The Role of Technology in Humanitarian Accountability : Analysis of Social Listening Role During the COVID-19 Response

Abstract: During recent public health emergencies, such as COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of over, false and misinformation in social media, resulted in an exponential use of digital social listening methodologies- in summary defined as collection and analysis of voices, concerns and/or perceptions expressed by individuals and communities- as part of the humanitarian response.  This raises the question on how those social listening findings are being used and influence emergency responses, while also addressing affected people’s needs and concerns, as part of the Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) mandate- an obligation of every organisation on the ground to place people affected by crisis at the centre of humanitarian action and promote respect for their human rights.  Trough the comparative analyses of social listening reports and a mixed survey responded by Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) practitioners, using COVID-19 context as an example, this project helps understanding the role social listening has had in humanitarian responses, while providing possible ways to better connect social listening to programming.  On way forward is urgent to harmonise the definition of social listening and clearly distinguish social media listening and its limited role in terms of communities’ participation, while acknowledging the risk of exclusion of digital channels in general. Social listening cannot continue to be limited to the RCCE field, but involve other programme sectors, besides effectively engaging governments, civil society and affected populations. Offline mechanisms seem to be better shaped to address inclusion, localisation and contextualisation (and AAP in general), and therefore the need to invest in specific community-based mechanisms and/or systems that combine online with offline tools. For accountability purposes, monitoring action taken based on Social Listening findings and evaluating how it impacted programmes, it is an urgent priority. Besides the obvious humanitarian obligation of communicating (looping) back to communities what was done with their voices.