Are citizen journalists playing an increasingly important role in documenting violent conflict and human rights violations? I posed this question during the 2008 Global Voices Summit and answered affirmatively—but without more than a hunch and rather limited anecdotal evidence. Paul Curion took issue and David Sasaki recommended that someone carry out an empirical study.
I appreciated David’s practical recommendation and decided to pursue the project since the topic overlaps with the Conflict Early Warning and Crisis Mapping project I’ve been working on at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI). Supported by Humanity United, the project seeks to explore the changing role and impact of information communication technology in crisis early warning and humanitarian response.
Seeing that I was in Nairobi during the election violence, I chose Kenya as a case study to assess the role of citizen journalists in crisis environments as compared to the mainstream media. My colleagues Kate Brodock, Briana Kramer and I used event-data analysis to code reports of violent and peaceful events as documented by about a dozen citizen journalist bloggers between December 27, 2007 and January 27, 2008.
We did the same for mainstream media, ranging from print media (national newspapers) to radio and television programs. I also included the Ushahidi data because I wanted to carry out a three way comparison between mainstream news media, citizen journalism and a dedicated crowdsourcing platform.
We then created a Google Earth layer to visualize the data over time and space. Below is a YouTube video I created of the animation (for slower Internet connections). Here is the Google Earth layer (KMZ). The data can also be visualized on Google Maps here.
Yellow icon = mainstream news reports; Blue icon = citizen journalism blogs; Green icon = Ushahidi reports.
A dynamic time line is also available below. The interactive time line depicts the number of daily reports produced by mainstream news, citizen journalists and Ushahidi over the 30-day period of study.
Our preliminary findings:
- Mainstream media reported actual death count before citizen journalists; however, on many accounts, mainstream media did not report on incidents leading to actual deaths, i.e., early warning signs;
- Citizen journalist reports and Ushahidi reports did not overlap geographically with mainstream media reports;
- Citizen journalists tended to report as soon as violence started, well before mainstream media;
- The number of comments on citizen journalist blogs increased during the 30-day period, or during particular periods of violence;
- The comment section was also used as a medium for real-time updating;
- Many citizen journalist bloggers used real-time updates sent to them via SMS, primarily from rural areas;
- Citizen journalism reports declined after the launch of Ushahidi;
- Ushahidi reports document an important number of violent events not reported by the mainstream media and citizen journalists;
- Contrary to news media and citizen journalist reports, Ushahidi data always had specific location information;
- Ushahidi reports also covered a wider geographical area than both mainstream news and citizen journalist bloggers.
For further information on our project’s methodology and sources, please see this short powerpoint presentation (PDF) which we have also uploaded on Slideshare. For more on crisis mapping, please see this page. For additional information on the role of digital technology during Kenya’s post election violence, see this narrative-based analysis (PDF) by my two colleagues Josh Goldstein and Juliana Rotich.
We look forward to receiving as much feedback as possible so we can improve our methodology and analysis in future case studies. We’re especially keen to have others interpret the dynamics displayed in the animation above. In the meantime, please contact me if you’d like to join the team and contribute to our next case study, which will be of Georgia.
To cite this research, please use: Meier, Patrick and Kate Brodock (2008). “Crisis Mapping Kenya’s Election Violence: Comparing Mainstream News, Citizen Journalism and Ushahidi.” (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, HHI, Harvard University: Boston). URL: http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/mapping-kenyas-election-violence
23 responses so far ↓
Documenting Kenya's Elections using Crisis Mapping Techniques | Ad Your Comment Here // October 23, 2008 at 8:06 pm |
[...] did a really good job of writing up the methodology at his blog, so I’m going to leave wheel inventing up to [...]
max // October 28, 2008 at 12:53 am |
very good!
loved your site.
Patrick Philippe Meier // October 28, 2008 at 1:18 am |
thanks Max!
Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Crisis Mapping Mainstream Media, Citizen Journalism, and Ushanidi during Post Election Violence in Kenya // October 30, 2008 at 3:16 pm |
[...] at the 2008 Global Voices Summit, Peter Meier, along with his colleague Kate Brodock mapped the crisis in Kenya to give weight to his affirmative answer to that [...]
Event: International News Coverage in A New Media World « iRevolution // November 28, 2008 at 6:49 pm |
[...] was originally planning to focus the bulk of my presentation on the role of new media in covering Kenya’s post-election violence but given the (still) current carnage in Mumbai and the unprecedented response of citizen [...]
Africa’s Crossborder Conflicts on Google Earth « iRevolution // December 19, 2008 at 2:43 am |
[...] visualizing the data on Google Earth is not as compelling as mapping dynamic event-data, such as HHI’s Crisis Map of Kenya’s Post-Election Violence. That said, the Google Earth layer at least provides the user with far more “spatial [...]
Top 5 iRevolution Posts of 2008 « iRevolution // December 23, 2008 at 7:10 pm |
[...] Crisis Mapping Kenya’s Election Violence [...]
Dennis King // January 2, 2009 at 7:46 pm |
Ushahidi Wins One of Three 2008 USAID Project Awards
Happy New Year from the Global Development Commons!
We are pleased to introduce you to the three winning projects for the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge – Child Malnutrition Surveillance and Famine Response, Click Diagnostics, and Ushahidi. We are elated with the caliber of the winners and would like to invite you to join us at the Awards Ceremony on January 8th at the Newseum’s Knight Conference Center.
If there is anyone you’d like to share this with, the event is open to the public (as long as people RSVP), and we especially encourage people engaged in social entrepreneurship, international development, technology, bloggers and mainstream media, investors and venture capitalists, university students, and other thought leaders to participate. Please pass this on to the innovators, thinkers, and activists you know who may wish to take advantage of this opportunity.
Kind Regards,
The Global Development Commons Team
Rebecca Askin
Global Development Commons, USAID
http://www.globaldevelopmentcommons.net
DAI
direct: 301-771-7666
email: rebecca.askin@gmail.com
rebecca_askin@dai.com
Connect. Collaborate. Prosper
Passing the Baton - notes part two « burning bridge // January 15, 2009 at 11:21 pm |
[...] Humanitarian Initiative study comparing Ushahid, citizen journalism, and MSM reporting on [...]
Which is a Better Mobile Citizen Reporting Tool: Twitter or Ushahidi? | Gauravonomics Blog // January 28, 2009 at 5:28 am |
[...] Meier and Kate Brodock did a comparison between the coverage of the post-election violence in Kenya on blogs (reporting based on … and found that none of the sources were complete in themselves, but Ushahidi had more precise [...]
Perspective: The key to good journalism through African art « Digital Democracy @ Tufts // February 17, 2009 at 2:39 am |
[...] 17, 2009 Patrick Meier’s Crisis Mapping of the Kenyan election violence showed that citizen journalists and mainstream media do not [...]
NeoGeography and Crisis Mapping Analytics « iRevolution // February 24, 2009 at 9:47 am |
[...] (2009) do not mention Ushahidi, a Mobile Crisis Mapping (CMC) platform nor do the authors reference HHI’s Google Earth Crisis Map of Kenya’s Post-Election violence (2008). Both initiatives provide unique geo-tagged peace and [...]
Ushahidi and the Changing Face of Media - The Ushahidi Blog // February 25, 2009 at 2:37 pm |
[...] is more interesting is if you take a look at a study done by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative on media during the post-election violence in Kenya. [...]
HURIDOCS09: From Wikipedia to Ushahidi « iRevolution // February 27, 2009 at 5:05 am |
[...] The point to keep in mind is that Ushahidi does not exist in a vacuum, which is why I showed HHI’s Google Earth Layer of Kenya’s post-election violence. In other words, Ushahidi does not replace but rather complements traditional sources of reporting [...]
A Brief History of Crisis Mapping « iRevolution // March 12, 2009 at 4:23 am |
[...] platforms like Ushahidi and the SensorWeb. In addition, HHI produced the first comparative and dynamic crisis map of Kenya by drawing on reports from the mainstream media, citizen journalists and reports to analyze spatial [...]
Wikinomics» Blog Archive » Crowdsourcing on Mobiles: Reporting the Crisis from Madagascar // March 18, 2009 at 4:10 pm |
[...] focus on the same areas and echo one another, Ushidi allowed coverage of a much broader area. Here’s a more in-depth blog from last October that covers this and other findings in more [...]
Crowdsourcing on Mobiles: Reporting the Crisis from Madagascar « Alex Marshall’s Blog // March 21, 2009 at 3:14 am |
[...] focus on the same areas and echo one another, Ushidi allowed coverage of a much broader area. Here’s a more in-depth blog from last October that covers this and other findings in more [...]
Internews, Ushahidi and Communication in Crises « iRevolution // March 27, 2009 at 3:34 am |
[...] post-election violence reported by the mainstream media, citizen journalists and Ushahidi. I then created a Google Earth layer of this data and animated the reports over time and space. I recommend reading the [...]
Crowdsourcing in Crisis: A More Critical Reflection « iRevolution // March 31, 2009 at 9:24 pm |
[...] I don’t understand how this question follows from any of my preceding comments. We need to think about information as an ecosystem with multiple potential sources that may or may not overlap. Obviously governments and national media may not be able to—or compelled to—report accurately and in a timely manner during times of crises. I’m not making an argument about obligation. I’m just making an observation about there being a gap that crowdsourcing can fill, which I showed empirically in this Kenya case study. [...]
iRevolution One Year On… « iRevolution // April 4, 2009 at 7:13 pm |
[...] Crisis Mapping Kenya’s Election Violence [...]
Conflict Early Warning Blog: One Year On « Conflict Early Warning and Early Response // April 4, 2009 at 7:31 pm |
[...] Crisis Mapping Kenya’s Election Violence [...]
Video Introduction to Crisis Mapping « iRevolution // April 27, 2009 at 11:09 pm |
[...] Crisis Mapping Kenya’s Post Election Violence [...]
Complexity Matters » “Crowdsourcing” and Crisis Mapping: Technological Ingenuity Makes it Happen // June 24, 2009 at 6:14 pm |
[...] team led by Patrick Meier, a doctoral fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, posted an analysis of crisis mapping during the post election violence in Kenya. The team found that mainstream media reported actual [...]