Leveraging social media and crowdsourcing in disaster risk management processes in Europe

This report presents novel approaches rooted in co-created and tested processes to navigate complexity in using social media and crowd-sourcing in disasters primarily for organisations. The report suggests new ways to examine and reflect on the increasing use of technologies with caution. Social media and crowdsourcing use in disasters will only increase and how can this be channelled to ensure a safer society without leaving anyone behind?

The report is based on findings from four different European countries: Denmark, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The empirical research has centred around five hazard-specific cases: Flooding (Copenhagen region, Denmark); Earthquake (Province of Terni, Italy), Terrorism and Drought (Germany) and industrial hazards (South Limburg, The Netherlands). The authors suggest a turn towards placing people and power at the heart of questions of social media and crowdsourcing technologies. Instead of ‘just’ placing social media and crowdsourcing in the centre of our attention, the focus should be put on the power shifts that these technologies produce, the contexts in which they are supposed to be applied, as well as on the social and cultural condition that coproduce the outcomes of social media and crowdsourcing in disaster risk management processes.

Three recommendations are made:

• Recommendation I: Increase formalisation of social media and crowdsourcing in the organisation.
• Recommendation II. Allocate resources to social media and crowdsourcing activities.
• Recommendation III. Diversify and target communication