Search results

What characterizes civil disaster response in the digital age? In a growing number of cases, citizens use social media platforms to self‐organize and carry out tasks in emergencies that potentially challenge or complement official emergency response. During the 2013 floods in Dresden, Germany, several Facebook groups emerged as a primary means for citizens to gather and share information about the emergency. These networks enabled the emergence of what is here called the "switchboard mechanism," whereby citizens in need of help could be connected to those offering it. Moreover, the online activity helped to create a sense of common purpose among volunteers. In combination with ethnographic research, this article provides an analysis of one of the Facebook groups by categorizing different posts according to their function to examine how such online networks are used to translate online activity into on‐the‐ground emergency response by citizens. The switchboard mechanism is thus an attempt to add to a conceptual apparatus for research into the ways that such online–offline translations occur during disasters.

The use of digital technologies, social media platforms, and (big) data analytics is reshaping crisis management in the 21st century. In turn, the sharing, collecting, and monitoring of personal and potentially sensitive data during crises has become a central matter of interest and concern which governments, emergency management and humanitarian professionals, and researchers are increasingly addressing. This article asks if these rapidly advancing challenges can be governed in the same ways that data is governed in periods of normalcy. By applying a political realist perspective, we argue that governing data in crises is challenged by state interests and by the complexity of other actors with interests of their own. The article focuses on three key issues: 1) vital interests of the data subject vis-à-vis the right to privacy; 2) the possibilities and limits of an international or global policy on data protection vis-à-vis the interests of states; and 3) the complexity of actors involved in the protection of data. In doing so, we highlight a number of recent cases in which the problems of governing data in crises have become visible.

This article conceptualizes resilience as an emergent and contingent practice that shapes societal relationships in unexpected ways. It focuses on the case of the 2013 floods in Dresden, a city that witnessed three major floods within 11 years. Emergent volunteer activities on the ground and on social media played a significant role during the flood emergency response efforts. Drawing on Philippe Bourbeau's definition of resilience as a process of patterned adjustment, the article regards these emergent structures as incidents of resilience. In the case of Dresden, not only was resilience not explicitly requested by the state, but it was in several incidents actively not wanted. While most of the volunteering activities arising from social media platforms intended to support the disaster management authorities, the case shows how subversive forms of resilience were mobilized to resist official plans. They finally urged authorities to adapt to a new social and technological reality in order to render unaffiliated volunteering governable. Resilience thus emerges as an adaptive process that shapes and is shaped by societal relations. The article thus seeks to add another facet to the debate on resilience by demonstrating how resilience helps us to make sense of complex and interdependent adaptation processes.

The use of digital technologies, social media platforms, and (big) data analytics is reshaping crisis management in the 21st century. In turn, the sharing, collecting, and monitoring of personal and potentially sensitive data during crises has become a central matter of interest and concern which governments, emergency management and humanitarian professionals, and researchers are increasingly addressing. This article asks if these rapidly advancing challenges can be governed in the same ways that data is governed in periods of normalcy. By applying a political realist perspective, we argue that governing data in crises is challenged by state interests and by the complexity of other actors with interests of their own. The article focuses on three key issues: 1) vital interests of the data subject vis-à-vis the right to privacy; 2) the possibilities and limits of an international or global policy on data protection vis-à-vis the interests of states; and 3) the complexity of actors involved in the protection of data. In doing so, we highlight a number of recent cases in which the problems of governing data in crises have become visible.

The use of digital technologies, social media platforms, and (big) data analytics is reshaping crisis management in the 21st century. In turn, the sharing, collecting, and monitoring of personal and potentially sensitive data during crises has become a central matter of interest and concern which governments, emergency management and humanitarian professionals, and researchers are increasingly addressing. This article asks if these rapidly advancing challenges can be governed in the same ways that data is governed in periods of normalcy. By applying a political realist perspective, we argue that governing data in crises is challenged by state interests and by the complexity of other actors with interests of their own. The article focuses on three key issues: 1) vital interests of the data subject vis-à-vis the right to privacy; 2) the possibilities and limits of an international or global policy on data protection vis-à-vis the interests of states; and 3) the complexity of actors involved in the protection of data. In doing so, we highlight a number of recent cases in which the problems of governing data in crises have become visible.

The use of digital technologies, social media platforms, and (big) data analytics is reshaping crisis management in the 21st century. In turn, the sharing, collecting and monitoring of personal and potentially sensitive data during crises has become a central matter of interest and concern which governments, emergency management and humanitarian professionals, and researchers are increasingly addressing. This paper asks if these rapidly advancing challenges can be governed in the same ways that data is governed in periods of normalcy. By applying a political realist perspective, we argue that governing data in crises is challenged by state interests and by the complexity of other actors with interests of their own. The paper focuses on three key issues: 1) vital interests of the data subject vis-a-vis the right to privacy; 2) the possibilities and limits of an international or global policy on data protection vis-a-vis the interests of states; and 3) the complexity of actors involved in the protection of data. In doing so, we highlight a number of recent cases in which the problems of governing data in crises have become visible. ; The use of digital technologies, social media platforms, and (big) data analytics is reshaping crisis management in the 21st century. In turn, the sharing, collecting, and monitoring of personal and potentially sensitive data during crises has become a central matter of interest and concern which governments, emergency management and humanitarian profes- sionals, and researchers are increasingly addressing. This article asks if these rapidly advancing challenges can be governed in the same ways that data is governed in periods of normalcy. By applying a political realist perspective, we argue that governing data in crises is challenged by state interests and by the complexity of other actors with interests of their own. The article focuses on three key issues: 1) vital interests of the data subject vis-à-vis the right to privacy; 2) the possibilities and limits of an international or global policy on data protection vis-à-vis the interests of states; and 3) the complexity of actors involved in the protection of data. In doing so, we highlight a number of recent cases in which the problems of governing data in crises have become visible.

Attention has become an issue of intense political, economic, and moral concern over recent years: from the commodification of attention by digital platforms to the alleged loss of the attentional capacities of screen-addicted children (and their parents). While attention has rarely been an explicit focus of anthropological inquiry, it has still played an important if mostly tacit part in many anthropological debates and subfields. Focusing on anthropological scholarship on digital worlds and ritual forms, we review resources for colleagues interested in this burgeoning topic of research and identify potential avenues for an incipient anthropology of attention, which studies how attentional technologies and techniques mold human minds and bodies in more or less intentional ways.

Expert scientific knowledge is fast becoming an integral part of disaster management, and, in the process, is changing the role of science for the reduction of disaster risks at the policy level. Yet science and policy operate in different domains between which there are often competing interests and modes of valuing knowledge. Based on research done as part of the research project Enhancing Synergies for Disaster Prevention in the European Union (ESPREssO), we discuss three major issues facing European Union member states with respect to the interface between science and policy for disaster risk reduction: knowledge transfer, disaster expertise, and risk awareness. In doing so, we hone in on three gaps: an epistemological gap, an institutional gap, and a strategic gap. We argue that these gaps can help explain underlying systematic challenges for the integration between science and policy for disaster risk reduction. These gaps need to be addressed by focusing on changes at the governance level.

Expert scientific knowledge is fast becoming an integral part of disaster management, and, in the process, is changing the role of science for the reduction of disaster risks at the policy level. Yet science and policy operate in different domains between which there are often competing interests and modes of valuing knowledge. Based on research done as part of the research project Enhancing Synergies for Disaster Prevention in the European Union (ESPREssO), we discuss three major issues facing European Union member states with respect to the interface between science and policy for disaster risk reduction: knowledge transfer, disaster expertise, and risk awareness. In doing so, we hone in on three gaps: an epistemological gap, an institutional gap, and a strategic gap. We argue that these gaps can help explain underlying systematic challenges for the integration between science and policy for disaster risk reduction. These gaps need to be addressed by focusing on changes at the governance level

As the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns forced populations across the world to become completely dependent on digital devices for working, studying, and socializing, there has been no shortage of published studies about the possible negative effects of the increased use of digital devices during this exceptional period. In seeking to empirically address how the concern with digital dependency has been experienced during the pandemic, we present findings from a study of daily self-reported logbooks by 59 university students in Copenhagen, Denmark, over 4 weeks in April and May 2020, investigating their everyday use of digital devices. We highlight two main findings. First, students report high levels of online fatigue, expressed as frustration with their constant reliance on digital devices. On the other hand, students found creative ways of using digital devices for maintaining social relations, helping them to cope with isolation. Such online interactions were nevertheless seen as a poor substitute for physical interactions in the long run. Our findings show how the dependence on digital devices was marked by ambivalence, where digital communication was seen as both the cure against, and cause of, feeling isolated and estranged from a sense of normality.

In this article, we study the framing activities of Scandinavian climate-active non-governmental organizations (NGOs) during the early phases of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Building on theories of focusing events, crisis exploitation and Ulrich Beck's global risks, we develop and apply the concept of inter-risk framing contests to the case. Empirically, we analyse all climate- and corona-related tweeting activity of a broad selection of green NGOs in Denmark (17 NGOs, 874 tweets), Norway (22 NGOs, 2575 tweets) and Sweden (15 NGOs, 920 tweets), respectively. Methodologically, we employ quantitative text analysis to map socio-symbolic constellations of NGO-term relations using principal component analysis, while complementing this via online ethnographic observation to increase interpretative validity. Overall, the analysis demonstrates similarities and differences in how green NGOs have variously responded to the ambiguous challenges and symbolic opportunities of the coronavirus event, in ways resonant with path-dependent dynamics of the three national green civil societies.