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Sentinel Citizens[edit]
Sentinel Citizens refers to individuals who actively engage in the collection and reporting of first-hand information during a one-time or ongoing event or issue.
In health, Sentinel Citizens may choose to provide information regarding an emergency, outbreak, disease, or other health or environmental issue to assist local, state, national, or international planning and response. This lay epidemiology is now possible with advances in Web and mobile technology that allow sharing of data, photos, video, and eyewitness reports.
Being a Sentinel Citizen is similar to other citizen service efforts such as citizen journalism and have also been called first informers or citizen sensors. In 2001, individuals tracked and reported injuries at theme parks in the “Accident Watch” special section of themeparkinsider.com. During the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, students confined to their buildings and concerned parents and friends worldwide compiled online lists of those injured or confirmed dead prior to published reports. Citizens also used technology to quickly track and report eyewitness accounts of fire locations during the 2008 California Wildfires and greatly assisted the evacuation and fire department response.
Agencies and groups typically involved in health, environment, and emergency response planning are only beginning to explore how best to encourage direct citizen participation and make strategic use of the data from their collective intelligence.
Quotes
We can no longer afford to work at the speed of government. We must remain relevant to the people we serve. (LA Fire Department Information Officer commenting on 2008 Los Angeles, California wildfires and FD use of Twitter which began May 2007)
....The old linear model of information dissemination of authorities-to-public relations-to-media is outmoded. ……. The public is able to not only take a more active part in seeking information, but also in providing information to each other. Palen and Liu 2007
The key here is that users will select the applications that work for them. What makes them work is an unpredictable combination of timing, popularity, features, and ease of use. We have to learn how to be current and interact with the community as it exists -- not as we wish it existed. This is undoubtedly our biggest challenge. Colin Whitmore, EMT-B, Crisis Informatics: The Evolving Role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), October 8, 2008, http://www.emforum.org/vforum/lc081008.htm
References
Citizen journalism. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism
Bowman, S. and Willis, C. "We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information." 2003, The Media Center at the American Press Institute. http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php
Licamele, G. "First Informers in a Facebook World.” 2008. https://sites.google.com/site/emse232newmedia/
Palen, L, Vieweg, S., Sutton, J., Liu, S., and Hughes, A. (2007). Crisis Informatics: Studying Crisis in a Networked World. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on E-Social Science, Ann Arbor, MI, Oct 7-9, 2007. http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/palen_papers/palen-crisisinformatics.pdf
Palen, L. and Liu, S. B. 2007. Citizen communications in crisis: anticipating a future of ICT-supported public participation. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California, USA, April 28 - May 03, 2007). CHI '07. ACM, New York, NY, 727-736. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240624.1240736
Palmer, J. “Emergency 2.0 is coming to a website near you,” May 2008, New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826545.900-emergency-20-is-coming-to-a-website-near-you.html?full=true
Rosenberg, J. “Citizen Sensors: Mobile Social Networks for the Common Good.” http://web.mac.com/jothyr/Work/Blog/Blog.html
Whitmore, C., Palen, L., Sebring, A. “The Evolving Role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT),” October 8, 2008. http://www.emforum.org/vforum/lc081008.htm