Ethics, Governance & Security, Interviews

Censorship or rumour management? How Weibo constructs “truth” around crisis events

by David Sutcliffe 03/10/2017

Examining the content moderation strategies of Sina Weibo, China’s largest microblogging platform, in regulating discussion of rumours following the 2015 Tianjin blasts.

by David Sutcliffe 03/10/2017

On 12 August 2015, a series of explosions killed 173 people and injured hundreds at a container storage station at the Port of Tianjin. Tianjin Port by Matthias Catón (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

As social media become increasingly important as a source of news and information for citizens, there is a growing concern over the impacts of social media platforms on information quality—as evidenced by the furore over the impact of “fake news”. Driven in part by the apparently substantial impact of social media on the outcomes of Brexit and the US Presidential election, various attempts have been made to hold social media platforms to account for presiding over misinformation, with recent efforts to improve fact-checking. There is a large and growing body of research examining rumour management on social media platforms. However, most of these studies treat it as a technical matter, and little attention has been paid to the social and political aspects of rumour. In their Policy & Internet article “How Social Media Construct ‘Truth’ Around Crisis Events: Weibo’s Rumor Management Strategies after the 2015 Tianjin Blasts”, Jing Zeng, Chung-hong Chan and King-wa Fu examine the content moderation strategies of Sina Weibo, China’s largest microblogging platform, in regulating discussion of rumours following the 2015 Tianjin blasts. Studying rumour communication in relation to the manipulation of social media platforms is particularly important in the context of China. In China, Internet companies are licensed by the state, and their businesses must therefore be compliant with Chinese law and collaborate with the government in monitoring and censoring politically sensitive topics. Given most Chinese citizens rely heavily on Chinese social media services as alternative information sources or as grassroots “truth”, the anti-rumour policies have raised widespread concern over the implications for China’s online sphere. As there is virtually no transparency in rumour management on Chinese social media, it is an important task for researchers to investigate how Internet platforms engage with rumour content and any associated impact on public discussion. We caught up with the authors to discuss their findings: Ed.: “Fake news” is currently a very hot issue, with Twitter and Facebook both…

Social Data Science

Verification of crowd-sourced information: is this ‘crowd wisdom’ or machine wisdom?

by Heather Ford 19/11/2013

The problem with computer code is that it is invisible, and that it makes it easy to regulate people’s behaviour directly and often without recourse.

by Heather Ford 19/11/2013

‘Code’ or ‘law’? Image from an Ushahidi development meetup by afropicmusing.

In ‘Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace’, Lawrence Lessig (2006) writes that computer code (or what he calls ‘West Coast code’) can have the same regulatory effect as the laws and legal code developed in Washington D.C., so-called ‘East Coast code’. Computer code impacts on a person’s behaviour by virtue of its essentially restrictive architecture: on some websites you must enter a password before you gain access, in other places you can enter unidentified. The problem with computer code, Lessig argues, is that it is invisible, and that it makes it easy to regulate people’s behaviour directly and often without recourse. For example, fair use provisions in US copyright law enable certain uses of copyrighted works, such as copying for research or teaching purposes. However the architecture of many online publishing systems heavily regulates what one can do with an e-book: how many times it can be transferred to another device, how many times it can be printed, whether it can be moved to a different format—activities that have been unregulated until now, or that are enabled by the law but effectively ‘closed off’ by code. In this case code works to reshape behaviour, upsetting the balance between the rights of copyright holders and the rights of the public to access works to support values like education and innovation. Working as an ethnographic researcher for Ushahidi, the non-profit technology company that makes tools for people to crowdsource crisis information, has made me acutely aware of the many ways in which ‘code’ can become ‘law’. During my time at Ushahidi, I studied the practices that people were using to verify reports by people affected by a variety of events—from earthquakes to elections, from floods to bomb blasts. I then compared these processes with those followed by Wikipedians when editing articles about breaking news events. In order to understand how to best design architecture to enable particular behaviour, it becomes important to…

Collective Action, Ethics, Mapping, Politics & Government

Did Libyan crisis mapping create usable military intelligence?

by Steve Stottlemyre 14/03/2013

While many people continued to contribute conventional humanitarian information to the map, the sudden shift toward information that could aid international military intervention was unmistakable.

by Steve Stottlemyre 14/03/2013

The Middle East has recently witnessed a series of popular uprisings against autocratic rulers. In mid-January 2011, Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled his country, and just four weeks later, protesters overthrew the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Yemen’s government was also overthrown in 2011, and Morocco, Jordan, and Oman saw significant governmental reforms leading, if only modestly, toward the implementation of additional civil liberties. Protesters in Libya called for their own ‘day of rage’ on February 17, 2011, marked by violent protests in several major cities, including the capitol Tripoli. As they transformed from ‘protestors’ to ‘Opposition forces’ they began pushing information onto Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, reporting their firsthand experiences of what had turned into a civil war virtually overnight. The evolving humanitarian crisis prompted the United Nations to request the creation of the Libya Crisis Map, which was made public on March 6, 2011. Other, more focused crisis maps followed, and were widely distributed on Twitter. While the map was initially populated with humanitarian information pulled from the media and online social networks, as the imposition of an internationally enforced No Fly Zone (NFZ) over Libya became imminent, information began to appear on it that appeared to be of a tactical military nature. While many people continued to contribute conventional humanitarian information to the map, the sudden shift toward information that could aid international military intervention was unmistakable. How useful was this information, though? Agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community convert raw data into useable information (incorporated into finished intelligence) by utilising some form of the Intelligence Process. As outlined in the U.S. military’s joint intelligence manual, this consists of six interrelated steps all centred on a specific mission. It is interesting that many Twitter users, though perhaps unaware of the intelligence process, replicated each step during the Libyan civil war; producing finished intelligence adequate for consumption by NATO commanders and rebel leadership. It…

Collective Action, Politics & Government, Video

Preserving the digital record of major natural disasters: the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive project

by Paul Millar 29/06/2012

The Internet can be hugely useful to coordinate disaster relief efforts, or to help rebuild affected communities.

by Paul Millar 29/06/2012

The 6.2 magnitude earthquake that struck the centre of Christchurch on 22 February 2011 claimed 185 lives, damaged 80% of the central city beyond repair, and forced the abandonment of 6000 homes. It was the third costliest insurance event in history. The CEISMIC archive developed at the University of Canterbury will soon have collected almost 100,000 digital objects documenting the experiences of the people and communities affected by the earthquake, all of it available for study. The Internet can be hugely useful to coordinate disaster relief efforts, or to help rebuild affected communities. Paul Millar came to the OII on 21 May 2012 to discuss the CEISMIC archive project and the role of digital humanities after a major disaster (below). We talked to him afterwards. Ed: You have collected a huge amount of information about the earthquake and people’s experiences that would otherwise have been lost: how do you think it will be used? Paul: From the beginning I was determined to avoid being prescriptive about eventual uses. The secret of our success has been to stick to the principles of open data, open access and collaboration—the more content we can collect, the better chance future generations have to understand and draw conclusions from our experiences, behaviour and decisions. We have already assisted a number of research projects in public health, the social and physical sciences; even accounting. One of my colleagues reads balance sheets the way I read novels, and discovers all sorts of earthquake-related signs of cause and effect in them. I’d never have envisaged such a use for the archive. We have made our ontology is as detailed and flexible as possible in order to help with re-purposing of primary material: we currently use three layers of metadata—machine generated, human-curated and crowd sourced. We also intend to work more seriously on our GIS capabilities. Ed: How do you go about preserving this information during a period of…