Kate StarbirdIn ~2014, my colleague & I argued that social media (esp. Twitter) had become part of the critical infrastructure of disaster response. People were turning to Twitter during crises to share information about impacts and resources. Disaster responders were using the data shared there for situational awareness, and were communicating in real-time with their constituents. Today’s events underscore just how dangerous it is for society to come to rely on private platforms as critical infrastructure.
In this paper documenting the "work" of communities responding to disaster events, Dharma Dailey and I explain how social media is operating as critical infrastructure, borrowing from Star and Ruhleder's conceptualizations of infrastructure, which notes that we often don't know that we're relying upon infrastructure until it breaks down. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2998181.2998290?casa_token=pzel650FuLcAAAAA:qIKePiHWEJGjfD8OLn4_UPQlboUVj0Cq25s0ijGDq92pBUhWDi9edeT2NtQwT-EgSpMm7uNUWwyPpg
renrenPDX
Tim Chambers@katestarbird Also Kate, see this: https://indieweb.social/@davidaugust@mastodon.online/110642495490178169
David August (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image Twitter, once the most powerful real-time information system ever built, so much so someone accidentally live tweeted the death of bin Laden, now not only can’t be used to save lives from bad weather, but won’t even let the existence of bad weather be seen by the weather people.