#croudsourcing

Twitter croudsourcing found effective for dermatologic diagnoses

Credit: CC0 Public Domain At the start of the pandemic, many doctors on the front lines turned to Twitter and other social media platforms to find guidance and solace directly from their peers. In early 2020, information on COVID-19 had yet to be studied and published in peer-reviewed journals or printed in medical textbooks. Since then, social media has been characterized as both a boon to…

Moments of crisis can leave us feeling terribly alone. It is in these moments of terror and natural disaster that the concept of Crowdsourcing is imperative. 

But what is crowdsourcing?

The concept is simply this: the collaboration of information from a wide range of people to inform the larger population. In the age of globalisation, mobile phone usage and internet access is rapidly increasing as these technologies are becoming more cost effective with later telecommunications range.

An example of using crowdsourcing in times of crisis can be seen with the earthquake in Haiti. The 2010 January earthquakes in Haiti ignited a completely new type of emergency response that involved the contributions of individuals, companies, NGOs, and staffed by thousands of volunteers around the world. Within the first two hours of the earthquake, Ushahidi was deployed. The volunteers of the crisis mapping team combed through tradition and social media sources such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs to identify actionable scraps of information that could be helpful for responses on the ground. Within four days, systems were set up in place where the people of Haiti could send reports for free to the number 4636.  

"Approximately 85 percent of Haitian households had access to mobile phones at the time of the earthquake. . . . Mobile phones were the most direct means of communication for Haitians during the crisis and emerged as “a lifeline for many survivors.” (Biewald, 2010)

The 4636 number was first announced via twitter which then sparked the flood of messages that would stream in asking for help and assistance. The extremely he task of collating thousands of reports was only manageable due to the work being crowdsourced to a very dedication network of international volunteers. 

"Crowdsourced maps enable targeted disaster response in a rapidly changing environment. Disasters have the ability to significantly affect the local geography, making existing maps outdated in an instant. Roads are blocked, IDP (internally displaced person) camps emerge, and landmarks are destroyed. The collaborative model used by OSM enabled individual volunteers, mapping experts, and international actors to update the map of Haiti rapidly and accurately to assist responders on the ground" (Heinzelman & Waters, 2010).

Founder of the Ushahidi Haiti information mapping Patrick Meirer speaks about how they used crowdsourcing in the moments of Haiti crisis. 

Without the application of crowdsourcing, people are left alone in the devastation and horror of world crisis events. It gives me great comfort to know that social media content has been appropriated and used to selectively benefit those in times of need. It gives me great hope for survival that if anything tragic were to happen in my neck of the woods in sunny Australia that such efforts of crowdsourcing would be deployed.

What we know now is, "social media can play an important role in crisis communication and emergency management, and the wider user community is generally willing to support and assist the work of emergency services if that work is undertaken in a way that is compatible with the established community conventions of the social media platform itself."(Bruns, Burgess, Crawford & Shaw, 2012). 

References:

Heinzelman, J., & Waters, C. (2010). Crowdsourcing Crisis Information in Disaster- Affected Haiti (pp. 1-14). Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace. Retrieved from https://www.preparecenter.org/sites/default/files/crowdsourcing_crisis_information_in_disaster-affected_haiti.pdf

Ciufetelli, I. (2014). Crowdsourcing and Social Media in Times of Crisis. Retrieved from https://ldi.upenn.edu/sumr/blog/2014/08/11/crowdsourcing-and-social-media-in-times-of-crisis

Biewald, L. (2010). How crowdsourcing helped Haiti's relief efforts. Retrieved from http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/how-crowdsourcing-helped-haiti.html

Virtual Volunteering, Retirement Project 2.0

Lord Lothian to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 7/9/1940 (Transcription tool view)

Our earlier posts about the National Archives Catalog Citizen Archivist Transcription Tool generated a lot of interest and even more questions, so we figured there’s no better way to learn about it than from hearing from one of the more active Citizen Archivists:

(This interview comes from Suzanne Isaacs of the Digital Public Access Branch in the Office of Innovation, and member of the Today’s Document team.)

Recently I met Alex Smith through an email he sent to [email protected]. Through our correspondence I learned that he began transcribing our records as a retirement project. I was really interested in transcription through the eyes of a Citizen Archivist and Mr. Smith was kind enough to answer my questions.

Tell us a little about yourself – What did you do before retirement?

I was a college administrator before retirement. For 30 years I was the registrar at Susquehanna University (so on a small scale I am used to dealing with records), and prior to that I was the director of continuing education. I received a B.A. in English at Bowdoin College and an M. A. in English at the University of Chicago. I have always loved history, but I have never done much work involving primary documents before.

How did you find out about transcription in the National Archives’ Catalog?

Late last year I read a brief newspaper article about the transcription project (I think that it was in the New York Times arts and entertainment section), and it immediately got my attention. Like many people on the verge of retirement, I was increasingly concerned about how I was going to handle the void created by no longer having to go to the office, and this project seemed fascinating to me. It really appeared to be an ideal option – I could do it from home or from the library at whatever pace I chose, I had the opportunity to pursue topics that interested me (a common question I get from friends is “Do they send you documents to transcribe?” and I explain that the transcriber is in complete control of finding whatever material which he or she would like to do, whether it’s Al Capone, Harry Truman’s diary, or First Ladies’ recipes. The same flexibility pertains to the length of the document. If I have a quarter of an hour of free time with no particular way to fill it, I can log on and transcribe a telegram or a couple of menus or one of the index cards for the Office of Indian Affairs and have a sense of productivity rather than of having just wasted time), if I needed to take time off for a vacation or for family matters I would not inconvenience anyone, and the project allowed me to go on learning (and in an entertaining manner at that). When I logged in for the first time this June I found that the reality was even better than my expectations had been.

How many have you transcribed?

According to the My Account feature which your website has, I have entered 576 documents during the month of June, which is the first month I have worked on this project.

How do you select your records for transcription? Do you have a favorite subject area?

When I started I thought that I was going to select records by favorite topics (e.g. I have a long-standing interest in the Titanic, so I entered that as one of my first topics). However, I have found that one of the major pleasures of this process to me is coming upon the unknown. I began by entering the topic “telegram,” since I thought that most telegrams would be relatively short and in printed form, so they would be a good choice for easing my way into transcription.