The Digital Humanitarian Moment: New Practices, Knowledge Politics, and Philanthro-capitalism

THE DIGITAL HUMANITARIAN

MOMENT: NEW PRACTICES, KNOWLEDGE POLITICS, AND PHILANTHRO-CAPITALISM

Ryan Burns, doctoral candidate

Department of Geography

University of Washington

@burnsr77

http://burnsr77.github.io

VIGNETTE #1: HAITI EARTHQUAKE, 2010

JANUARY 10, 2010OpenStreetMap

January 14, 2010

USHAHIDI

300 reports

USHAHIDI [PT 2]

300 reports

VIGNETTE #2: HOT DATA MODEL

“…visible on the ground…” “…average person…”

“…my experience with communities… local people know very well where the main hazard zones are located… every year… ‘My father told me…”

…”would you see any relevance to develop classes for natural(and man-made?) hazards to be included in HOSM framework?”

“top-down information … place-based knowledge systems … counter intuitive to initiatives to 'democratize' data?”

“…we should aim at a fork-project…”

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenHazardMap

How are these technologies influencing aid allocation and distribution?

What kinds of organizations are using these technologies, data, and practices? How are they being used?

Whose knowledges are left out in this reconfiguration of knowledge encoding?

What kinds of relationships are implied between those helping and those being helped?

Wilson, Gahan. 2014. New Yorker. January 27th.

critical GIS

institutional relationships around data

socio-political implications

knowledge politics

political economy

neoliberalism

philanthropy & capitalism

“contribution” economies

urban geography

the right to the (digital) city

code/space urban redevelopment

political geography

governance (citizen participation, etc)

geographies of activism

critical humanitarian studies

critical GIS

institutional relationships around data

socio-political implications

knowledge politics political

geography

governance (citizen participation, etc)

geographies of activism

political economy

neoliberalism

philanthropy & capitalism

critical humanitarian studies

“contribution” economies

urban geography

the right to the (digital) city

code/spaceurban

redevelopment

BROADER IMPLICATIONS

RESEARCH QUESTIONSWhat kinds of digital

spatial data are relief and redevelopment actors using, and from what sources are they gathering these data? How are needs collected

and represented in digital humanitarian contexts,

and what are the implications of this shift?

What does “crisis mapping” mean and entail for responders, and how does this impact their operations, how they leverage the technology in response strategies?

How do geoweb modes of mapping influence the assessment of where resources are needed, the allocation of resources, and the decision-making processes that lead to such resource allocations?

How are problems, places, and people represented in the emerging digital spatial data, and what inclusions or exclusions are implied in these representations?

EXTENDED CASE METHOD

“…applies reflexive science to ethnography in order to extract the generalfrom the unique, to move from the ‘micro’ to the ‘macro,’ and to connectthe present to the past in anticipation of the future, all by building onpreexisting theory.” (Burawoy 1998, 5)

Max Gluckman

37 in-depth semi-structured interviews

100sarchived data artifacts: reports, maps, websites, blog posts, (public) listserve discussions

7months of participant observation (including some preliminary work)

EXTENDED CASE METHOD

1 year research project

THE ARGUMENT

Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new

spatial technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.

one: alters how data are collected

THE ARGUMENTDigital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new


social media = needs which occupy both “public” and “private” discursive spaces

needs must be “tamed”






two: alters how data are representedneeds are represented in order to construct the “needy subject”

they are interpolated through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response

the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large at in particular interventions







they are interpolated through place imaginaries and temporal segments of the response

the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large at in particular interventions

represents the further incursion of the private sector into humanitarianism

this has taken the form of “philanthro-capitalism”

the formal humanitarian sector is turning to digital humanitarianism as its important “innovation”three: represents philanthro-capitalism

PUBLIC OR PRIVATE? SOCIAL MEDIA AND NEEDS DISCOURSESJordan: [W]here we're a little not sure where this fits in, in the crowdsourcing sense, [is in] being able to take information from the public and use it for operational decisions - that's different. How do you feel about things? What are you concerned about? The issues we need to address when we talk to the public, that's one thing. But for them to provide us, in a crowdsourcing way, with operational information is the area I'm still struggling with. … But the perception of the danger - the operational issue of where is the fire - I don't think we're at a point where we can ask the public to pin on a map where they think the fire is, because we're going to get a lot of noise in there.

public/legitimate formal intervention

private/individual

private = “noise”?

social media occupies both “public” and “private” discursive spaces

TAMING NEEDS

Laurie Van Leuven:“…we in emergency management need to filter those out and listen specifically to actionable pieces of content. So, we’ve got some work to do in how we can build a system to receive that information.”

Source: http://youtu.be/vAUt7h4kk0A

“[T]hese communities need to get their priorities of what they're working on from enlightened emergency management

communities. … I think [emergency managers need to] bring the technology volunteer community into our process. … [T]here

should be more integrated planning of using these technology volunteer groups.”

-Thomas, personal interview

“some … misclassification was deliberate in an attempt to

move critical reports into what were perceived to be more

closely monitored categories in order to improve the chance

that the reports would trigger a response” (Morrow et al.,

2011, pp. 24–25)







they are interpolated through place-based imaginaries

the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large and in particular interventions

three: represents philanthro-capitalism



the formal humanitarian sector is turning to digital humanitarianism as its important “innovation”

CONSTRUCTING DIGITAL HUMANITARIANISM’S NEEDY SUBJECTS

1. “Victims” of crises

2. Formal humanitarian sector

“…thanks to this map – using this map – every hour of every day [responders] were able

to save hundreds of lives” (TEDxTalks 2011).

“Ushahidi kept Kenyans current on vital information and provided invaluable assistance

to those providing relief” (Ushahidi 2009).

“Haiti showed everyone that it is going to be crucial to adopt and use these technologies

to make humanitarian work better, faster and more efficient” (Adele Waugaman, quoted

in Lohr 2011).

interpolated through place-based and temporal imaginaries

“That's part of why the preparedness work is to help build communities

in places where there isn't one. … if there's a really strong local

community then there's not much for the international or OpenStreetMap

community to do, which is great.” (Alex, personal interview)

LEGITIMATION BOTH WRIT LARGE AND AD HOC

1. Individual activations

2. As a whole

“On December 12th, 2011, … WHO Mediterranean Center… (WMC) based in Tunisia contacted the SBTF, OSM and GISCorps to request support on a project related to the public health system in Libya. The purpose of the project was to get a final Health Facility Registry GIS layer for Libya. … This was to be the starting point for providing a crucial service to the local community since the public health infrastructure was starting to get back “online” as it’s [sic] capacity was starting to increase again, which would benefit the entire community and citizens” (standbytaskforce 2012).

• TED talks• ICCM• Popular press• Hackathons







they are interpolated through place-based imaginaries

the needy subjects help justify digital humanitarianism at large and in particular interventions

three: represents philanthro-capitalism



the formal humanitarian sector is turning to digital humanitarianism as its important “innovation”

INNOVATION AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR

1. Drive for efficiency and fewer resources

2. Enter: private sector

“Robert Kirkpatrick, who’s now at the U.N. Global

Pulse program, used to be at Microsoft. And he

used to argue that -- in these discussions, please let

the private sector take care of this. We will

address this problem for you, we will take the

research, we will commercialize it, and we’ll sell it

back to you for cheap. Everybody will be happy”

(Eric Rasmussen, in WoodrowWilsonCenter 2012).

“There wasn't time and resources to work on [digital humanitarian] kind of things. …

But I'm allowed to bring in interns. … Now, as soon as I bring in interns I can task

them on what I want. … So I tasked them on doing [digital humanitarian] and other

things. … Then I have to manage them. So I'm allowed to dedicate time to manage

interns” (David, personal interview).

Comic relief

PHILANTHRO-CAPITALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM

1. Private-sector rationalities and languages

2. Accumulating capital through philanthropy

• Depoliticizes humanitarianism and avoids critique through its appeal to ‘the good’

• Obscures and naturalizes certain tradeoffs/consequences

“Well, part of it is just pure manpower. … So say we're working with OCHA in Geneva…

when Geneva is asleep and everybody else is still working away, by the time that they

wake up they see that a massive amount of work has been done overnight. And it gives

them [a] sort of 24/7 workforce … So I think that's not something that a lot of

organizations would typically have: … a breadth of really strong technical people that can

work across time zones…” (Jasmine, personal interview)

SIGNIFICANCE AND CONTRIBUTIONS

Critical GIS : knowledge politics enacted prior to the visual artifact (map)

Political economy : private sector incursions through philanthro-capitalism

Urban geography : cities are redeveloped with exclusionary mechanisms

Political geography : scaled-up form of humanitarianism that invokes

responsibilization of, well, everyone

CONCLUSION

Digital humanitarianism emerges at the nexus of new spatial

technologies, practices, and philanthro-capitalism.

This has implications for how needs are collected and represented in

humanitarian contexts, representing further advance of the private

sector into humanitarianism.

Digital humanitarianism is shaping humanitarianism, and consequently political

and urban geographies, and broader political-economic relations.

Thank you for your time, attention, and feedback!

The Digital Humanitarian Moment: New Practices, Knowledge Politics, and Philanthro-capitalism

Technology

Transcript of The Digital Humanitarian Moment: New Practices, Knowledge Politics, and Philanthro-capitalism