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CCGL9061 Global IssuesDigital Humanitarianism: Can You Save the World with Your Computer?This course is under the thematic cluster(s) of:
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Course Description
In recent years, digital humanitarians have been on the rise. In particular, a new generation of ‘online’ volunteers have been taking advantage of digital technologies to play a role in emergency situations and to address social problems. From mapping areas struck by natural disasters to analyzing social media messages during crisis events, from digital activism to big data and now large language models, it seems that everyone can today “save the world with their computer”. But is this really the case? What are the benefits, the limits, and possibly the dangers of these approaches?
During this course, you will investigate digital humanitarianism from various perspectives. You will first learn more about how humanitarian action was born and has evolved through time, what are the main actors and the key historical events that have led to today’s ideas and practices. You will then discover how recent technological progress is gradually changing the way expert humanitarian actors, but also people ‘like you and me’, can help others in difficult situations. You will learn to use some of the tools available and get truly involved by participating in two projects: i) a crowd-mapping project aimed at offering better maps of remote regions to humanitarian field workers (no prior experience necessary!), and ii) a project aimed at investigating with digital tools and measures (e.g., geolocalized pictures) the everyday living conditions in Hong Kong. Finally, you will cultivate a critical and creative eye, reflecting on the benefits but also on the possible negative outcomes of current digital practices.
This course is a flipped-classroom course: you will listen to recordings of the lectures before coming to class, which will free time for many in-class group activities.
This course is certified as communication-intensive and through a range of different activities and assignments, you will get the opportunity to develop your communication skills with feedback from the teachers and your peers.
Course Learning Outcomes
On completing the course, students will be able to:
- Describe the main trends, actors and recent technological developments in the field of humanitarianism.
- Analyze the complexity of real situations and of possible digital responses.
- Critique the current approaches in digital humanitarianism.
- Reflect on the notion of global citizenship in the light of humanitarian endeavors.
- Synthesize and communicate information effectively and creatively with means such as digital maps, infoboards and ‘deep style transfer’ pictures
- Create rich visual outputs such as short videos and ‘deep style transfer’ pictures
- Produce textual outputs (reflective diaries, online petitions, project reports) delivering facts and personal reflections with thoughtfulness, accuracy and impact.
Offer Semester and Day of Teaching
Second semester (Wed)
Study Load
| Activities | Number of hours |
| Lectures | 24 |
| Tutorials | 10 |
| Reading / Self-study | 35 |
| Assessment: Quizzes | 2 |
| Assessment: Reflective diary | 12 |
| Assessment: Individual tasks | 6 |
| Assessment: Group project and presentation | 15 |
| Assessment: Group video production and presentation | 20 |
| Total: | 124 |
Assessment: 100% coursework
| Assessment Tasks | Weighting |
| Quizzes | 10 |
| Individual presentation | 15 |
| Group project and presentation | 20 |
| Video production | 30 |
| Reflective writing | 20 |
| Participation | 5 |
Required Reading and Viewing
A number of sources – news articles, reports or scientific publications, but also digital resources such as websites or videos – will be given for each lecture. Some of them will be required reading or watching, others – usually more complex materials – will be optional recommendations.
Preliminary reading program:
Week 1: General introduction to the course
No required reading
Week 2: Humanitarianism and humanitarian action
- International Committee of the Red Cross. (2004). What is International Humanitarian Law?
- Rysaback-Smith, H. (2015). History and principles of humanitarian action. Turkish Journal of Emergency Medicine, 15(Suppl 1), 5–7.
Week 3: Looking beyond the surface: challenges, critiques and ideologies
- Buchan, J. (2010, May 8). War games: The story of aid and war in modern times by Linda Polman. The Guardian. From https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/08/war-games-linda-polman-review
- Domashneva, H. (2013, December 3). NGOs in Cambodia: It’s complicated. The Diplomat. From https://thediplomat.com/2013/12/ngos-in-cambodia-its-complicated/
- The Humanitarian Policy Group at ODI. (2010, May). Aid and war: A response to Linda Polman’s critique of humanitarianism. ODI Opinions. Overseas Development Institute. From https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/5914.pdf
Week 4: The digital revolution of humanitarian action
- PLoS Medicine Editors. (2012). Digital humanitarianism: Collective intelligence emerging. PLoS Medicine, 9(7), e1001278.
- TED Conference. Digital Humanitarians: Patrick Meier. TEDxTraverseCity. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUGRziSDbY4
Week 5: Digital mapping in humanitarian action
- Leson, H. (2017, January 28). How digital humanitarians are closing the gaps in worldwide disaster response. Huffpost. From https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-digital-humanitarians_b_9101950?guccounter=1
- US Federal News Service. (2017). Central Washington University Geography students take part in global humanitarian digital mapping network. From https://search.proquest.com/docview/1874677174?accountid=14548
- Weinandy, T. J. (2016). Volunteer and technical communities in humanitarian response. Lessons in digital humanitarianism from Typhoon Haiyan. UN Chronicle, 1, 29-30.
Week 6: Mapping social issues in the city
- Brandusescu, A., Sieber, R. E., & Jochems, S. (2016). Confronting the hype: The use of crisis mapping for community development. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 22(6), 616–632.
Week 7: Analyzing social media in humanitarian contexts
- Imran, M., Mitra, P., & Castillo, C. (2016). Twitter as a lifeline: Human-annotated Twitter Corpora for NLP of crisis-related messages. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2016. Portoroz, Slovenia. [pp. 1638-1643]
- Kumar, S., Barbier, G., Abbasi, M. A., & Liu, H. (2011, July 17-21). TweetTracker: An analysis tool for humanitarian and disaster relief. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Barcelona, Spain. [pp. 661-662]
Week 8: Online communication and influencing
- Cadwalladr, C. (2013, November 17). Inside Avaaz – Can online activism really change the world? The Guardian. From https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/17/avaaz-online-activism-can-it-change-the-world
- Halupka, M. (2016). Don’t knock clicktivism: It represents the political participation aspirations of the modern citizen. Democratic Audit. From http://www.democraticaudit.com/2016/04/12/dont-knock-clickivism-it-represents-the-political-participation-aspirations-of-the-modern-citizen-2/
- Hartford, B. (2018, January 5). The limits of “clicktivism”. Huffpost. From https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-limits-of-clicktivism_b_13956416
- Kingsley, P. (2010, July 20). Avaaz: Activism or ‘slacktivism’? The Guardian. From https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/20/avaaz-activism-slactivism-clicktivism
- Regan, C. (2015, January 15). Social media ‘clicktivism’ creates more apathy than empathy. Development Education. From https://developmenteducation.ie/feature/social-media-clicktivism-creates-more-apathy-than-empathy/
- White, M. (2010, August 12). Clicktivism is ruining leftist activism. The Guardian. From https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/clicktivism-ruining-leftist-activism
Week 9: From human analysis to machine learning and AI in humanitarian action
- Meier, P. (2015). Digital humanitarians: How big data is changing the face of humanitarian response (1st ed.). Routledge. [Chap. 5 Artificial intelligence for disaster response, Chap. 6 Artificial intelligence in the sky]
Week 10: Large language models and information in crisis contexts
- Lahlou, Y., El Fikhi, S., & Faizi, R. (2019). Automatic detection of fake news on online platforms: A survey. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Smart Systems and Data Science (ICSSD)
- OpenAI. (2024). Disrupting deceptive uses of AI by covert influence operations. From https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-covert-influence-operations/
- Urbani, S. (2019). First Draft’s Essential Guide to Verifying Online Information. First Draft.
Week 11: Ethical challenges of digital humanitarianism
- Johns, F. (2017, July 23). Digital humanitarianism – Possibilities and challenges. UNSW Sydney. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyN-GH-ariA
- Ong, J. C., & Combinido, P. (2018). Local aid workers in the digital humanitarian project: Between “second class citizens” and “entrepreneurial survivors”. Critical Asian Studies, 50(1), 86-102.
Week 12: Wrapping-up
No required reading
Required Websites
Week 2: Humanitarianism and humanitarian action
(For the input in the reflective diary):
Humanity and Inclusion (UK) (also known as Handicap International)
International Committee of the Red Cross
Week 5: Collaborative mapping of emergency areas
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)
Week 6: Mapping social issues in the city
Week 8: Online communication and influencing
Week 9: From human analysis to machine learning and AI in humanitarian action
Course Co-ordinator and Teacher(s)
| Course Co-ordinator | Contact |
| Professor C.D.M. Coupe School of Humanities (Linguistics), Faculty of Arts |
Tel: 3917 2872 Email: ccoupe@hku.hk |
| Teacher(s) | Contact |
| Professor C.D.M. Coupe School of Humanities (Linguistics), Faculty of Arts |
Tel: 3917 2872 Email: ccoupe@hku.hk |