In 2010, Al Jazeera used Ushahidi (www.ushahidi.com) to expand their coverage of Gaza during the recent tensions there. Israel was blocking many reporters and especially camera-personnel so they needed to rely on the few journalists they had plus a group of anonymous “citizen journalists”. In a sense Al Jazeera successfully used both “bounded” and “unbounded” information sources to provide a fuller portrait of what was going on during a crisis. This has implications for how we can organize information gathering at protests.

Al Jazeera encouraged its viewers to go to their Ushahidi map that showed real-time reports from journalists. This provided an immediacy that normally live video broadcasts serve but were impossible under the circumstances. Despite the relatively small territory of Gaza it was impossible for the handful of journalists to get to every site of interest to file their reports. To get around this Al Jazeera implemented an unbounded reporting system. This meant than anyone could send a report from the field. This was later verified by reporters and soon a pattern emerged that certain unbounded citizens were giving highly reliable information and thus could be trusted. In addition Al Jazeera soon discovered that they could “place” citizen informants to various geographic areas. This was useful because when a report from an unknown or less reliable unbounded informant came through they could dispatch (by sending a sms) a reliable volunteer informant if no journalist was around. These volunteers sent back photos, short videos and sms all from their phones which were then placed on the official Al Jazeera Gaza Ushahidi map. Through the use of real-time comparative analysis Al Jazeera was able to identify nearly a hundred volunteer unbounded informants to add to their paid bounded journalists in the field. In addition since many Al Jazeera reporters were known by officials at the borders and check points their movement was often hindered and their access to hot-spots severely limited. These obstacles did not affect unbounded reliable volunteers. Even unknown and unreliable volunteer informants were useful in providing directions of possible hot spots to reliable and/or bounded informants. Al Jazeera was able to provide factual and timely information to its audience despite a limited number of journalists covering a significant and difficult geographic area over a number of days. They were able to this by having a combination of bounded (trusted) paid journalists, trusted volunteers and unknown or less reliable observers. The system worked by using the limited number of bounded reporters as verifiers; which in turn, lead to the identifying of unbounded trusted volunteer reporters. Then individuals back at the collecting station were able to plot where these reports were coming from to create an approximate location for these unbounded but trusted informants. These informants did not only produce useful and much needed reports but in turn could verify unknown informants’ reports. Creating an ever widening pool of mutually trusted reporters and saturation for maximum coverage. This was all done with only know the actual identities of the paid journalists working for Al Jazeera. In a protest situation a similar model could be implemented when there are few known trusted sources of reports (like medics, legal observers or scouts). These bounded reporters could be used to create a larger group of trusted unbounded (and thus unknown) observers that could be used to ensure accurate information is reported on a map or in sms texts. The technology either exists or could be made to ensure that a communications group could identify these trusted unbound people and maybe even dispatch them to hotspots based on the location of their reports. With the advent of camera/video phones this could be a potentially useful source of information on the street. The same model could be used during disasters (assuming cell phone capability). Often bounded reporters are few and far between inside a disaster zone. Travel is often difficult and could be costly. By utilizing what little resources and emergency communications group has they may be able to expand the amount of information coming from the ground without necessarily compromise the accuracy or timeliness of the reports.