Solidarity not Charity! Empowering Local Communities for Disaster Relief during COVID-19 through Grassroots Support
Open Access
- Author:
- Knearem, Tiffany
- Graduate Program:
- Information Sciences and Technology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- November 19, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Jack Carroll, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Steven Haynes, Major Field Member
Heather Zimmerman, Outside Unit & Field Member
Mary Beth Rosson, Major Field Member
Mary Beth Rosson, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Mutual aid
Community-based disaster relief
social media
Community informatics - Abstract:
- The COVID-19 pandemic brought wide-ranging, unanticipated societal changes as communities rushed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. In response, mutual aid groups bloomed online across the United States to fill in the gaps in social services and help local communities cope with infrastructural breakdowns. Unlike many previous disasters, the long-haul nature of COVID-19 necessitates sustained disaster relief efforts. Developing an in-depth understanding of how online mutual aid mobilized community-based disaster relief to support the needs of local communities in this disaster can provide the crucial groundwork for community resilience and preparedness as this pandemic evolves and during future disasters. This dissertation presents a series of empirical studies which were conducted during the first year of COVID-19, i.e., March 2020 to March 2021. Firstly, I teased out significant design features that support the facilitation of mutual aid on online platforms through a scenario-based claims analysis of the two most widely used platforms for mutual aid. From this, platforms that are appropriated for disaster relief should support aid request standardization and balanced visibility of requests alongside user validation and a means for interactivity. Next, an interview study with online mutual aid group administrators outlines the ways in which local online mutual aid groups facilitated disaster relief and how they developed and maintained over the course of the first year of COVID-19. This study identified immediate needs relief, long-term initiatives aimed at reducing chronic needs, and justice-centered organizing as aspects of mutual aid which supported localized disaster relief; it also demonstrated how groups re-focused their efforts towards addressing the most pressing community needs. Next, all of the groups mentioned food insecurity as a chronic community need, which prompted an analysis of the ways that online mutual aid groups facilitated tangible food aid. The findings from this analysis revealed how groups contributed immediate food relief as well as laid the groundwork for long-term food security, with implications for community resilience. Finally, a content analysis of the posts and comments in a care-mongering group outlines how local community members innovated and developed care-mongering practices online, and how such practices might contribute to community collective efficacy and community resilience. Together, the insights gained from these studies can support communities to collectively be more prepared for future long-haul disasters than they were with COVID-19.