Disasters in Sociotechnical Systems

One disaster that is currently effecting a sociotechnical system is the Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram.

Now What the Heck is a Sociotechnical System?

From what I learned today, my classmates and I discussed the definition of a sociotechnical system as something that is a self-contained system of people and technology. The world-wide web is a good example of a sociotechnical system because it involves people interacting with technology. However, people who ride the el trains here in Chicago could also be considered a sociotechnical system because they are a group of people using a certain technology. Still a bit fuzzy on the definition? Check out the wiki page here or go to this website.

And a Disaster?

The definition of a disaster as a bit more straightforward, but for the purposes of this post I’ll describe what my class and I came up with. We decided that a disaster would be categorized as a negative event that directly affects a large number of people.

Got That?

Now, you may be wondering how Boko Haram fits into the category of a disaster in a sociotechnical system. Let’s start with the facts.

1. Boko Haram is an Islamic terrorist group in Nigeria

They have been reeking havoc on the country of Nigeria since around 2009, and have claimed thousands of civilian lives through bombings, various weapons, and kidnappings. They have also caused over one million people to flee their homes in order to escape the conflict.  This is where Boko Haram meets the criteria for a “disaster.”And this really only scratches the surface.

2. Their goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government.

According to an article from the BBC News, “Boko Haram promotes a version of Islam which makes it ‘haram’, or forbidden, for Muslims to take part in any political or social activity associated with Western society. This includes voting in elections, wearing shirts and trousers or receiving a secular education.” Boko Haram has a lot of resources at its disposal, and they are not afraid to use them. At this point the group has much more control over the Nigerian government then Nigeria would like to admit, but who can forget the 276 school girls who were kidnapped as well as countless other acts of violence? The kidnapping blew up twitter here in the United States back in mid-2014 with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. This is where it meets the criteria for impacting a sociotechnical system.

Writing About a Disaster in a Sociotechnical System

I linked a few articles here about Boko Haram, but really the issue is so large that you could surf the web for hours learning about the group. This disaster involved writing because countless articles have been written, campaigns introduced to help the afflicted, as well as photos, videos, and any other modes of journalism you can think of to help inform people about what is happening as it happens.

 

Social Media in Disaster Response

One of the books that I have been mentioning in my last couple of posts was Liza Potts’ Social Media in Disaster Response.

It is quite an interesting book, if you have the time to crack it open and read the whole thing (and you should, because it isn’t even that long). Basically Potts’ book talks about how important the role of social media plays in the response in times of crisis or disaster. One of her more memorable quotes points out this simple fact; “In times of disaster and crisis, people tend to gravitate toward the systems and networks that are most relevant to them.” And it’s true.

What Should I Take Away From This Book?

One of the most significant ideas of this book for me was the idea of “architecting”.  Part of the reason this is so interesting to me is because it focuses more on the designers of a social media space and emphasizes how important it is for these architects to become participants in their space rather than only just a designer. This is an important point because the more connected we can become with something that we are creating, the better we can made it be. The second half of this idea comes in with being able to make these spaces adaptable to the ever-changing needs of the social web. The bottom line is that it is important for these architects to be able to build spaces for something they weren’t necessarily built for.

Wait What?

If you’re still a bit lost on that last part, consider this: Twitter was built primarily for leisure social media use, following celebrities, your friends or what-have-you. But along the line Twitter was starting to be used as a way of communicating during times of crisis or disaster because it had the capability to. And if we go back to Potts’ quote, it’s no surprise Twitter started being used that way because people were familiar with it and knew that news and messages could spread quickly. The article “What Tear Gas Taught Me about Twitter and the NSA: It’s Time to Rethink Our Nightmares about Surveillance” by Zeynep Tufekci is a perfect example of people using social media during times of disaster or crisis to inform others. Or consider the recent kidnappings that happened in Nigeria. If it hadn’t been for social media, and #bringbackourgirls, I think it is safe to say that many of us wouldn’t even know what was happening.

Communication Is Key

Through this book I really learned how important it is to have sites that we can communicate effectively with during times of crisis, to let people know what is happening and where to go from there. I also learned how important it is for the designers of the space to participate and make their space better for what it is needed/being used for. Adaptability is extremely important in this day and age.

Some of the things that I would like to know more about is how we can help to integrate these social media systems into poorer areas of the world, like places that don’t have easy access to the internet. What alternatives can we offer those places in their time of need?

Where Can I Get it?

If you would like to read Liza Potts’ book, Social Media in Disaster Response, you can buy it here, or check out the website for a free sample chapter.

A Reflection

The process of creating this project was definitely an interesting one. I remember way back when when I first pitched the Unicef tap project for our class to consider. It was great to see people get excited about it, and I was happy when it got chosen to move forward. I’ve always had a particular interest in UNICEF as I think that they are a great organization and it’s awesome to help out children.

Collaborate!

The process of being able to work with some of my other classmates was pretty interesting. It was exciting to see what others were able to contribute to make the UNICEF tap project come to life. We we’re able to come up with some good ideas like building up a facebook page, a website, and having a bake sale.

How’d It Go?

I think that our project turned out pretty well considering some of the setbacks that our team experienced. The timed donations for the UNICEF tap project  were only during the month of March, but our team managed to adapt and encourage people to donate on their own. Not to mention that we did indeed end up donating one hundred dollars to support the cause! Our whole mission was to help UNICEF and their cause to help provide for children, and I feel that our team did a good job raising awareness about it.

Would You Do Anything Different?

I think that if I had to do everything over again, I would be a little bit more assertive in my position as team manager. I am not so great at confronting people about things, but I think it would have been beneficial for me to deal with some of the issues head on.

Writing For New Media

I learned a lot in this class, and to be honest I don’t think that I was very open to it at first, specifically using Twitter. But as the semester moved on the idea grew on me, and I enjoyed being able to interact with my classmates outside of the classroom and their thoughts on the materials we were reading and presenting about. I really liked learning how to code using this website and watching the video “What Most Schools Don’t Teach. It really made me realize how important coding is and how many people don’t know how to do it.

Another thing I found particularly interesting was the piece on net neutrality, Leaked: The Internet Must Go. I found that after I had a better idea about what was going on with neutrality on the internet, I noticed it popping up in the news. It was a good feeling to know what was going and what these people were talking about, and I even signed a petition to help keep the net neutral.

The last piece that intrigued me was “The Pace of Modern Life“. It was fascinating to see that people had the same concerns in the 1800’s about technology that we do today, and ultimately I think it helped open me up to technology and stop thinking about it as “good” or “bad”.

All in all I would say that I am really happy that I took this course, since I learned a lot and it opened me up to things that I didn’t think I would before.

Look Here!

I read this interesting article “What Tear Gas Taught Me about Twitter and the NSA: It’s Time to Rethink Our Nightmares about Surveillance” by Zeynep Tufekci today and it was quite interesting on many levels.

What’s It About?

The overall theme of the piece was kind of about whether or not the internet was good or bad with an emphasis on social media and the surveillance that occurs within. Tufekci states “…the more we connect to each other online, the more our actions become visible to governments and corporations.” Which is where the surveillance comes in since these corporations have access to this kind of data. However, social media and the internet become extremely important in times of disaster like the Gezi Park protests that she described.

Get To The Good Parts

Perhaps one of the most intriguing parts of the article was when Tufekci talks about marketing and advertising monitoring. She describes a story in which Target was able to detect a woman’s pregnancy before she had told anyone by analyzing her recent shopping habits. It was quite an eerie feeling to know that large corporations such as Target would be able to know and market me a product before I could even tell anyone I was pregnant.

How Does It Relate?

This article particularly relates to the book I read for class, Social Media in Disaster Response by Liza Potts. You should check out the book, but it pretty much talks about how important social media platforms can be for people in times of crisis.

I Learned A lot About…

The protests in Gezi Park and how corporations and government can have a strikingly wide access to data that circulates on the internet. I guess the only thing I would like to know more about are the different kinds of access that different governments have on their country’s internet data, and the type of censorship they put on it.

 

It’s Been A While…

Quick Catch Up

Our Tap project team here at Columbia has been mighty busy the past couple of weeks. We’ve done some more work on our facebook page, our website, and had a very successful bake sale in which we raised 100 dollars and donated it to UNICEF’s water and sanitation programs! So we’ve been pretty happy about these latest accomplishments.

Anywho…

What I really wanted to talk about today was some other projects that our class had been working on. We all had to do book reviews and a certain book that some of my classmates introduced was particularly interesting to me, and also happened to relate to the book that I reviewed.

The book is called Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. (You can check out a wonderfully thorough review of the book written by one of my classmates, Ann Marie Farrell, on her blog.)

Sharing

One of the biggest points of the book is that WE are in charge of what goes viral out on the internet: what gets seen and what doesn’t, and that is such a powerful thing for us as internet participants and contributors to understand. WE have the power!

Let’s Go!

Once we realize that we actually have a lot of say in what gets noticed on the internet, the better the chance we will become participants rather than just users or “lurkers” as my class likes to call them. 

It’s Really This Simple

The more we understand that we are capable of making a change, the more likely we are to do so, which I thought was a pretty powerful message. So get out there and go do it!

A Slight Slump

Well our team reached a slight setback with our project. Unfortunately, the UNICEF tap project that we have been promoting up until this point was only active during the month of March.

However, not all is lost

While this is a bit of bad news, there is still hope! You can still donate to UNICEF and know that your money is going to a great cause; Helping to provide those in need with safe, clean drinking water, which, at the end of the day, is all that really matters right?

We’ve been making progress

Our team got started on our WordPress site dedicated to the project and you can check it out here for some awesome information and resources about water. We’ve still got some work to do, and I imagine we’ll have to re-group and think about our approach a little bit differently now with this recent discovery, but were still forging ahead with some of our previous ideas.

The next few weeks

We’ll be steadily increasing our online presence and making sure our Facebook page and WordPress site are the best they can be.

Next week we will be busy putting up posters and posting on our sites to advertise for our upcoming bake sale.

Mark your Calendars

On Wednesday, April 30th we will be hosting our bake sale at 33 E. Congress, so make sure and come out and buy some baked goodies in order to support a great cause! All the proceeds will be donated to UNICEF. There will be plenty of delicious food, pictures will be taken, and lots of merriment will be had, so don’t miss out!

The first week of May we will be busy posting pictures from the bake sale and tallying up the money we made and donating it to UNICEF, so make sure and look out for posts on our sites with the totals!

Strategically Speaking

So I know most of you have been dying to know what my team has been up to regarding this UNICEF tap project I announced a couple of weeks ago. Wait no more! Our team has been making slow, but steady progress on the project.

Ok maybe you’ll have to wait a tad bit longer…

I want to talk a little strategy first; content strategy.

Basically content strategy is how we present and distribute our content as well as choosing what the content actually is. (For more detail on content strategy I suggest checking out this article.) In order for our team to do this effectively, we need to find out what YOU (the audience) wants and will best respond to. We’ve specifically named Columbia College as one big member of our audience, but who’s to say there can’t be more? *Musters up best Oprah voice* You get to contribute! You get to contribute! You get to contribute!

If you haven’t caught on by now…

I’m trying to be fun and engaging, because who wouldn’t want to be part of a fun and engaging project like the UNICEF TaP PrOjEcT?? ok, ok probably a bit over the top.

But still

We need to pull in as many people as we can to help provide clean water to those in need, and fun and engaging usually works for people of all ages or what have you.

Unless you’re grumpy cat.

 

For now

My team and I are still working to create the best content strategy for you guys. I’ll update with more as we progress.

(psst look out for a facebook page coming soon!)

We Propose…

An effort to help the UNICEF Tap Project!

UNICEF tap project is a nationwide campaign that has invited people to go without their phones to help children in need of clean water. This means that for every ten minutes that you don’t touch your phone, UNICEF donors/sponsors will fund one day of clean water for a child in need. Just $1.00 can provide 40 days of clean water.

Why water? It’s simple; human beings cannot survive without it. Over 768 million people around the world do not have safe, clean water to drink and 2.5 billion people don’t have access to a proper toilet. The push towards clean water will keep 1,400 children from dying from diseases linked to unsafe water. In addition to Unicef’s campaign, we plan on spreading the word to people to participate through a project of our own. Let’s show the world that we can put down our phones to provide others with something they actually can’t live without.

How you ask?

Specifically, our digital networked response will be a facebook page and an informational wordpress blog promoting the UNICEF tap project and how Columbia can help. We would like to create a blogroll on the wordpress site directing people to our facebook page and to UNICEF’s website.

For the research plan, our team will have to visit the UNICEF website (http://tap.unicefusa.org/) in order to become more informed on the application. This is the essential site that will provide us with the most accurate and thorough explanation on how/why/where this project will affect most people. Also, in order to fully push the campaign, we can use our own experiences with the app to understand why it’s effective. Each of us can download UNICEF tap project at a designated period during the day and then discuss how it personally impacted our time. After that, we can explore various social media sites (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.) to see if there were any other individuals around the world who tested the app and reported their encounters or knowledge of this mobile campaign.  In an effort to reach out to more Columbia students, we can go to the official Facebook page and ask if anyone has heard of this app and post a link for any potential responses. A lot of students use this page as a means of interacting within the school’s community. So it turn, we can see some surprising results.

Go Team!

Our team members have a diverse number of skills which will help us to complete our project effectively. Jess and Chris have skills in ad art so they will be creating posters and stickers to advertise a bake sale that we will be having in addition to promoting UNICEF. Carolyn is good at photography so she will be taking pictures at our bake sale and putting them up on our wordpress and facebook page. She will also help with making things for our bake sale and overseeing our facebook page. Grace is skilled at baking so she will provide items for the bake sale as well as overseeing the donations to UNICEF that our team will hopefully be able to collect at our bake sale. She will also be overseeing others in the group to make sure that tasks are completed on time. Joe will be helping out with our wordpress page and making sure the posts are up to date.

When? When? When?

We plan on having the bake sale the last week of April. We are looking to have it on a Wednesday since that seems to be the best day for everyone. We will affirm this the first week of April and make the necessary reservations on Columbia’s campus .During this time Chris and Jess will begin to make the stickers and posters advertising the bake sale. Grace will check in every week with Carolyn and Joe to make sure that the wordpress and facebook page are up to date. The week of the sale, the whole team will work to provide items to sell and help man the table. The first week of May Grace will inventory the donations accepted and donate the money to UNICEF. Carolyn and Joe will post updates to the wordpress and facebook pages on how much we earned.

The digital assets we need in order to fulfill the campaign push, will obviously be the UNICEF website (http://tap.unicefusa.org/) because it has the most accurate information on the app. Secondly, we’d have to create a wordpress site (tentatively titled, “Columbia College Chicago UNICEF Tap Project”) in order to specifically inform CCC students with news, events, updates, and social media links. Thirdly, our Facebook page will connect the online CCC community to interact with each other and share their experiences. Lastly, we need a Twitter account to connect with students through ‪#‎hashtags‬ and respond immediately to questions or comments on upcoming occasions or the app.

Help Us!

If you’re interested in helping us out now, go here on your phone and start saving some lives!

Cracking The Code

Let’s Code

As a filmmaker and aspiring creative professional, I think it is very important to learn how to code. There is a lot of value in it because if I want to be able to create my own website to market myself, it would be helpful to know how to program.

Code Red

While I do think that coding is important to learn, many websites already offer more convenient ways to accomplish writing a post or other things. And for people like me who aren’t exactly “computer savvy”, these type of sites are a life-saver…

Because

Somebody knew how to code and created this type of site for me. It allows people who don’t know how to program to get their words and opinions out into the world. If you know how to code, then it enables you to be a creator rather than just a consumer.

No way could I code!

As with almost everything in life, it takes practice and effort to get good at something. Learning to code can seem daunting, but with a little determination and elbow grease it is possible. (Well
This site doesn’t hurt either).

Hey if I can, so can you.

What’s so bad about copyright?

For those looking for an engaging way to learn about copyright, I suggest you take a look at neat little documentary called RIP: A Remix Manifesto. The video discusses strict copyright laws vs. a creative commons approach to allow artists to build upon other works not created by them.

One of the most disturbing issues of copyright is the whole financial aspect of it. I understand artists need to be paid for the work they created, but I feel like it is companies who are the ones to receive most of this revenue.

(Creative commons money!)

The other sad part about copyright is that even if you DID jump through all of the necessary hoops to obtain permission, the amount of money you would need to afford said item is out of this world. It makes it nearly impossible for anyone (unless you’re some kind of millionaire) to be able to use anything created that wasn’t theirs if it is copyrighted.

Well let’s just use stuff on creative commons then!

That’s all fine and well in theory, but let’s be honest here. Not many people allow their work up for creative commons …YET. Think about your favorite book or movie; it’s most likely copyrighted, and if you happen to read the disclaimer on their site, you might be a bit surprised.

“Do not assume that the results displayed in this search portal are under a CC license. You should always verify that the work is actually under a CC license by following the link. Since there is no registration to use a CC license, CC has no way to determine what has and hasn’t been placed under the terms of a CC license. If you are in doubt you should contact the copyright holder directly, or try to contact the site where you found the content.”

How interesting.

What to do?

I don’t want to make it seem like I’m against creative commons, I think it is important that we are able to build upon things to make them better, or different. The key here I think is the phrase “some rights reserved.” The artist should be able to retain the integrity of their work if they so choose, but still be able to allow other people to use it if they wish.

My Manifesto

1. You as the artist should be able to decide what you want to do with your work.

2. If you lock it up, it will be yours forever and never change (which can be good or bad)

3. If you open it up, others can build and create, and use it (which can be good or bad)

The choice is yours!

(More Creative commons images)