Crisis crowdsourcing and China’s civic participation in disaster response: Evidence from earthquake relief

Abstract

The devastating 2008 Wenchuan earthquake unfolded the co-evolution of a proactive civic engagement and extensive application of web-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) in China’s disaster response. However, existing literature has not yet sufficiently examined how ad hoc web-based voluntary participation has led to long-term development of digital disaster management in China in the wake of the Wenchuan earthquake of 2008. The present article addresses this gap by focusing on one specific type of ICT-mediated civic effort, crisis crowdsourcing, and presenting newly collected empirical evidence from relief work in the 2008 Wenchuan, 2010 Yushu, and 2013 Lushan earthquakes. This article examines the emergence of a broad-based digitally enabled civic participation in disaster response and its more general political implications. The main findings of this study suggest that web-based ICTs have not only enabled the relatively weak and episodic social actors to overcome constraints on information, fundraising, organizational development and to achieve collective development in a field historically dominated by the state, but also facilitated the evolution of a parallel disaster management system with agenda, skills and expertise independent of the state.