IRMA-International.org: Creator of Knowledge
Information Resources Management Association
Advancing the Concepts & Practices of Information Resources Management in Modern Organizations

Crowdsourcing for Human Rights Monitoring: Challenges and Opportunities for Information Collection and Verification

Crowdsourcing for Human Rights Monitoring: Challenges and Opportunities for Information Collection and Verification
View Sample PDF
Author(s): Jessica Heinzelman (The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, USA)and Patrick Meier (Stanford University and Ushahidi, USA)
Copyright: 2013
Pages: 16
Source title: Human Rights and Information Communication Technologies: Trends and Consequences of Use
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): John Lannon (University of Limerick, Ireland)and Edward Halpin (Leeds Metropolitan University, UK)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-1918-0.ch008

Purchase


Abstract

Accurate information is a foundational element of human rights work. Collecting and presenting factual evidence of violations is critical to the success of advocacy activities and the reputation of organizations reporting on abuses. To ensure credibility, human rights monitoring has historically been conducted through highly controlled organizational structures that face mounting challenges in terms of capacity, cost, and access. The proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) provide new opportunities to overcome some of these challenges through crowdsourcing. At the same time, however, crowdsourcing raises new challenges of verification and information overload that have made human rights professionals skeptical of their utility. This chapter explores whether the efficiencies gained through an open call for monitoring and reporting abuses provides a net gain for human rights monitoring and analyzes the opportunities and challenges that new and traditional methods pose for verifying crowdsourced human rights reporting.

Related Content

Maja Pucelj, Matjaž Mulej, Anita Hrast. © 2024. 29 pages.
Hemendra Singh. © 2024. 26 pages.
Nestor Soler del Toro. © 2024. 27 pages.
Pablo Banchio. © 2024. 18 pages.
Jože Ruparčič. © 2024. 26 pages.
Anuttama Ghose, Hartej Singh Kochher, S. M. Aamir Ali. © 2024. 28 pages.
Bhupinder Singh, Komal Vig, Pushan Kumar Dutta, Christian Kaunert, Bhupendra Kumar Gautam. © 2024. 23 pages.
Body Bottom