Information Verification for Humanitarians: A Critical Review

TL;DR

This paper critically reviews methods and practices for verifying humanitarian information, highlighting challenges and recent developments, and offers recommendations for improving information quality in crisis response.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of verification techniques, surveys crowd-sourced projects, and discusses challenges and future directions in humanitarian information verification.

Findings

Social media content raises verification concerns

Traditional methods face accessibility challenges

Crowd-sourced projects offer new verification approaches

Abstract

Quality humanitarian information is essential for efficient, effective and coordinated humanitarian responses. During crises, however, humanitarian responders rarely have access to quality information in order to provide the much-needed relief in a timely fashion. Traditional methods for the acquisition and evaluation of humanitarian information typically confront challenges such as poor accessibility, limited sources, and the capacity of monitoring and documentation. The more recent emergence of user generated content from online social platforms addressed some challenges faced by traditional methods, but it also raised many concerns regarding information quality and verifiability, among others, that affect both the public and humanitarian actors. This paper provides an overview of information verification methods in literature and reviews information collection and verification practices and tools used by news agencies and humanitarian organizations. Twenty crowd-sourced information projects in humanitarian and human rights nature are surveyed. We discuss the findings and give recommendations for future research.