The blog Mobile Active covered Sharek961 the other day as part 2 of a two-part article on mobiles and the Lebanese elections. We were flattered to be featured and excited about the coverage, as Mobile Active is a well-read and widely respected publication among the ever-expanding community of people interested in mobiles for development, social change, and other good things.

First, transparency: some of us know Katrin Verclas, the author of the blog post and founder of the site, through friends and conferences. We knew she was writing this post and had a friendly conversation about Sharek961 days before it was published.

When the post came out we were a little surprised by its tone. We felt Mobile Active had not quite understood what we were trying to achieve with Sharek961. This might have been paradigmatic - the only other example of Ushahidi in elections was Vote Report India, which positioned itself as a monitoring site - and it might have been our own fault for not articulating our position clearly. So we wanted to respond in a little more details to the post, and perhaps answer or clear up some general questions about who we are and what we are trying to do.

Mobile Active: Sharek961 is another effort in Lebanon to monitor the election there today on June 7. Unlike LADE which uses more than 2,000 trained volunteer election monitors to systematically report from polling stations throughout the day, Sharek961 aims to get ordinary Lebanese citizen to text, call, and email in incidences from polling stations, crowdsourcing the conduct of the critically important election there.

Sharek961 was never intended to be another LADE. LADE is an accredited monitor with an official mission: observe and report violations of poll code. Sharek961 is a neutral platform for citizen reporting on issues happening around Lebanon.

Mobile Active: Sharek961, built on the open-source Ushahidi mapping platform, was developed by a group of volunteers, using FrontlineSMS as the SMS reception software for submissions via text. With the election nearing its end on Sunday afternoon, however, Sharek961 received only a little more than 100 citizen submissions…The few incidences reported on Sharek961 during the election from citizens are not sufficient to get an impression of the conduct of the election, unfortunately.

We posted around 140 reports on election day. 11 of those reports were LADE sourced. The other 129 were citizen reports (often with media sources). Since we launched 3 days before the election, we see this as a success, and view building audience as a long-term project. Although higher volume would be nice, we missed no major events and the substance of our reports match the election day mood.

Mobile Active: Another challenge in citizen monitoring efforts is the inability to sufficiently verify any data (to the extent that is comes in from the public in sufficient numbers) and thus the danger that especially in a highly contested and potentially fraught election, these systems can be abused in favor of one or the other political faction with so-called ‘poison data’.  While this is an issue that efforts such as Swift River are trying to address, it is currently unresolved.

We’re aware of the poison data risk and addressed our approach on our site. Our approach to the risk of poison data was as follows:

1. We publish all reports on to avoid charges of editorializing or censorship.
2. We tag by source as well as incident.
3. We did follow-up reporting and debunking, adding information to original reports.
4. We reminded users throughout the day that no data was verified.

Having said this, we’re really looking forward to a functional Swift River!

And finally, on a personal note, we were disappointed in the following comment, because we felt reinforced the very divisive presumptions we are trying to overcome.

However, both LADE and Sharek961 have the potential to be tainted as ‘partisan.”  LADE was accused of being too close to the Western-backed governing coalition, and similarly, key volunteers from Sharek961 have ties to a large Lebanese newspaper that backs the same.

We know it’s the job of bloggers to find a story behind the story. However, the heart of Sharek961 is transparency. . Our team is made up of individuals, not affiliations. Everyone on our team is listed. All our partners are listed. We receive no backing, financial or otherwise, from any organizations other than the ones listed on our partner page. Lebanon is a small country where you are born with a background, but you are free to choose how and whom you engage, and that’s the core of Sharek961.

(Finally – because we want to debunk this perpetuated myth of an unstable Lebanon: There was no curfew. People were free to move. Bars and major places for congregation were encouraged to close, but many didn’t! That’s it!)