Digital volunteers can do a wide variety of tasks related to the use of collective intelligence in crises. Crowdsourcing is the main task that volunteers do. Crowdsourcing allows the big tasks to be broken down into smaller more manageable tasks. An example would be searching photos for plane debris which happed during the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370

Albion College

Digital Volunteers are those who use the internet in order to help communities during a crisis. While online activism doesn't always spur political attention or change during a crisis those that are heavily involved in online activism are able to impact the online attention the crisis receives. 

Digital Volunteers In a Crisis

The practice of completing tasks by using a large group of remote workers, where the specific tasks performed are typically short, require limited context, and are algorithmically mediated.

Crowdsourcing Definition

Büscher, M., Liegl, M., & Thomas, V. (2014). Collective Intelligence in Crises. In J.  Stewart (Ed.), Social Collective Intelligence: Combining The Powers of Humans and Machines (pp. 243–265). Springer International Publishing. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08681-1__12

Collective Intelligence in Crises

In regards to disaster response, there is some belief that when digital volunteering during a crisis goes up physical volunteering will go down. Though that could be seen to change as officials and responders use social media in order to get the word out about plans for on the ground volunteering. 

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