OLD Jayne Blog on nonprofits/ngos, communications, community engagement, volunteerism, aid & development, women's empowerment, & random thoughts

rampant misinformation online re: Mumbai

07:53, 28 November 2008

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I'm intensely interested in how rumors and myth derail humanitarian efforts -- or affect our understanding of various events, both current and historical. So yesterday, as I watched CNN reporters trumpet again and again how easy it was for "ordinary people" to find and disseminate information regarding the Mumbai attacks via various Internet tools such as blogs and Twitter, as well as cell phone text messaging, I wondered how long it would be before CNN started reporting unverified items from these Internet sources and ended up repeating things that would turn out not at all to be true.

I think it took approximately 15 minutes after that thought before a reporter started retracting some of the things being reported online that CNN had repeated. Suddenly, cyberspace wasn't such a great example of "citizen journalism" after all.

In CNN's own story about this online phenomenon today, they admit that a vast number of the posts on Twitter amounted to unsubstantiated rumors and wild inaccuracies. As blogger Tim Mallon put it, "far from being a crowd-sourced version of the news it (Twitter) was actually an incoherent, rumour-fueled mob operating in a mad echo chamber of tweets, re-tweets and re-re-tweets... During the hour or so I followed on Twitter there were wildly differing estimates of the numbers killed and injured - ranging up to 1,000."

Sometimes misinformation is bad, or even worse, than no information at all. As with any communications tool, when it comes to instant networking tools like blogs, Twitter, and cell phones, use with caution. And TV journalists -- please re-read your journalism 101 text books.

UPDATE: Amy Gahran has posted Responsible Tweeting: Mumbai Provides Teachable Moment that includes four excellent tips for people who want to micro-blog the news as it happens. It emphasizes checking sources and correcting information that you have found out is incorrect, and cautions journalists to remember that everything you read on the Internet or your cell phone isn't necessarily true (how sad that they even have to be reminded...)
 

GIve a child in the developing world a laptop - and get one yourself?

03:46, 28 November 2008

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The XO Laptop is a very special kind of laptop, the result of many years of work by the One Laptop per Child Foundation and its various supporters for children in the developing world. It's about the size of a small textbook and made with a rugged plastic exterior. It has built-in wireless and a unique screen that works in full color or black and white to make it readable under direct sunlight for children who go to school outdoors. Its power consumption is very low--the XO uses only about 4 watts of power, while most laptops use about 40 watts. This means that when there's no electricity, it can be recharged with alternate power sources like solar power. This laptop is not expensive, big, heavy, fragile, power-hungry or dangerous -- it can't be any of those things to be of service in the developing world.

XO comes pre-loaded with free and open-source software that allows children to write, draw, surf the web, record audio, images and video, edit music, undertake basic computer programming, and undertake distance and sound-wave measurement . Currently, there are XO laptops in over 30 countries. When the laptops arrive, school attendance goes up, teachers download lesson plans from the Web, kids teach each other how to use the machine and everyone has greater access to knowledge.

Why give a laptop to a child who has no running water? People asked the same question about education once upon a time. Yet, what has been found over many years of providing aid and development activities is that teaching children to read means that they won't be hungry in the future. Raise the knowledge of a community and you raise everyone's living standards. To deny even the poorest of children knowledge is to hold them back for life.

You can give a laptop -- or even give one AND get one for yourself -- through Amazon USA, or Amazon UK.