Ushahidi was created in response to the crisis after the failed elections in Kenya in 2007. In our quest to minimize the impact of riots and unrest around the country, we developed a free open-source platform that allows people to report incidents they witness. Their reports are added to an online map that rapidly becomes a source for information neglected by media and governments.
Watching Ushahidi in use after disasters like the Haitian earthquake has shown that in a crisis, the barriers of complacency and cultural indifference break down. People directly, indirectly, and even remotely involved in a situation are suddenly open to collaborating and sharing. It is at this moment that the crowd is the most powerful. Once the crisis is over, though, apathy breaks up this cohesion. With Ushahidi, in keeping with a pattern seen in other social media, a mere 1 percent of participants actively contribute new content, 9 percent interact with it, and the other 90 percent are mere viewers. These ratios slide further toward passive viewing once an event is no longer front-page news. Finding ways to help keep the crowd engaged beyond the crisis is one of our greatest challenges.
Like anyone trying to promote user engagement, we must relentlessly remind people of our message to encourage them to use the service. We have to connect different sources of information that otherwise would never be linked. Adapting Ushahidi to incorporate social media is a big part of our strategy: it encourages user-generated content and gives everyone a front-row seat as events unfold.
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