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Natural Disasters and Alternative Modes of Governance: The Role of Social Networks and Crowdsourcing Platforms in Russia
Abstract
The chapter explores the role of ICT for emergency response in areas of limited statehood. It addresses whether ICT can make the crowd not only a resource for emergency response but also an actor in that response, capable of developing alternative modes of governance. Relying on the analysis of two case studies of natural disasters in Russia, the chapter argues that ICT provides new opportunities for the organization of large-scale collective action, making it possible for volunteers to play a dominant independent role in emergency response. The role of citizen collective action in emergency situations depends on the attitude of the state actors toward horizontal citizen structures. The chapter suggests that if the state is open to the synergy of formal and informal structures, the role of citizens will be embedded within the institutional response; if the state ignores or restricts networked volunteers, alternative modes of governance emerge.
... The Chernobyl disaster and subsequent crises triggered extensive scientific research, including risk and emergency management and disaster preparedness (Porfiriev, 1993;Porfiriev & Quarantelli, 1996;Quarantelli & Mozgovaya, 1994); risk management and risk communication (Elimova & Mozgovaya, 2001;Mozgovaya & Komarova, 2004); crisis management in transitional societies (Karpenko, Krasnov, & Simons, 2014;Porfiriev & Simons, 2012); online communities and social networking in emergencies (Asmolov, 2013;Morozova & Miroshnichenko, 2010); and terrorism and crisis communication (Gryzunova, 2012(Gryzunova, , 2013. ...
... A crisis can be perceived as an opportunity for social consolidation, structural improvement, or increased public loyalty to the government. Some cases, such as the Verkhnyaya Salda smelter accident in 1999 (Mozgovaia et al., in Porfiriev & Svedin, 2002) or flooding in Krymsk in 2012 (Asmolov, 2013;Samoilenko, 2014a) illustrate a learning problem -when previous crises do not serve as teachable moments. However, "the public has in many ways learned much more about how to deal with a crisis than governmental institutions have" (Porfiriev & Svedin, 2002, p. 277). ...
... Social networking sites are particularly important in crisis communication as they help solve everyday problems and compensate for the shortcomings of all formal institutions, including the traditional media (Asmolov, 2013). Russia provides an example of a developed network society defined by Dutton (2009) as the "fifth estate." ...
This chapter addresses contemporary crisis communication research produced by Russian and international scholars. It features a variety of original sources that reveal both Russian cultural norms and new tendencies in crisis communication practices, including social networking, crowdsourcing, and volunteer movement. It identifies three approaches to crisis communication research in Russia from institutional, media, and public perspectives, and addresses the state of Russian academic research in the field of risk and crisis communication. The chapter concludes by providing an outlook for crisis communication research in Russia and suggests areas for future development.
... The presidency of Dmitry Medvedev (2008-2012) was associated with a surge in the popularity of Internet media. The Russian Internet community (Runet) became a unique public space for discussing instances of state corruption, as well as a tool for social mobilization during natural disasters (Asmolov, 2013). Social networking sites proved to be effective at playing a watchdog role, providing a venue for social campaigns against abuses of power by state officials and corporations. ...
... In the early 2010s the active Russian blogosphere and networked Internet communities were developing into an independent social force that posed a serious challenge to the authorities. In a number of cases, social networking sites created opportunities to expand the public sphere, forge civil society, and give activist groups the presence and tools for mobilization (Alexanyan, 2013;Asmolov, 2013). During protests against election falsification in 2011-2012, "about one-third of protesters mentioned social media as a source of information and almost twice as many learned about the rallies from other Internet resources" (Makarin and Polishchuk, 2012). ...
The history of public relations (PR) in Russia resembles the trajectory of other post-Soviet democratic institutions: it blossomed in the 1990s, lost impetus during the next decade, and then calcified at a low level. Early on, scholars and practitioners embraced public relations in the Russian context as a force of democratization and market reforms. They saw it as a tool for facilitating interaction among social actors, producing and reproducing effective public discourses in society, and encouraging sustainable partnerships between different groups and communities. As a new social institution, public relations was well-positioned to engage in dialogue with other democracy-enhancing institutions—including journalism, political parties, and nongovernmental organizations—to address societal problems. Yet during the first decade of the twenty-first century, public relations ossified within the limits of the established sociopolitical environment and became just another service-oriented practice for assisting corporate communications, noncompetitive elections, and government-sponsored projects.
... Particular attention is dedicated to how crisis mapping supports 'crowdfeeding', which is the facilitation of peer-to-peer mutual aid in emergency situations (Ziemke, 2012). This is particularly notable in cases of limited statehood and failure by the emergency services to provide emergency response (Asmolov, 2013). Additional functions include testing hypotheses, detection of trends and early warning of events, as well as using maps as testimony to shed light on different forms of human rights violations or abuses by repressive regimes (Livingston, 2016;Ziemke, 2012). ...
... Russian internet users tried to self-organise to respond to the emergency. The crisis-related online activism was motivated particularly by the lack of an appropriate response from traditional institutions responsible for disaster management (Asmolov, 2013). A group of online volunteers created an Ushahidi deployment and named it Help Map. ...
The paper discusses the ambivalent role of participatory maps as an object of human activity and a mediator that enables new forms of activity. Relying on the analysis of several case studies it argues, that maps fail when we see a gap between mapping as activity and mapping enabled activities.
... The role of digital platforms and social networks in crisis situations is not limited to increasing transparency around these situations, the attribution of responsibility for them and holding someone accountable. Various forms of crowdsourcing practices have the potential to allow the resources of digital users to be mobilised to respond to a crisis (Asmolov, 2014;Meier, 2015). While the availability of big data (Castillo, 2016) and user-generated information contribute to the capacity to construct the crisis, crowdsourcing practices support various types of online and offline activity that can be considered part of an emergency response (Meier, 2011;Ziemke, 2012). ...
... (Samoilenko, 2016, p. 406). In that light, the practices that were developed by Runet users in response to wildfires can be seen as an alternative user-driven mode of governance for an emergency situation (Asmolov, 2014). ...
This chapter suggests that the Russian Internet has two different, though interrelated, faces. The first face is that of Runet in everyday life. The second is that of Runet in crisis situations. To explore the “crisis face” of Runet this chapter addresses a variety of crisis situations including terror attacks, natural disasters, political protests and international conflicts. Despite the diversity of these situations, an examination of the role of Runet in crisis situations allows us to identify a number of common features of the Russian Internet space and the crisis-related practices of Russian Internet users. To this end, this chapter examines the role that Runet plays in mediating the transition from everyday life to a crisis and the constitution of the user’s position in relation to crisis situations. The common features of the Russian Internet in crisis situations include: an increasing transparency around such situations and the shaping of a situational awareness, holding accountable the authorities in relation to how to they manage emergency responses and support for various forms of user participation in crisis-related activities and the crisis-related mobilisation of user resources. In addition, this chapter demonstrates how crisis situations can be considered as both moments of accelerated innovation and as moments for the accelerated development of new forms of control. The role of Runet in crisis situations is explored in the context of the structure of power relations between state and citizens and the specific role of crisis situations in Russian history and Russian political culture.
... On the one hand, in a case of natural disaster the major purpose shared by the majority of actors is responding to the disaster, including saving human lives and recovery. In the case of Russia, the volunteers organized spontaneously around crowdsourcing platforms and social media played a significant role in a struggle against wildfires in 2010 and floods in 2011 (Asmolov, 2014a). On the other hand, as pointed out by Hewitt (1998, p. 90), one of the major concerns of state-affiliated actors can be related to the restoration of "all forms of regulation and enforcement of state power" disrupted by the power of nature. ...
... project (2010), which relied on the Ushahidi platform (Figure 4). 12 The Help Map sought to support the efficient allocation of resources through providing an infrastructure for direct horizontal communication between people in need and those willing to help them (Asmolov, 2014a). The idea of the Atlas of Help was to expand the facilitation of resources between those in need and those interested in helping beyond the situations of natural disasters. ...
Crowdsourcing can be analyzed not only as a mechanism for empowerment, but also as operating a form of control over volunteers. This article applies Foucault's notion of governmentality to examine relations between traditional governmental institutions and users of crowdsourcing platforms in Russia. Through a comparative analysis of two emergency volunteering portals, Dobrovoletz, and Rynda.org, we describe “vertical crowdsourcing” as a strategy by traditional (government affiliated) actors to use crowdsourcing platforms to govern and control volunteers. This is in contrast to horizontally organized, or ground-up understandings of crowd-volunteering platforms. Two alternative discourses around the role of crowd members are further discussed: volunteers as actors who can contribute resources to the achievement of a common goal, and the crowd as a threat to central government that needs to be controlled.
... 124). The case of crowdsourcing platforms highlights the socio-political role of digital platforms in response to crises (Asmolov 2014). Real-time data collection relying on citizens as sensors and on the aggregation of user-generated information increases the scale of transparency around a crisis and challenges state control overflows of crisis-related information. ...
... 74 One of the most significant cases of digital media civic mobilization was the response to wildfires in 2010. 75 This was the first time that RuNet users used crowdsourcing platforms to coordinate mobilization. In the same year, 2010, crowdsourcing platforms started to be used to monitor urban problems, including potholes (the first project was initiated by Navalny), and in the struggle against corruption.76 ...
By exploring the changes among online elites who have constructed the Internet, this article traces the unique history of the Russian Internet (RuNet). Illustrating how changes in online elites can be associated with changes in the socio-political role of the online space in general, it concludes that, although the Internet is of global nature, its space is constructed on the level of nation, culture and language. To show this, the article presents five stages in the development of RuNet, suggesting that the change in the stages is associated with the relationship of power between, first, actors (users, developers, the government, etc.) that construct Internet space and, second, alternative elites that emerge online and the traditional elites that seek to take the online space under their control by making their imaginary dominate.
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/2451-8921-00201004
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School of Economics and Political Science; date: 05 July 2014