A Syracuse University professor continues to lead a team of students and professionals with a website that tracks the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Liberia.

Ken Harper, an associate professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and director of the Newhouse Center for Global Engagement, established www.ebolainliberia.org in September. The website lists the number of cases and total death toll from Ebola for both civilians and medical professionals with colorful line graphs and an interactive map tracking them county-by-county.

With Ebola continuing to affect people in Liberia and other western African countries, the website is continuing to track Ebola data. The Ministry of Health in Liberia originally compiled the data and distributed it to governmental agencies, including the Center for Disease Control and World Health Organization.

However, Harper said it would be difficult for general readers to understand the information posted on those agencies. His website, he thought, needed to be “visually accessible.”

“The idea behind the website is editing down (the data) to the most simple pieces, a big chunk, to get people a broad view of a national trend and then to a county,” Harper said.

Thomas Karyah, Harper’s former student who now works with the United Nations and the Ministry of Information in Liberia, asked for help as the deadly virus continues throughout the country.

Harper said that his personal connection with friends in Liberia influenced him to launch the website.

“I have friends in Liberia,” Harper said. “These are not numbers. These are people.”

Since mid-2014, Ebola has devastated western African countries, in particular Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. As of Jan. 7, the CDC website says 21,086 cases of Ebola were confirmed and death toll reached 8,289 in those countries. Among the three countries, Liberia has the highest death toll with 3,515.

Harper knew he needed to quickly start up the website to disseminate important information considering Ebola’s high mortality rate.

“It is journalism. I mean, the same idea of ‘there is a deadline’ and in fact there is death involved in the deadline. We’ve got to get it done,” Harper said.

Liberia, however, is among one of the few countries with the lowest Internet accessibility. According to The World Bank data, 4.6 percent of the population in Liberia has access to the Internet. Harper said he hopes that those individuals with the Internet, such as government decision-makers and reporters, will publicize the information and enforce necessary steps for the rest of the population to contain the crisis.

“I think it takes a network of people that care enough to help offer solutions collectively,” Harper said.

To develop the website, Harper collaborated with fellow professors, journalists and students.

Professor Steve King at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the contributors and development director of the site, said students played an important role for the website to come to reality.

“Most of their job was trying to figure out how to execute designs and ideas,” King said.

UNC students involved in the process were from both the School of Information Studies and Library Science and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and were equipped with computer programming skills.

King said it was valuable to have inputs coming from students with different backgrounds, discerning digital convergence in journalism.

“I think it is vital that we are telling stories in new ways and, we, as journalists, get involved in stories in ways that people are consuming information, meaning learning new tools and new technologies,” King said.

Harper said the project team has learned what is actually happening in Liberia through the process of making the website irrespective of varying background.

Said Harper: “It gave everyone involved in the project a window into the reality of what happens in an epidemic in post-conflict nations.”

Published on January 15, 2015 at 12:01 am

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