Abstract
Liza Potts’s Social Media in Disaster Response: How Experience Architects Can Build for Participation is the first of Association of Teachers of Technical Writing’s (ATTW’s) book series in technical and professional communication. The book addresses the need for flexible and participatory communication systems by examining social Web use during major disasters. Potts argues that social Web technologies have transformed how information is shared across networks in times of dire need. She suggests that system designers and technical communicators (or what she terms more broadly as experience architects) can learn from participants using social networks to collect data, validate information, and share knowledge. Surveying numerous disaster cases—particularly Hurricane Katrina (2005), the London bombings (2005), and the Mumbai attacks (2008)—Potts calls us to engage in experience architecture, that is, the interdisciplinary work of architecting participatory systems that support the communication needs of participants as they create and circulate knowledge across multiple online networks.
In Chapter 1, Potts analyzes examples of participants creating or repurposing social Web tools in disaster situations. These innovative patterns of use are instructive to experience architects and provide insight into how participants create, modify, and repurpose digital spaces to aggregate data, validate information, and distribute knowledge. She focuses on high-pressure disaster situations to identify how participants collaboratively gather data, verify information, and share knowledge across multiple networks in order to build a coherent narrative of events (p. 9). Potts argues that experience architects “have the requisite knowledge and skills needed to map these networks, learn what information is important to social Web participants, uncover how they spread that information, and then drive the design decisions that make social software much more usable” (p. 11).
In Chapter 2, Potts presents her conceptual framework for mapping participant experiences as they access, verify, and share knowledge across multiple systems during disasters. Potts leverages actor-network theory to uncover the multiple actors that help participants engage with Web content and transform it from data to verified information and shareable knowledge. She argues that understanding how data, information, and knowledge circulate “helps us become better participant advocates, for it allows us to visualize the many people, organizations, technologies, locations, and events that are part of the networks for which we are building experiences” (p. 36). Visualizing networks helps experience architects understand how participants organize and make sense of information across multiple systems. With this knowledge, Potts suggests, experience architects can effectively design systems that are supportive of participation.
In Chapter 3, Potts describes challenges that participants face in collecting and managing online data and argues for more open, flexible systems that allow participants to actively contribute to organizing databases. To that end, this chapter focuses on the inadequacies of Cable News Network’s (CNN's) Safe List, a database developed to provide information to Hurricane Katrina victims and their families about survivors and those reported missing. Safe List processed information through a closed review system whereby all submissions had to be reviewed by CNN’s designated moderators before being manually entered into the database. Consequently, Safe List could not keep pace with the amount of real-time information submitted. Participants in need of information instead gravitated toward Web sites such as Craigslist, which offered an open space for community members to exchange information, contact missing individuals, and even provide shelter to those in need.
In Chapter 4, Potts describes how participants crowd-sourced disaster data into verified information. To illustrate this, Potts provides an analysis of David Storey’s use of Flickr during the London bombings to organize and validate information by “locating images and piecing together tweets and status updates” (p. 68). Storey thus constructed a fragmented but useful narrative of the bombing. Potts sees this work as necessary and argues that open, flexible systems alone are not enough for participation. According to Potts, data without interpretation are not useful to those seeking reliable information on which to base consequent action (e.g., survivor searches and resource delivery). Participants such as Storey leveraged social Web tools to build narratives by verifying information as it flows across networks.
In Chapter 5, Potts turns her attention to how this verified information is then repurposed and distributed among participants spanning multiple networks. To demonstrate the power of the social Web in circulating knowledge, Potts looks to Dina Mehta’s use of Twitter and collaborative technologies such as Google Documents to coordinate and circulate knowledge in response to the Mumbai attacks. Potts lauds this approach because it not only allowed participants to organize and edit information, but it also mobilized that information in order to make it accessible across multiple social networks (p. 95).
Potts’s concluding chapter, arguably the strongest in the book, considers the role that technical communication can play in designing participatory systems. Drawing from recent disasters, such as the earthquake in Haiti (2010), the tsunami in Japan (2011), the Virginia Tech massacre (2007), Hurricane Sandy in the northeast (2012), and the Boston Marathon bombing (2013), Potts describes the rhetorical work needed to architect systems that facilitate participatory knowledge exchange. These situations necessitate contextual responses that technical communicators—with “our background in rhetoric [and] our training in technologies”—are well suited to provide (p. 113). Potts thus advocates for examining participants as they build knowledge in these spaces as well as embedding ourselves in people-powered systems to improve the spaces (p. 118).
Social Media in Disaster Response is a theoretically rich book that makes a persuasive case for reframing technical communication as experience architecture. Similar to Salvo (2004) in his work on information architecture, Potts argues that our participatory future involves engaging participants as coresearchers and designers of experiences. This collaborative undertaking resituates our work as technical communicators, experience architects, and participant advocates, moving us closer to supporting and empowering effective participation.
Overall, Potts’s project lays important groundwork for technical communication research. Rather than presenting an exhaustive account of social media usage in response to crisis situations, the book provides readers with an adaptable framework for understanding how participants make use of social Web technologies and how experience architects can learn from these patterns of use to design better systems. Moreover, Potts’s work presents us with productive opportunities for future work. Indeed, the book calls us to ask reflective and exploratory questions: What is technical and professional communication’s relationship to disaster management and emergency services? How can we strengthen the many interdisciplinary bridges that have already been built (Horsley & Barker, 2002; Munger, 2000; Sauer, 2003; Tyler, 1992; Varvas & McKenna, 2013) by including the innovative work of participants? Moreover, how can we build on Potts’s understanding of information and knowledge exchange to investigate affective or emotional responses that also circulate in these spaces? And in what way would this investigation connect the participatory activities that Potts describes with other disciplinary perspectives? While these questions necessitate and reaffirm the value of engaging diverse disciplines, organizations, and participants, they also introduce new realms of work. For instance, reframing technical communication as experience architecture necessitates an examination of how participatory design might address issues of access and technological literacy. As Potts describes, “participants now work across multiple-systems, balancing activities on multiple technologies, connecting to various applications and Websites, and accessing spaces through a plethora of devices” (p. 20). Many, in fact, “now walk around with more computing power in their pockets than ever before” (p. 111). Rather than assuming access to these systems, Potts’s work pushes us to consider how participants respond to disasters in parts of the world with little to no infrastructure.
What is remarkable about Social Media in Disaster Response is the way it constructs the audience it seeks to address. The book calls for technical communication practitioners, teachers, researchers, and graduate students to become experience architects attuned to participant needs. In doing so, Potts provides a methodology that challenges disciplinary discussions to shift focus from single-interface/single-user design to learning from participatory activities spanning multiple social systems. Academics and graduate students, in particular, will find Potts’s theoretical discussion a compelling and valuable resource in exploring the obligations of technical communicators to be advocates for diverse participants and their communication needs.