#participantcentered #casestudies (3)

In chapter five, Liza Potts (2014) took a closer look at how information is redistributed to the masses most effectively. She analyzed the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, looking closely at how one anchor actor—a label for any actor that gains prominence within in a network for leading in the validation and distribution of information—orchestrates across multiple social media systems. In this case study, Dina Mehta recruited volunteers, collected and shared information via Twitter hashtags, and then transferred the information to a fax listing and an easily accessed, searchable Google Docs listing that the mainstream media would come to depend on for their own reporting. Here, human actors provide information to non-human actors—in these cases, mainstream media sites like BBC—and this “combining [of] the power of human and nonhuman actors is the key to creating better systems to support people in times of disaster” (p. 97). Of course, one wonders about the actors who were excluded from communicating in these networks either because they lacked access to mobile technologies, the internet, or even the basic computing skills necessary to access mutable and immutable mobiles, fire spaces, and walled gardens.