Online Information – Good and Bad – About Japan’s Crises
As Japan responds to multiple and worsening crises, the Internet is proving to be a helpful, but sometimes confounding, tool.
Thousands of Japanese are dead and many more missing, following the earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Hundreds of thousands more are homeless or in temporary shelters, and millions in Japan and around the world are desperate to make contact with loved ones.
Screen-grab of the Ushahidi map and reports on March 16
Mobile phones and the web are proving their worth, becoming something like a giant bulletin board – helping people share information about where they are, their condition and what’s most needed. As in the Haiti disaster, such crowd-sourcing tools are proving particularly effective when local Internet access is spotty. Read the rest of this entry »
