From MH370 to HarassMap, the power of the digital crowd

This is my weekly newspaper column published yesterday in The National.

The mysterious case of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight has gripped the world. How could such a huge area be scoured for clues?

DigitalGlobe, a US-based satellite imaging company, came up with a way for us all to get involved in the search through crowdsourcing, where we can go onto their website and review detailed image files from their five satellites and tag anything suspicious. They will then use an algorithm to assess which regions are getting more tags than others.

They’ve taken a problem of vast proportions and are harnessing the power of the digital crowd to solve it. It shows the digital crowd has qualities that can be put to good use: mass resources, global connectivity and immediacy. It can address problems of a macro nature through the micro actions of individuals. It’s the digital world in one of its finer moments.

In 2010, Harassmap was set up in Egypt in response to the high levels of sexual harassment faced by women there. The incidents are reported and mapped using mobile technology.

In such situations, those who have been subject to unwanted advances or even sexual assault may suffer it so often that they feel compelled to get on with their lives. Alternatively, they may not know who to tell, and not want to spend large amounts of time in police stations when not only might nothing come of it but they might be told it is they who are the source of the shame.

Being part of the digital crowd can help individuals feel part of a bigger movement, where they see how speaking out, regardless of the barriers, can lead to seemingly insurmountable social problems being resolved.

The work of HarassMap highlights the digital crowd’s power when it comes to on-the-ground events. Volunteers often show the map in places where harassment had been reported and share eyewitness accounts. People are often shocked when they realise how common harassment is on their own streets.

The power of the digital crowd does not stop there. Crowdfunding first took off as a phenomenon in 2006 by raising finance through a wide range of investors. The digital crowd in this case becomes the resource as well as the impetus for creativity and results, bypassing traditional financial and corporate gatekeepers.

By pooling individual needs together, the digital crowd can benefit its individual components in a way that is not possible offline. MOOCs (massive open online courses) offer world-class learning to millions who cannot access it through conventional education due to geography, time, or finances.

The dynamic changes from the traditional one of a teacher instructing the class to one in which individuals are required to engage with other students as part of the learning experience via virtual spaces, with huge impacts on the future of education.

Of course, the digital crowd also has its dark side, such as disgusting revenge sites where intimate pictures are posted and others where groups promote distasteful views. Normal etiquette also seems easier to forget online when it turns nasty.

The study of crowd psychology has existed for nearly 200 years but we need to learn about the digital crowd’s ability to be a power for good, having already seen it harnessed in unimaginable ways. As Gustave Le Bon, the 19th century author of The Psychology of Crowds, tells us: “The improbable does not exist for a crowd.”

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