Author: Jim

danah boyd (yes, no capitals), who I
believe is one of the top two or three smartest people in the whole
world, has an amazing post up this week that really gave me pause.
Guilt Through Algorithmic
Association
is a post very similar to the types of posts I write in that it brings
up some really complex problem with no solution. It asks questions
that have no good answers. It tickles your brain and ultimately leaves
you more depressed about where our technology and world are taking
us—if only because we haven’t yet though through all of the
ramifications of our actions. But, man!, does it make you think.

Dr. boyd is an expert in young people’s issues and has relatedly
become an expert in how young folks interact and live online. The
subjects of her research generally place her on the bleeding edge of
what’s next, what’s going to be a problem and how things that are
seemingly good for society end up ostracizing the most vulnerable.

The Algorithm post is all about something similar to the old
“googlebombing” trick from
2004. You remember the “waffle” thing for John Kerry and “miserable
failure” thing for George W. Bush. To do that trick, a person had to
actually change a website (using search engine optimization
techniques) to influence the algorithm and produce the desired result.
An identifiable person or group did something. This problem is much
more subtle, and to the best of my understanding, a perpetrator-less
crime. Dr. Boyd describes it thusly:

You’re a 16-year-old Muslim kid in America. Say your name is Mohammad Abdullah. Your schoolmates are convinced that you’re a terrorist. They keep typing in Google queries likes “is Mohammad Abdullah a terrorist?” and “Mohammad Abdullah al Qaeda.” Google’s search engine learns. All of a sudden, auto-complete starts suggesting terms like “Al Qaeda” as the next term in relation to your name.

See the difference? This isn’t a person slandering you, they’re just
searching for you. The money line:

It’s one thing to be slandered by another person on a website, on a blog, in comments. It’s another to have your reputation slandered by computer algorithms. The algorithmic associations do reveal the attitudes and practices of people, but those people are invisible; all that’s visible is the product of the algorithm, without any context of how or why the search engine conveyed that information. What becomes visible is the data point of the algorithmic association. But what gets interpreted is the “fact” implied by said data point, and that gives an impression of guilt.

I make no effort to minimize Dr. boyd’s horrific scenario (which she
says she’s heard real cases of), but worry about how something similar
could happen to us, to our agencies. Imagine you’re responding to some
emergency, disease outbreak, oil spill, wildland fire. Some members of
the public, say locals, for whatever reason are unhappy about the
response. They think you’re only focused on remediation in a way that
benefits you (giving out vaccine, mass doses of dispersant, focus on
rich neighborhoods) to the detriment of the general public.
Enterprising bloggers start searching online for proof of a
conspiracy. “Is the Mayor taking bribes?” “Does the vaccine cause
autism?” Not posting, just searching. As interest in the situation
grows, more and more people start to look for information online. They
head to their favorite search engine and type in your agency name, and
the auto-prompt suggests that you guys are taking bribes and giving
autism and hate African-Americans. Even if you’re WAY ahead of the
situation and have materials designed to combat that way of thinking,
the first thing the public sees is your name tied to unsavory
practices. The frame of reference has already been set.

The tricky part is that no one is at fault. An algorithm associated
you with some level of guilt. No one did anything malicious or
untowards. How can you possibly fix that? Or even identify that it’s a
problem? Nothing actually changed or happened, it’s just suggested
that you might be taking bribes.

And the more and more our society comes to depend more and more on
machine-based suggestions, this tone-deafness will only get worse.
Until sentience, of course. And then we’ve got a bigger fish to fry.

We spend a lot of time in our little social media (#SMEM) bubble,
talking about how vital it is for government agencies, first and
second responders, and the human service industry to be “present” on
social media. It’s the future, we say. It’s trendy, your executive
says.

And all of that is true. It’s just not the whole story. Nor the why.

You see, there are two reasons that social media is so critical to
crisis communications. The first “why” is because that’s where the
audience is. Study
(Neilsen, 2011) after
study
(Pew, 2011) after
study
(American Red Cross, 2011) has shown that Americans use social media
as a big part of their lives. And that big part, it just keeps getting
bigger. I’ve yet to see a study that has demonstrated a decrease in
either the percentage of people on social networks, or time spent on
social media sites. You can yell as loud as you want, but if you’re
talking to your publics, they’re probably not going to hear you.

The other “why” is mobility. It’s easy to get updates via social media
when you’re not at a computer. Like y’know, when you’re in the middle
of a crisis or disaster. Whether it’s using dedicated smartphone apps
(e.g., Facebook,
Tumblr, Twitter,
etc.) or tools like Twitter
FastFollow, people can
utilize their phone (which everyone has these days) to get more
information. Proof? From the Nielsen study:

Nearly 40% of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone

Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile Internet

From a 2010 Pew survey on mobile
use:

Compared with 2009, cell phone owners ages 30-49 are significantly more likely to use their mobile device to send text messages, access the internet, take pictures, record videos, use email or instant messaging, and play music

In total, 64% of African-Americans access the internet from a laptop or mobile phone, a seven-point increase from the 57% who did so at a similar point in 2009.

But that’s not the whole story. Sure social media is great, but it
(say it with me) is just one tool in the toolbox. You still have to
have a place for press conferences and letterhead for releases and a
website. Hey, your website! Since we’ve already established the social
media users are using mobile means of accessing social media, why not
head over to our local government website on our phones and check
out… Oh, yeah it doesn’t really fit. And the pictures and animation
are all missing. The drop-down menus screw everything up…

Someone needs help building a mobile website. And fast.

The Sensei Marketing
blog posits these
things to more fully utilize mobile websites:

• Create a mobile status page for your company’s live crisis updates
• Allow it to localize the updates by zip/postal code
• Add to the ability to text updates to customers automatically
• Integrate the service with field teams so that when they roll into
  an area, customers know
• Hook it into your social accounts so overly concerned customers can
  communicate with someone
• Let them share it with others easily; enable your customers to help
  you manage the crisis and disseminate official news and updates.

Do you have any other tips for building a mobile website, especially
as it relates to crisis response and communication?

One more thing, just because in between writing this post and posting
it, I heard from one of my social media heroes, Andrew
Wilson who was casting about
for ideas on the future of the communication
team.
One of his most immediate suggestions was for the inclusion of mobile
technologies specialists on the team. Great minds and all that. =)