Help: Digital Humanitarianism and the Remaking of International Order

Like many other areas of life, humanitarian practice and thinking are being transformed by information and communications technology. Despite this, the growing digitization of humanitarianism has been a relatively unnoticed dimension of global order. Based on more than seven years of data collection and interdisciplinary research, #Help presents a ground-breaking study of digital humanitarianism and its ramifications for international law and politics.

Global problems and policies are being reconfigured, regulated, and addressed through digital interfaces developed for humanitarian ends. #Help analyses how populations, maps, and emergencies take shape on the global plane when given digital form and explores the reorientation of nation states' priorities and practices of governing around digital data collection imperatives. This book also illuminates how the growing prominence of digital interfaces in international humanitarian work is sustained and shaped by law and policy.

#Help reveals new vectors of global inequality and new forms of global relation taking effect in the here and now. To understand how major digital platforms are seeking to extend their serviceable lives, and to see how global order might take shape in the future, it is essential to grasp the perils and possibilities of digital humanitarianism. #Help will transform thinking about what is at stake in the use of digital interfaces in the humanitarian field and about how, where, and for whom we are making the global order of tomorrow.

Fleur Johns is Professor in the Faculty of Law & Justice at UNSW Sydney. She is also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Fleur has held visiting appointments in Europe, the UK, the US, and Canada, and currently serves on a range of editorial boards, including those of the American Journal of International Law and the journal Technology and Regulation. She is a graduate of Melbourne University and Harvard University, and a member of the New York Bar.