Interdisciplinary connections: Kate Starbird on the importance of empathy in research

Kate Starbird is a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Washington. She studies digital volunteerism in social media after crises, such as an earthquake or the Boston Marathon bombing.

There are many caring people around the world who want to actively help when disaster hits. Although they are too far away to directly perform first aid, deliver supplies, and carry out other crucial tasks on the ground, they are perfectly situated for organizing information for rescuers who are there, like classifying messages in individual tweets to make those  messages easier to distribute where it's needed.

Just as we aspire to promote resilience and self-efficacy in our individual clients, she works to facilitate those aspects in communities.

With Hurricane Michael's destruction in Haiti in the news, her observation on the importance of empathy in conducting research is especially timely right now.

"I think empathy is really important for doing research—especially qualitative research—on disaster events. We really have to approach each study with recognition that the events we are studying had (in many cases) catastrophic effects on people’s lives. Even though we tend to focus on the more positive aspects of disaster, i.e. people working together to survive and thrive afterwards, the context of this work is always quite sad. At every point in the study—data collection (especially interviews), data analysis, writing up papers, and giving presentations—we have to balance our enthusiasm for the research with the weight of the event and its impacts. So being able to empathize with those who are affected, even with folks who were not directly affected but who spent considerable time trying to help and are therefore emotionally impacted, is extremely important."

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