SUMALL.ORG INSIGHTS

The Nominet Trust 100 joins together people and organizations who are using digital technology create positive change in the world. The list includes 100 of the world's most inspiring examples of social innovation and this year SumAll.org is part of it.

SumAll.org gathered speakers from civic tech and beyond with case studies spanned the globe--from Kenya to Egypt to NYC. Our conversations explored data in all its forms: visual, community-collected, high-tech and low.

DATA: IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Our team created a photo booth for the event--and it wasn't just for fun. We conceptualized the photo booth as a space for you to start the conversation: to tell us what data means to you, and how you think it can impact social change.

These are just some of the ways you described the power of data: transparency, accountability, participation, humanity. All responses are included on this open Google Doc and the word cloud below.

INFORMAL MAPS AND FORMAL SYSTEMS

@larrybuch explains how the #NYTimes uses data to explain the world. #compassionatedata http://t.co/GrUW7EW1eE

— Michael Hickey (@manabouttownnyc) August 19, 2014

Buchanan, who has also vizualized data for the New Yorker, described how and why he created this project: Inequality and the NYC Subway System.

@larrybuch talks about how #data graphics make info more accessible, allow deeper insight. #compassionatedata

— Michael Hickey (@manabouttownnyc) August 19, 2014

FORMAL MAPS AND INFORMAL SYSTEMS

Sarah Williams, of the MIT Civic Data Lab, shared with us just some of her work with the Digital Matatus project, a collaborative research and mapping of Nairobi's largest transportation system: informally organized matatu taxis. Her most powerful point was that taking data to stakeholders can incite real change. And that data need not be high-tech. Williams' team's impact was felt with the creation of a simple, yet elegant, map of the matatu system--the first of its kind.

"Take data and make it into something more impactful..." from MIT's @datasew with @SumAllOrg #compassionatedata

— shea molloy (@papermashea) August 20, 2014

EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES

Empower overlooked demographics, challenge bogus data by getting communities involved in their own planning #compassionatedata w/@SumAllOrg

— shea molloy (@papermashea) August 20, 2014

Mitali Ayyangar shared her experiences working with SPARC (a Mumbai-based NGO associated with Slum Dwellers International) where she had the opportunity to interact with and document the simple mechanisms used by inhabitants of informal settlements, or slums, to bring about positive change and development. Ayyangar explained how community-driven data collection is a tool of empowerment--one that community members and advocates can leverage to communicate with steakholders and create real impact.

.@tali_launch: The value of community generated data is ownership. The power of these data is in advocacy.

— JD Godchaux (@jdgodchaux) August 20, 2014

DATA ISN'T ALWAYS HIGH-TECH

.@bodaceacat: The tech is ever only 10% of a project. The rest is the hard part!

— JD Godchaux (@jdgodchaux) August 20, 2014

Sara-Janye Terp, Director of Data Projects at Ushahidi discussed the development of HarassMap an anonymous reporting and mapping system for street harassment in Egypt. Although Terp highlighted work of a seemingly high-tech product, she also mentioned one key point that resonated with the audience: "technology is only 10% of the solution." The rest--working within communities, conceptualizing a product with real impact--is the hard part.

Inspiring stories of impact at #compassionatedata. Let's keep making the invisible visible @SumAllOrg

— Claire Manibog (@manib0g) August 20, 2014

Epilogue

@SumAllOrg thx for hosting #CompassionateData with @CivicDataDesign @bodaceacat @larrybuch. Great to see the #data4good community growing!

— Sara Cornish (@s_nish) August 20, 2014

Our initial analysis on the Syria conflict from data collected by the Syria tracker reveals just how pervasive and severe death by sniper fire is. Out of total of around four thousand sniper deaths as of March this year, more than five hundred of them were women.

More interesting is the manner in which these deaths occurred. In our simple correlation analysis of female deaths by sniper fire and that of other causes, we found that sniper deaths were actually occurring in a manner more consistent with indiscriminate methods of warfare, such as Artillery and Air Bombardment, than with focused killings, such as Stabbing and Beating. Is the nature of modern warfare more complex than what we might think?

To illustrate our analysis we have built the interactive graphic below to show just how similar the intensity of females killed by snipers are to other leading causes of death. To compare intensities, select different causes of death using the small map images.

War's Wheel of Destruction from WIRED UK (July 2014). Copy - Madhu Venkataramanan; Illustration - Signal Noise.

Crowdsourcing Crisis Data Collection

Crowdsourcing is all the rage. Yet while usually associated with funding creative projects or providing resources to students, crowdsourcing can also be leveraged as a critical tool in times of crisis. From the earthquake in Haiti to Hurricane Sandy, citizens and civic techies have joined together to use crowdsourcing as a way to quickly gather information in times of crisis. The data collected from these sources can send rapid alerts to humanitarian organizations, while also providing critical information for journalists, stakeholders and citizens.

SumAll.org's partner Humanitarian Tracker is a crowdsourcing initiative developed by Syrian-Americans based in the United States. Syria Tracker, a project of Humanitarian Tracker, has been crowdsourcing information on casualties in Syria since April 2011; they rely primarily on existing networks and organizations in Syria that submit online reports to their website. They also carry out data-mining of social media and produce separate aggregate reports on deaths and other violations. Syria Tracker makes all of its aggregated and disaggregated data available on its website.

For more information on female, and other, killings in Syria, see our white paper: Rising Proportion of Female Deaths in Syria and our interactive dashboard. Additional information on this project is available on SumAll.org's website.

More Convictions and Harsher Punishments for Women

A close examination of New York City data from the past eight years reveals a disparity in legal outcomes following prostitution-related arrests. Specifically, individuals arrested for prostitution are convicted of prostitution much more frequently than individuals arrested for patronizing are convicted of patronizing. Further, individuals convicted of prostitution are sentenced more harshly than those who are convicted of patronizing. The majority of individuals arrested for prostitution are women and almost all individuals arrested for patronizing are men. Thus, women are generally subject to greater conviction rates and harsher punishments than men for prostitution-related offenses.

Conviction Categories for Individuals Arrested for Prostitution or Patronizing

Convictions from prostitution are mostly for prostitution; convictions from patronizing are almost never for patronizing.

Sentences for Individuals Arrested for Prostitution or Patronization

Convicted prostitutes are twice as likely as convicted patrons to receive a jail sentence (42% of prostitutes versus 20% of patrons).

More detailed insights are included in our white paper: The Disparity in Legal Outcomes for Individuals Arrested for Prostitution and Patronizing: A Gender Perspective. SumAll.org has also published an interactive dashboard with even more information about NYC prostitution-based arrests.

Investigative Analytics for Social Good

This project is just one of our Investigative Analytics projects; here, our data scientists dig into civic data sets in order to identify and expose injustices. The goal of this work is to ensure that laws and policies are just and fair for all.

The answer to this question is simple: they know because they collect and measure data. From campaign optimization to A/B testing, the fields of web and marketing analytics offer communicators a framework to assess just how effective they are at reaching and engaging target audiences.

In the social services field, the target audience of communications and outreach materials is often a group living on the margins; people who are vulnerable or at-risk. Social service agencies rarely have the time and money to creation communications materials and measure just how effective those materials are at engaging and reaching their target audiences. Yet, communication matters—and a data-driven approach to reaching at-risk populations can help social service providers better personalize interventions, break through stigma and, ultimately, connect at-risk populations to critical services.

HOW STIGMA IMPACTS PEOPLE AT-RISK

For vulnerable populations, words can carry extra weight. Lazy. Stupid. Worthless. These are just some of the terms used by policy makers, politicians, pundits and even your Facebook friends to describe vulnerable populations. These words, and the attitudes they engender, can create negative judgements and stereotypes about vulnerable populations that permeate public discourse. Those judgements stereotypes can lead to discriminatory public policy practices. They can also cause people at-risk to feel shame, blame and even denial about their situation--ultimately impacting whether or not vulnerable populations seek the supportive services they need and deserve.

Reducing stigma not only empowers individuals at-risk, but can also lead to positive social and economic outcomes. Public health researchers have found that reducing stigma has been linked to a higher quality of life for People Living with HIV/AIDS. Mark Horvath, founder of Invisible People TV and tireless advocate for the homeless, states in his Reddit AMA that one of the most important thing people can do is to “support the cause” and have “genuine compassion” for the homeless. This is because Horvath recognizes that creating a culture of empathy--where vulnerable people are not judged or stigmatized by friends, family and stakeholders--can trigger real changes not only in public perception, but also in policy.

DATA-DRIVEN COMMUNICATIONS FOR HOMELESS PREVENTION

Creating personalized communications materials for at-risk populations isn’t what SumAll.org set out to do at the beginning of our work with the New York City Department of Homeless Services and CAMBA. When we began the project, our goal was to create an algorithm that detects which families are at-risk of becoming homeless due to eviction. But as we started using large data sets to help solve a problem, we soon realized that reaching families wasn’t just about the data alone--it was also about effectively communicating with those at-risk families.

When our team--which cooperates with CAMBA (the Brooklyn-based non-profit that is piloting this project)--sat down to begin developing outreach communication materials the first thing we discussed was how we could leverage the principles of design and creative writing to reduce stigma, shame, blame and fear. We know that at-risk families may have a history of negative experiences with service providers. We also know that a shadow of stigma exists around people at-risk of becoming homeless.

With that in mind, our goal was to create materials that convey a sense of warmth and caring; materials that move away from the somewhat impersonal and “official-seeming” communications often sent to families by social service agencies. What we wanted to make were materials that that evoke a feeling of safety and empathy--not blame, shame or judgment. And, although it seems counterintuitive, we knew that data would help us to create materials that pushed past stigma to better reach families at-risk.

LEVERAGING DATA TO ADDRESS STIGMA

In a recent New York Times opinion piece David Bornstein notes that personalized outreach to those experiencing or at-risk of experiencing street homelessness works. His article, The Push to End Chronic Homelessness is Working, highlights just how successful NYC-based non-profit Community Solutions has been at reaching chronically homeless individuals; this is because the organization’s outreach staff and volunteers get to know homeless folks by name. Personalization is not only necessary when reaching out to the chronically street homelessness; it also helps with prevention.

What SumAll.org, in cooperation with CAMBA, has ultimately created is this: a data-driven, personalized, outreach campaign that has improved outreach efforts by over 30%. We have not only developed new, and personalized, print materials, but also: Facebook ads, text message response options, and a responsive web contact form. This isn't about simply adding a name to a letter--this is about identifying risk levels and adapting outreach materials based on an individual's specific risk profile. Our team is also tracking every potential contact--online, in-person, and via telephone--so that as we begin to scale, we can (1) optimize our campaign for increased outreach and impact, and, (2) assess whether or not our materials are breaking through stigma to engage at-risk families. As our project begins to scale, our goal is to automate this personalized outreach so that social workers can spend more time interacting with families to keep them stably housed.

Much like the advertisers and marketers, who spend days, months and even years creating content and measuring its impact, SumAll.org is developing and analyzing a communications system to reach out target audience. But, unlike our peers, we aren’t aiming to sell a product----our goal is to help families remain stably housed.

Syria Tracker is one project at the forefront of crisis data collection. This project of SumAll.org’s partner Humanitarian Tracker, offers viewers crowd-sourced--and verified--data on deaths in Syria. SumAll.org has been working with this group to analyze the types casualties in Syria. Together our teams are examining this data using several different key metrics--one of which is gender (for more, see our interactive dashboard).

Female Deaths in Syria

Click to read the entire report: Rising Proportion of Female Deaths in Syria

Working closely with Humanitarian Tracker, our team has discovered that the proportion of female deaths in Syria has increased from less than 1% in April 2011 to over 13% today. 85% of those casualties result from artillery (large caliber guns, shelling, tanks, etc), gun shots or air bombardment. These types of casualties are consistent with collateral damage--women could simply be bystanders. Yet the other top causes of female deaths, sniper fire and beating and stabbing, are typically associated with deliberate, targeted killings.

Total Deaths in Syria

Click to view Interactive Syria Data

With the large amount of information coming out of Syria every day--whether from citizens, journalists, or official sources--it can be difficult to keep track of casualties and events. In an effort to provide reliable real-time data on the Syrian conflict, the SumAll Foundation has partnered with Humanitarian Tracker to offer access to data sets and analytics that provide insight into the fluctuating situation in Syria.

“We are thrilled about this partnership and the potential it can have on Syria’s future” explains Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, Founder and CEO of Humanitarian Tracker. "The goal of Humanitarian Tracker is to give a voice to those silenced by the conflict. Our partnership with SumAll will help amplify those voices, by making the influx of data coming out of Syria easy to understand."

Humanitarian Tracker, whose mission is to connect and empower citizens using innovation in technology to support humanitarian causes, provides the most complete and up to date crowdsourced dataset concerning events in Syria on the web.

"It is common for businesses to have real-time management dashboards for better decision-making. Surprisingly, the most pressing issues of our time don't have a dashboard." says Stefan Heeke, Executive Director of SumAll.org. The challenge is using that data to reach valuable insights and accurately communicate information. In order to do that, we aim to provide this publicly available Interactive Syria Crisis Dashboard for those interested in mining the very latest data first hand. 

OUR PARTNERSHIP OFFER

For journalists who have specific questions that can be answered by further in-depth exploration, SumAll is offering a channel to investigate your research ideas and work with you to mine the most recent Humanitarian Tracker datasets. Our goal is to provide ad-hoc insights for data-driven journalists and political decision-makers. Please contact us for assistance.

DATABASE

Some educators and policymakers like Diane Ravitch, former U.S. Secretary of Education, question the effectiveness of such programs as the No Child Left Behind Act, which assumes that schools bear the full responsibility for helping students achieve literacy. Studies have also shown that a number of non-school related factors such as having family support affects the way children develop their mastery of language. This begs the question, if the literacy gap is a societal issue that extends beyond the scope of traditional schooling, what tools can we give students to help them improve their mastery of language outside the classroom?

Power Poetry, the first online community of its kind

The idea for Power Poetry was born when founder and Executive Director Roland Legiardi-Laura noticed that his students in the Bronx-based Power Writers program were tossing aside their Moleskin notebooks, and writing and posting poetry online using their smartphones. Technology gave these students the power to capture moments in real-time, but it also amplified their voices, allowing them to share things with more people online.

Power Poetry's motto is "If you don't write your own life story, someone else will write it for you."

At its core, Power Poetry is a social platform that brings young poets together. Users can write, post, share, and comment on each other’s poems. For some youth in low-income communities, community support is next to impossible in real life, but with Power Poetry, an expansive network of young poets can instill a sense of empowerment and motivation to change.

Change yourself or change others? Roland and his team believe that poetry can also have a real impact in the world. In the Take Action pages, Power Poetry encourages youth to think critically about global issues in society, such as HIV/AIDS, animal rights, and homelessness.

Since its launch in April 2012, Power Poetry has drawn the interest of many people worldwide. The poetry map shows that its site visitors can sometimes come as far as India and Australia! In the last couple of years, the users base has grown dramatically; today, there are 135,000 young poets, 21,000 comments, and 128,00 poems written and shared on the platform.

Partnership with SumAll

Beyond providing a platform for sharing online poetry, the team at Power Poetry wanted to make a real impact on narrowing the literacy gap. So they collected and analyzed data from more than 100,000 submitted poems to help inform educators and policymakers--and also to aid students in their efforts to become better writers.

Traditionally, low budgets have blocked nonprofits like Power Poetry from gaining access to technology and expertise required for analyzing large, complex sets of data. This is precisely why analytics start-up SumAll created its foundation, SumAll.org - to provide data that non-profits can use to deepen their impact. Power Poetry was fortunate enough to secure a partnership with SumAll.org, and together, they embarked on an unparalleled journey to analyze all poems submitted to PowerPoetry.org by youth ages 13-24. Their goal was to analyze the (1) quality of a poem and, (2) linguistic progress of users who submitted multiple poems.

PowerPoetry.org has grown to over 130,000 users in just two years

Methodology

To quantify students’ language skills, SumAll looked at hundreds of data points extracted from poems and created a logical regression model to describe the mastery of language in the poem. This was then applied to the more than 100,000 poems submitted on Power Poetry, so that each poets’ progress could be tracked.

For the training set used to build the regression model half of which were poems written by well-known professional poets and half were written by amateur writers. The algorithms created looked at word counts, abstractions, phonetics, rhymes, tonality, punctuation, n-grams, and many other features in order to assess quality. The output of the model predicts the likelihood of the poem being written by a professional writer, with 1 indicating absolute certainty and 0 indicating that the poem was most likely written by an amateur writer.

Result: Technology makes kids smarter, not dumber

Are millennials the dumbest generation? There is much debate around the impact of technology on youth literacy and writing skills. Some research shows that technology helps to improve literacy by allowing students to write lengthier pieces of work; the average number of pages in a paper written by a freshman today is more than twice the number of pages written by a freshman in the 1980s.

Our research also shows the positive impact of technology on the mastery of language. Those who publish at least 10 poems on Power Poetry saw a visible progression of their language scores: starting out slightly below average (51% percentile) aspiring poets were able to advance to an above average during the course of their 10 poem submissions to the 47-percentile.

4% is a significant improvement. Given that powerpoetry.org knows the approximate location of where poems were submitted, it was possible to map poems and their language scores to respective low-income and high-income zip codes. Among Power Poetry users the literacy gap between low-income and high-income neighborhoods appears to be about 9 percentiles. Active poets seemed to be able to advance their language score by about 4-percentiles which is the equivalent of half of the gap between more affluent and less affluent zipcodes.

Impact and Social Application

Our younger generation will need to be prepared for a globalized world where many different cultures and backgrounds blend into one another. Being able to communicate and articulate ideas clearly will become even more important. As we have seen, writing poetry can significantly improve the mastery of the English language. Through further research and analysis of data, SumAll and Power Poetry hope to create an assessment tool through which parents, educators, policymakers can use to make informed decisions for their families, schools, and society.

Let us us not forget that there are other benefits to writing poetry. Some youth write poetry to cope with challenges in life, whether it be the loss of a loved one or difficult situations at home. Poetry can also enable us to take action, become better global citizens, and make a positive difference in the world. Some of the most respected poets in the world have tackled issues like gender and race inequality in their poems. These are only some of the applications of poetry to society. Perhaps this is only the beginning of what’s more to come.

The Pew Center for the Internet and American Life estimates that 97% of cultural organizations have at least one active social media account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and/or Youtube. Organizations rely on these social media accounts for sales, fundraising, advocacy, and increasing the diversity of their audiences. How can these arts organizations, many of whom operate on tight budgets, determine if the time they devote to social media engagement is time, and money, well spent?

At SumAll.org, we’re using data from the Cultural Data Project (CDP), a national organization whose mission is to strengthen non-profit arts and cultural organizations through data analysis, to investigate the relationship between an arts organization’s social media engagement and its economic health. Our goal is to help arts organizations measure the effectiveness of their social media use.

Thanks to the CDP, we have access to reliable longitudinal data on organizational social media engagement and economic health. This data includes, but is not limited to, information about the type of organization, attendance levels, revenue and expense line items, website traffic, social media network engagement, and workforce/employment practices.

FROM DECISION TREE TO BENCHMARK

Our team knows that comparing the MoMA to a small gallery won’t yield the most useful results. So we are using a benchmarking tool to compare one organization’s performance in relation to other organizations (1) in the same region, (2) with similar audiences, and (3) of the same size. We think that having such competitive measure enables institutions to gauge their social media presence more accurately.

Ranking systems, like benchmarks, are made not born. So to establish our benchmarks for this project, we used a decision tree model. Decision tree models are designed to minimize the variance within each subgroup; in other words, they can establish the best way to arrange and compare a diverse set of groups. Think of it like mapping a choose your own adventure story: if I complete one action, what are all of the possible outcomes--and after I arrive at one of those outcomes where will I go next?

SumAll.org analyzed and grouped cultural organizations based on region, organization type, number of donors, revenue, and attendance. Based on the decision tree model analysis, we determined that the best way to group a diverse set of cultural organizations is by their attendance numbers. Then, we used these subgroups to analyze Twitter and other social media activity. The decision tree model output is shown below.

The figures represent average activity for a given dataset (e.g. medium sized theaters are mentioned 2.6 times/day). Click for larger version.

By using a decision tree model, we have established an average number of followers, retweets and mentions for cultural organizations based on their attendance numbers. If a theater, for example, has 90,000 annual attendees, on average, that theater will have 1300 Twitter followers, 2.5 daily retweets, and 6.3 daily mentions.

Regional variables are meaningful only when exploring retweets. The model implies that art organizations located in Washington DC, NY, and VT receive more retweets than other regions; yet, the impact of the region variable is not quite conclusive. What we call “goodness of fit tests” give us little reason to believe that organizations in different regions possess different characteristics.

PORTRAIT OF A…TWEET?

Data often come to life through visualizations. Putting the benchmarks in use, we are in the process of integrating the benchmarking solution into the easy-to-use SumAll.com dashboard. The visualization below, which shows our benchmarking tool, illustrates an example: Unnamed Theater A’s activity against its benchmark, a medium-sized small theater in NYC.

Click the buttons to view the interactive visualization. The bottom line for Followers is the benchmark and the top line is an Unnamed Theater in NYC's SoHo. The line shifts when Mentions is clicked, meaning that the Unnamed Theater has less mentions than the benchmark. Number of Tweets brings us back to the benchmark at the bottom and Unnamed Theater at the top.

We can immediately see that although the Unnamed Theater’s follower and tweet counts are higher than a comparable NYC theater, there are days where the the Twitter activity of the group is lagging its peers in terms of number of mentions.

ARTIST AS OUTLIER

Given the popularity of large institutions like the the Museum of Modern Art or even smaller organizations like St. Ann’s Warehouse on Twitter, it may seem surprising that the average number of Twitter followers for an organization with the highest attendance numbers--over 140,000 annually--is only 3,751. But for every organization with a high numbers of Twitter followers, there are other organizations with small number of followers. For example, one of the NYC groups with the largest reported attendance numbers, the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps with 1,701,500 annual attendees, has a tiny Twitter account with only 83 followers. This compares with the relatively small Wooster Group (135,500 annual attendees) who has an active Twitter account with nearly 8,000 followers.

Our work doesn’t stop here--we have a long way to go until our project is complete. Specifically, we will try to answer question whether social media presence has an impact on outcomes such as audience numbers, donations, web site visits etc and which type of activity and platform should an organization focus its efforts on. We also plan to explore how social media demographics impact an organization’s social media engagement. For example, are young audience members engaging with their favorite organizations via Instagram--and is that a different type of an engagement than older audience members on Facebook or Pinterest? Further, how are Black American cultural organizations leveraging the power of Twitter--a social network that African Americans use at a much higher rate than any other racial group? Stay tuned!

Click to see our interactive dashboard

DATA ANALYTICS, PROSTITUTION AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING

The SumAll Foundation is partnering with Sanctuary for Families, an NYC-based agency that provides services to survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, to analyze New York City’s prostitution and human trafficking arrest records. Between 2005 and 2013, almost 12,000 patrons of prostitutes were arrested in NYC alone, with almost 1,250 of these arrests made in 2013. The police are much more likely to arrest people for the crime of prostitution rather than the johns pimps and traffickers who are fueling the growing of this massive underground industry.

Our researchers have made available an Interactive NY Prostitution Arrest Dashboard highlighting the number of arrests for patronizing people working as prostitutes in NYC’s five boroughs. The information in this dashboard is just the tip of the iceberg—soon, we will make available an interface with richer data and analytics, which we plan to share with the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition. We encourage journalists and policy-makers to contact us for information and/or assistance.

TRAFFICKING: NOT JUST ABOUT SEX

Another often forgotten aspect of human trafficking, which is also associated with large sporting events, as seen with a widely-circulated Guardian exposé of preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, is trafficked labor. While the sex industry receives a lot of attention, it is but one of a number of industries that attract traffickers abusing underage or at-risk laborers.