Deng-Shun Chang and Georgia Guthrie

Fu Chi: Future Chinatown

July 2011

Fu Chi: “happiness, blessing, fortune” in Chinese

Description

The Fu Chi social media applicationaims to increase communication, raise civic engagement, and increase cooperation among multilingual residents and the organizations serving them in an immigrant neighborhood. The project focuses on Philadelphia’s Chinatown, where the lack of communication and trust manifests itself in visible ways, including trash littering streets, crime, and apathy among residents.

To address these problems, we built a social media system built with the open source software Ushahidi(available under the GNU Lesser General Public License; source code can be found at strengthen informal contacts and help bridge the communication barrier. The overall objective is to help residents go from a feeling of apathy to one of hope and confidence that their opinions and concerns matter. We also aim to raise the profile and recognition of organizations working in the community by helping them form agile responses to resident concerns.

Local impact

Philadelphia’s Chinatown has faced repeated challenges to its geographic boundaries, including the construction of the Gallery Mall and Convention Center, threats to build a baseball stadium and casino, the Vine Street Expressway, and expansion of the convention center completed in April 2011. These threats make it imperative that residents and social organizations in the community work together, but coordination has been difficult. The community is divided by the range of dialects spoken there.Cantonese (58%), Fujianese (25%), and Mandarin (17%)are the most common. People speaking these languages have relatively low levels of bilingualism, and the dialects are mutually unintelligible in spoken form. This creates a neighborhood whose purpose to make people of Asian heritage and recent immigrants feel at home, but where many perceive themselves as outsiders. Numerous social organizations and associations have been created to help residents, but these organizations usually target a specific demographic, such as older Cantonese speakers or younger Fujianese business owners. The organizations rarely come together to address issues that everyone agrees are problems: trash, lack of affordable housing, crime, and neglect.

The social media system Fu Chi could help forge social ties and build the essential element of trust[i] by providing an alternative to face-to-face communication among different language speakers. All dialects are familiar with the same written characters, so Fu Chi relies on written reports from residents and creates a bridge over the spoken language barrier. Fu Chi also provides an easy way for organizations to get the pulse of the neighborhood by allowing them to read the reports submitted online, and create categories or polls to get responses on specific issues. Social media is a useful tool to use in this context because when “people with bridging ties (weak ties across groups) use communication media, they enhance their capability to educate community members and organize for collective action...”[ii]The people most likely to have bridging ties in this group are also more likely to be American citizens, with higher social capital, broadband access, and general civic knowledge. They can use these strengths to read the complaints submitted to Fu Chi and organize a movement themselves to remedy problems. Because the website and system would be public it could also help build shared understanding and empathy, and therefore increase social cohesion among the greater Philadelphia community and Chinatown residents, the lack of which has lead to violence against Asian students in Philly public schools in the past.

Fu Chi fulfills several needs of the neighborhood:

Users who don’t know whom to contact to report issues or want to remain anonymous can simply submit reports to the system
Residents who are not bi- or multilingual could have a way to understand the comments and concerns of others in the neighborhood, learning how much they have in common
Social media systems have become very popular in China, so it would be a familiar source of knowledge for new immigrants[iii]
Online users can subscribe to alerts about particular categories of reports
Young people willing to help have been recruited as translators, giving them a chance to use their language abilities in a context with less pressure than face-to-face conversations
Young professional volunteers have also been recruited to categorize and respond to reports, putting them in a position to identify patterns of recurring issues that are not being addressed, and start movements using their contacts, social capital, and knowledge of American society
Outside viewers would have a way to understand the dynamics at work in Chinatown, and see what they have in common with the neighborhood’s residents.

User experience

To submit a report, all a user has to do is send a text with the issue (break-in, trash, illegal bus idling, etc) and location (address or cross street) to the number 1-775-237-4407.

Users also have the ability to tweet reports @phillyfuchi, email them to , or submit them via a form on the website

We have created promotional cards, posters and pamphlets and distributed them in the neighborhood, as well as a contest to encourage and reward reporting.

Accessibility

The Fu Chi app is highly accessible; anyone with any type of cell phone may submit reports.

Sustainability

At present this system relies on maintenance byvolunteer translators and coordinators, making it less sustainable. Because online English/Chinese translation is still very unreliable, this process cannot yet be automated and human translators are necessary until online translations improve. We believe that the benefit of creating a feedback loop between residents and social organizations, and an entry point for outsiders or policy-makers to understand the wants and needs of Chinatown will ultimately draw attention to this project and make it more sustainable. By lowering barriers for residents to communicate to social organizations and policy makers, and for those stakeholders to understand each other, we believe Fu Chi will provide a lasting, valuable contribution to Chinatown. Although Fu Chi could not be simply dropped in any location, it could be applied in any other Chinatown in the U.S. with recruitment of volunteers and promotion among residents and social organizations.

Broadband Adoption

Fu Chi itself does not promote broadband adoption, but it uses social media and the internet to put those with lower social capital (who may not go online) in touch with those with higher social capital (who may go online and read reports). The users online are more likely to have more contacts and knowledge about city issues. We have also spoken with instructors who teach computer skills in the neighborhood, and have asked them to include a brief lesson about Fu Chi to their students. At this time online users may submit comments to reports that would appear on the website. With the help of a developer we could add the feature of letting users receive comments to their reports on their cell phones, allowing them to submit questions and collect crowd-sourced answers. Other features we would like to add include a voice to text option, so residents who are more comfortable speaking, not texting, may simply leave a message that is automatically transcribed to a written report. The Fu Chi system puts the most information in the hands of those with the most connections and social capital, so while their response to issues may not be immediate, they are the most likely to be able to implement positive change.

[i]Earls, F., Raudenbush, S. Sampson, R. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.” Science. Vol. 277. August 15, 1997.

[ii]Kavanaugh, A., Reese, D., Carroll, J., & Rosson, M. (2005). Weak ties in networked communities.The Information Society, 21(2), 119-131.

[iii]Fenn, Andrea. “Social media in China: Why and How” Shanghai Business Review. Thomas Crampton.com February 28, 2011. Accessed March 31, 2011. thomascrampton.com/china/china-social- media/