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The limits of crisis data: analytical and ethical challenges of using social and mobile data to understand disasters

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Abstract

Social media platforms and mobile phone data are commonly mined to produce accounts of how people are responding in the aftermath of crisis events. Yet social and mobile datasets have limitations that, if not sufficiently understood and accounted for, can produce specific kinds of analytical and ethical oversights. In this paper, we analyze some of the problems that emerge from the reliance on particular forms of crisis data, and we suggest ways forward through a deeper engagement with ethical frameworks and a more critical questioning of what crisis data actually represents. In particular, the use of Twitter data and crowdsourced text messages during crisis events such as Hurricane Sandy and the Haiti Earthquake raised questions about the ways in which crisis data act as a system of knowledge. We analyze these events from ontological, epistemological, and ethical perspectives and assess the challenges of data collection, analysis and deployment. While privacy concerns are often dismissed when data is scraped from public-facing platforms such as Twitter, we suggest that the kinds of personal information shared during a crisis—often as a way to find assistance and support—present ongoing risks. We argue for a deeper integration of critical data studies into crisis research, and for researchers to acknowledge their role in shaping norms of privacy and consent in data use.

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Notes

  1. For example, the crowd sourcing of tweet verification was initiated by MicroMappers on behalf of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), while groups such as GIS Corps were conducting crisis map construction.

  2. Researchers in geography and anthropology note a difference between “hazard,” which refers to an “agent” such as an earthquake, and “disaster” as “the process in which the agent and specific physical, social, and economic factors participate” (Oliver-Smith 1986: 8). We note that there are different histories for the various words used to describe these events—disaster, crisis, emergency, catastrophe—but for the sake of brevity, we will not address this in detail here.

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Acknowledgments

Kate Miltner gave invaluable assistance in the preparation of this article. The authors also thank the journal editors and reviewers for insightful comments on the paper.

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  1. Microsoft Research, NYU Information Law Institute, 641 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10011, USA

    Kate Crawford

  2. University of Washington, Mary Gate Hall, Suite 370, Box 352840, Seattle, WA, 98195-2840, USA

    Megan Finn

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Correspondence to Kate Crawford.

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Crawford, K., Finn, M. The limits of crisis data: analytical and ethical challenges of using social and mobile data to understand disasters. GeoJournal 80, 491–502 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-014-9597-z

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