# Coproduction as an Approach to Technology-Mediated Citizen Participation in Emergency Management
## 3 Design Case Study: The Participative Roles of Citizens in EM
#### 3.1.3 Findings of the Empirical Studies
In many cases, filtering out the information generated in social networks is delegated to humans. In particular, most EMAs work with their own VOST (Virtual Operations Support Teams). VOST are groups of trusted people, usually recruited among volunteers, who help to detect hoaxes as well as relevant information. It originated in USA in 2011 and now has spread to many countries and regions. They usually have a team leader who is in contact with the EMA managers in their area of influence so they can have a more fluid communication. Technologies, like data mining and visualization, have been also used in research prototypes to organize this huge quantity of information into more manageable sets of data with a view to help EM operators make sense of the situation. For instance, in [9] authors develop an algorithm to automatically derive the quality of data generated in twitter. In [40] the use of ontologies is proposed to generate semantic visualizations that categorize tweets according to meaningful concepts in EM. Our participants did not value very highly the utility of technology to support crowd intelligence processes. Given the fact that there are crowd platforms already used by citizens in crisis like Ushahidi, this result suggests a lack of confidence on the integration of crowd intelligence within their practice more than a lack of confidence on technology to promote crowd intelligence. EM is a critical activity performed by professionals who have clear goals and responsibilities, so any change in their procedures has to imply an evident benefit for the organization. In a context where coordinating efforts amongst agencies is often seen as a burden [41], involving citizens might be a utopia if both decision-makers and citizens are not empowered to work together in an efficient way. 3. **Citizens could do more than act as first line informants**. The role of citizens as intelligent sensors and first-line informants has been studied in real cases [5; 6; 7; 8; 9], but as reported by the participants of the second empirical study, citizens could do more than just informing. In our experience after more than 16 years working with EM workers, mentioning citizen participation usually put them on the defensive due to two misconceptions based on fake generalizations. The first one is assuming, erroneously, that the term \"citizen\" refers to a homogenous crowd, where each person has exactly the same skills and knowledge and, therefore, all of them will participate in the same way. When they are reminded that VOST members are also citizens, their initial attitude changes. The second one is about what \"participation\" means. Many professional EM workers stick to one of two extreme options that define their position for or against citizen participation. They are quite positive when participation is seen as citizens sending or receiving information, for which they know that social networks are a resource they have to use. But when participation is perceived as citizens being proactive and taking responsibilities, most EM stakeholders adopt a negative position, since losing control of the situation could end up in damages and losses they will have to respond to. However in our study, participants were quite positive about having citizens as reactive sensors, as agents who could execute actions under supervision. Again, taking into account that not all citizens will do exactly the same tasks and that preparation is required, if you have citizens with accredited skills to act in a disaster you will use them, since EM is characterized by improvisation and the need to assume roles dynamically [13]. Social and mobile computing can contribute to speed up the location and mobilization of this kind of resources, engaging in EM other coproducers including volunteers, retired emergency workers, or citizens with skills or resources to deal with a specific hazard. The capability to integrate this information on the EMAs current information systems will make it possible to mobilize this digital social capital when a crisis happens.