-    US Army @USArmy
-    Tweet Congress: Aggregator of tweets from Members of Congress @tweetcongress
-    USA.gov – the one-stop shopping portal of the US Government: @usagov
-    Transportation Security Administration (TSA): @tsablogteam

In addition, the tweets of government-related IT publications and organizations might be helpful to learn about ongoing initiatives and news:
-    One Laptop Per Child @olpc
-    Govdigest @govdigest and DotGov @dotgov are compiling up to date information and are retweeting information from other accounts, spreading the word to their followers and multiplying the attention base.
-    UN Secretary general @secgen is using Twitter to as an online calendar, listing whom he is meeting with each day.
-    GovWik
-    Government Technology Magazine

As I am located in the US, this post and my list of favorite Web 2.0 people is very much US-centric. Please leave your suggestions for additional Twitter accounts in the comments!

Follow me on Twitter: @inesmergel

Future of journalims: Congressional hearing: Print vs. blog and citizen journalism

This week the The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation conducted a hearing of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet on the “Future of Journalism“. Invited were representatives of traditional print media (Steve Coll, Former Managing Editor The Washington Post and James Moroney, Publisher/CEO The Dallas Morning News) and new media, such as Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience Google Inc. and Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post.com.

Some snippets of the testimonies:

- Huffington:

“Journalism Will Not Only Survive, It Will Thrive”

“Can anyone seriously argue that this isn’t a magnificent time for readers who can surf the net, use search engines, and go to news aggregators to access the best stories from countless sources around the world — stories that are up-to-the-minute, not rolled out once a day?  Online news also allows users to immediately comment on stories, as well as interact and form communities with other commenters.”

- Ibargüen, Knights Foundation:

“For the first time in the history of the Republic, news  and information are being delivered on platforms far broader than the geographic boundaries of our democratic institutions. Until recently, the circulation area of newspaper or the reach of local television or radio signal roughly coincided with the physical boundaries of cities and countries.”

Coll, Former Editor of Washington Post

American journalism has entered a phase of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter has called “creative destruction.”

The participants made a few suggestion on what Congress could do to ensure the public interest journalists are serving. My biggested question is: should the Government bailout the newspapers, acquiring stakes in newspapers? How can this serve public interest as a democracy element, if journalists have to serve a newspaper owned by the government? Will this ensure neutral coverage and still be democratic?

Social networks in crisis communication and as a resilience factor

We have just launched the “Resilience & Security” project website at INSCT, Syracuse University. The workshop report at the end of the first page, includes two papers of mine on a) institutional resilience and the influence of social networks and b) on the use of social media in crisis communication as a resilience factor.

The full research report is available via SSRN: Longstaff, Patricia, Mergel, Ines A. and Armstrong, Nicholas J.,Workshop Report: Resilience in Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Natural Disasters(March 9, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1357525

Here is the blurb of the project description:

The Institute’s project on Resilience is an effort to generate an interdisciplinary stream of research aimed at identifying key metrics of adaptive capacity in local communities overcome by armed conflict or major disasters.  Recent challenges in Post-Conflict Reconstruction (PCR) highlight the need for a full understanding of a host nation’s resilience to withstand the hardships of armed conflict.  The same holds true for communities impacted by natural disasters.  Academic research on resilience across multiple disciplines (social sciences, engineering, biology) has practical applications for data collection and analysis to inter-agency planners in developing strategies to restore the critical functions of civil society.  This leads to our foundational research questions:

1. What attributes (human, social, cultural, political, economic, technological) within a community are essential to ensuring resilience?
2. How are they measured?
3. How are they interrelated?

This research will provide a deeper intellectual understanding of what makes communities “bounce back” (or not) after a significant disturbance, and culturally sensitive metrics for measuring resilience of local populations that can be used for planning response, and rebuilding. The knowledge gained in this collaboration will also find immediate application in other fields with high uncertainty including emergency management and disaster response planning.

Twitter in action: Reports Amsterdam plane crash supposedly 15 minutes earlier than traditional media

When I woke up this morning, my Twitter contacts had just started to report about the plane crash in Amsterdam – the news pages I check only had one line of breaking news, but no full coverage. The #schiphol hash tag was bursting with quick messages; a Google Mash-up popped up with the exact location and distance to the runway, Twitterfall is even after a few hours still interesting to follow, citizen journalists have their five minutes of fame (@nipp reported directly from the scene and went from a handfull of followers to several hundred of followers within an hour). A lot of this reminds me of the  Hudson river landing a few weeks ago: the first picture of the plane in the river was published by a Twitter user as well.

What concerns me is that people were copying or retweeting head counts obviously replicating false messages for a while and I was wondering about the ethics of reporting in this new way. The head count rumors went from 0 (everyone survived), to 1 (although right away denied by the Turkish government), up to 5-7 (at the moment – unconfirmed). This seems to be the only way to collect information when official reports are not available in a crisis: the official press conference won’t start until 1:30pm today (about 4-5 hours after the crash).

In crisis communication, social media tools are prone to be used to report false information, but also have the ability to quickly correct (see Facebook messages during the Virgina Tech attacks) – this procedure is comparable to the mistake eliminations on Wikipedia. The current communication during the aftermath of the plane crash in Amsterdam supports Lea Winerman’s findings recently published in Nature (“Social Networking in Crisis Communication” -> abstract):

Messages appear on Internet-based social networks within minutes of disasters occurring. Lea Winerman investigates how to harness this trend to create official community-response grids.

“Citizen journalism” using Twitter and Blogs in Mumbai

My Twitter contacts were all talking about it within the first few hours, and now I see that main stream media has picked up the story too: Twitter and Blogs were the most frequented information channels during the first few hours of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last Wednesday. Brian Caulfield and Naazneen Karmali, call this “Citizen journalism” in their recent article in Forbes. Others call this “Twitter’s moment” – people were using rapid tweets to report attacks throughout the city.

There are several visitors from around the world who are updating their Twitter accounts constantly and reporting almost quicker than the the CNN journalists in fron the of Taj. I am following some of them and watching the news at the same time. Astounding how quick information is spreading.

I read one concern in using SMS and Twitter messaging during terrorist attacks: Tweets can unfortunately reveal people’s locations, whether they were using their smartphone at the train station or in one of the cafes. The downside of social media…The attackers’ origin was determined based on their cellphones (at the moment it seems as if most of them are from Pakistan). That the upside, I guess… if there is one at all.