Citizen (in)security?: Social media, citizen journalism and crisis response

The use of social media in a crisis has been applauded, and is witnessing an increase in uptake among those involved in crisis management activities, including citizens. Whilst some challenges have been discussed elsewhere, somewhat lacking is a discussion on the impact of sharing information on the security of those that may have been recorded. Accordingly, this working paper aims to provide preliminary results of an initial mapping task that seeks to examine the impact of the use of social media in a crisis on the social and ethical wellbeing of the security of the citizen. Authors argue that the heightened involvement of citizen journalism results in the filtering of information after its online publication which raises concerns relating to the dissemination of false information and a threat to an individual’s privacy. Such issues should be adequately addressed in the encouragement and use of citizen contributions in crisis response.