Crowd and Crown: Policy Issues in Social Media for International Crisis Response

Commons Lab of the Science and Technology Innovation Program, Woodrow Wilson Center.

Crowdsourcing and crisis mapping have opened new approaches to making sense of crises. Yet these new technologies raise unanswered questions. When a refugee tweets her location with a request for help, is she still safe? How do we know that the content of the message is from a refugee at all? And do we have a responsibility to act on that request for aid? Developing policies that connect the crowd to the large, traditional institutions that respond to emergencies will require asking these questions and developing some initial (and imperfect) answers.
 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011
3:00-4:30pm

6th Floor Moynihan Board Room
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
1300 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20004

This meeting is free and open to the public. Allow time for routine security procedures. A photo ID is required for entry.

For more information, please contact Lea Shanley, Science and Technology Innovation Program, Wilson Center: Lea.Shanley@wilsoncenter.org.

The Woodrow Wilson Center is located in the Ronald Reagan Building (Federal Triangle stop on Blue/Orange Line, or down the street from Metro Center stop on the Red Line). Public parking is available underneath the Reagan Building; however we recommend metro or taxi. www.wilsoncenter.org/directions

About John Crowley, Research Fellow, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
John Crowley is a research fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and an analyst (contract) with the STAR-TIDES initiative at the National Defense University. He was the lead author of the recent UN Foundation study, Disaster Relief 2.0. He also leads a community of software developers that convene at Camp Roberts to work on the difficult inter-organizational issues that emerge from crowdsourcing and crisis mapping. He holds degrees in public policy, history, and music from Harvard and Boston University, and was the 2008 Robert C. Seamans Fellow in Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He tweets at @jcrowley.

The Wilson Center's Science and Technology Innovation Program (STIP) focuses on emerging technologies and the critical choices innovation presents to public policy. Our work ranges from nanotechnology, geoengineering, and synthetic biology to serious games, participatory technology assessment, transformative social media, and geospatial technology.

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is the living, national memorial to President Wilson established by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Center establishes and maintains a neutral forum for free, open, and informed dialogue. It is a nonpartisan institution, supported by public and private funds and engaged in the study of national and international affairs.