How Social Media Is Changing Disaster Response. More than 66% of adult online users are now connected to one or more social media platforms. And it's not just about keeping in touch with friends or following news or interests. As social media continues to play a pervasive role in the way people think, act and react to the world, it's also changing one of the most crucial ways of actually helping the world: how people respond to emergencies and disaster.
From government agencies and other organizations, to citizens and social platforms themselves, people across the spectrum of social media are leveraging its use to respond to emergencies. According to a 2011 report of the Congressional Research Service, there are two broad categories in the way that we can conceptualize this use of social media: 1) to "somewhat passively" disseminate information and receive user feedback; and 2) to use social media more systematically as an emergency management tool. But what does that mean, exactly? If you are in south Dallas Co, SEEK SHELTER NOW! Public health leaders using social media to convey emergencies: New tools a boon — The Nation's Health. What some people might think of as online entertainment or a fun way to stay in touch with friends has turned into a communications boon for the public health community, particularly in times of crisis. Social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook are allowing public health officials to reach out fast and directly to the public on everything from salmonella-related food recalls to disease outbreaks and weather emergencies.
“We’ve tried to make social media a very everyday thing for us here,” Laura Howe, senior director of public affairs for the American Red Cross, told The Nation’s Health. “Basically, we’re trying to advance the mission of helping people prepare for and respond to emergencies. We’re really looking to ensure that people can get very quick, very effective access to the information where they can either get help or give help.” Wilson pointed to the success of the public health response to the recent recall of salmonella-contaminated peanut butter and peanut products.
Social Media Testimony on Capitol Hill. This morning, May 5th, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs hosted testimony on the importance of social media in emergency management. Today’s speakers included: Craig Fugate @craigatfema, FEMA AdministratorRenee Preslar @rpreslar, Arkansas Department of Emergency ManagementSuzy DeFrancis @sdefrancis, Red Cross Chief Public Information OfficerShona Brown, Senior Vice President of GoogleHeather Blanchard @poplifegirl, Co-Founder of Crisis Commons The excellent speakers provided key examples of use and statistics on the use of social media during crisis situations.
Some of these incredible examples included: The testimony itself is about 1:44 hours to listen to, but is well worth the time if you are unsure of how social media is impacting our current world. Here are some quick links to both see the testimony and see more about what people were saying online during the testimony: Social Media + Emergency Management Camp Comes to NEMA « CrisisCommons. On Thursday, March 24th over 150 emergency management practitioners, including State Emergency Management Directors stopped by to participate in Social Media + Emergency Management Camp, an unconference event, hosted by the National Emergency Management Association’s Mid-Year conference and organized by the SMEM Initiative, a community of emergency management practitioners interested in promoting the use of open data and social media in emergency management.
This was the first time that an emergency management event has been organized in a “barcamp” format where the attendees of the event create their own agenda for the day. It was pretty cool what they come up with! What Happened? The day started with a few tips on how barcamp works and how it depended upon all the participants in the room to make it successful. After introductions, SMEM Campers nominated sessions for discussion which were grouped into topic areas such as: Video streaming by Ustream Social Media Public Outreach Twitter.
Intercom. Social Media + Emergency Management: Talking with Tech Leaders on the West Coast. Mockups of a Disaster Assistance Assessment Dashboard are shared with participants at FEMA's first-ever Data Town Hall. Developers at Appalicious created the dashboard to utilize publicly available data sets, including some of FEMA's open data. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a few “hackathons” and “data jams”, both inside and outside of the government space. These events often have a simple premise: bring together tech experts from different disciplines and organizations so they can create cool, useful solutions or products. The challenge at these gatherings isn’t coming up with great ideas – the tough task is transforming big ideas into tangible to-do lists and, ultimately, a useful product. The approach to FEMA’s first-ever Data Town Hall was refreshing because our OpenFEMA team harked just as much about project management and results as they did about getting creative when using FEMA’s data.
Respondents Question: Why did you choose to attend? How-social-media-is-shaping-crisis-communication.pdf (application/pdf Object) How to Measure Your Social Media Return On Investment | Smedio | The New Media and Social Web Guide for Business and Marketers. Most business follow a simple rule when it comes to adopting new technologies or paradigms – If it boosts my business’ ROI, it’s worth the investment. Social Media is no exception to this rule. Unless, businesses see value addition from social media, they are not going to take the plunge. Therefore, as a social media activist, one of my primary responsibilities is to educate businesses on how they can measure their social media ROI. This helps them understand and appreciate the impact of social media on their business. This post explains the various aspects of Social media ROI from a business’ perspective. Is Social Media ROI Measurable? Of course, it is. How to measure Social Media ROI? I’ve come across many social media marketers who claim that it’s a challenging task to measure social media ROI because there are no rules/ guidelines to do so.
Simply put, ROI is (Revenue – Investment)/ Investment. 1) Helps in boosting a business revenue therefore increasing the numerator * Facebook Fans. Japan earthquake: how Twitter and Facebook helped. Social media as risk communication tools | EdLab. How Might You Use Social Media In An Emergency? How We Use Social Media During Emergencies [INFOGRAPHIC] The use of social media during national and international crises, both natural and political, is something that Mashable has followed with great interest over the past few years.
As a culture, we started becoming more aware of the power of social media during times of crisis, like when the Iran election in 2009 caused a furor, both on the ground and on Twitter. More recently, the Internet and social media played an important role in spreading news about the earthquake in Haiti and political revolution in Egypt. But what about other kinds of natural disasters or crime? Can social media be used to good effect then? In 2009, two girls trapped in a storm water drain used Facebook to ask for help rather than calling emergency services from their mobile phones. However, according to new research from the American Red Cross, the Congressional Management Foundation and other organizations, social media could stand to play a larger and more formal role in emergency response.
VoluntweetersStarbirdPalen.pdf (application/pdf Object) Personal Information Backup – Twitter, Gmail Contacts, Google Calendar, Reader - Manas Tungare. Make a New Year’s Resolution to start backing up your data regularly. Not just local files, but even data from the cloud. Here’s how to backup your data from a few of the most common online services. More importantly, I’ve also included instructions on how to restore from that backup. Twitter How to backup? Copy this URL to a new browser window. Then replace the string USERNAME with your actual Twitter username. How to restore? You cannot restore this data into Twitter (neither to your own account, nor to a different account.) Gmail Messages Use an IMAP client such as Mail.app on the Mac, or Thunderbird on any platform. You can access your messages from these programs even if Gmail is down.
Gmail Contacts Login to your Gmail / Google Apps email account, then open the Contact Manager. The vCard format is fairly standard. Google Calendar Google Calendar publishes feeds of your calendar in the iCal format. Google Reader. I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience — New Media Society. Microblogging during two natural hazards events. Lead rather than follow social media, says Army and Navy public affairs. It's always better to lead than to straggle behind in the case of government public affairs, said a panel of Defense Department officials speaking during an Oct. 4 a webinar presented by Defense Daily.
"Conversations about you or that add value to you--they happen with or without your participation," said Cmdr. Scott McIlnay, director of emerging media integration at the Navy Department's Office of Information (CHINFO). "So you can either be part of it, or you can not be part of it and then deal with the ramifications of whatever has transpired in your absence. " Public engagement through social media is quickly becoming a necessity across the DoD, added Maj. Juanita Chang, director of online and social media at the Army's Office of the Chief of Public Affairs.
"People want information immediately, and they want to be able to share it and comment on it," said Chang. Sign up for our FREE newsletter for more news like this sent to your inbox! For more:- view the archived webinar (reg. req.) "AN EXPLORATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN EXTREME EVENTS: RUMOR THEORY AND TWI" by Onook Oh, Kyounghee Hazel Kwon et al. Abstract Due to its rapid speed of information spread, wide user bases, and extreme mobility, Twitter is drawing attention as a potential emergency reporting tool under extreme events. However, at the same time, Twitter is sometimes despised as a citizen based non-professional social medium for propagating misinformation, rumors, and, in extreme case, propaganda.
This study explores the working dynamics of the rumor mill by analyzing Twitter data of the Haiti Earthquake in 2010. For this analysis, two key variables of anxiety and informational uncertainty are derived from rumor theory, and their interactive dynamics are measured by both quantitative and qualitative methods. Our research finds that information with credible sources contribute to suppress the level of anxiety in Twitter community, which leads to rumor control and high information quality. Recommended Citation. Public Relations Review : Socially distributing public relations: Twitter, Haiti, and interactivity in social media. Abstract Social media and communication technology have shifted the power of communication from public relations practitioners to social media users who may not have a recognized role or defined interest in an organization.
What results is a social model of public relations in which traditional public relations responsibilities are distributed to social media users, and which depends on interactivity, legitimacy, and a user's social stake. This study explores social public relations through a qualitative analysis of user involvement on Twitter regarding relief efforts to support Haiti following the 7.0 earthquake that hit Port-Au-Prince in January, 2010. This analysis of Twitter posts also expands understanding of interactivity online and demonstrates social media user fulfillment of public relations objectives. Keywords. "Priceless Tweets! A Study on Twitter Messages Posted During Crisis: Bl" by Suku Sinnappan, Cathy Farrell et al.
Abstract Twitter has been regarded as an outstanding social media application due to its immediacy in communication. Twitter has experienced exponential growth and been used for various purposes including crisis communication. However, there have been less empirical studies on Twitter messages (tweets) posted during crisis. In this paper, we analyse the tweets that were posted during Australia’s worst fire disaster - Black Saturday. We propose a new coding scheme for tweets during crisis and propose further research into how Twitter can be used as an alternative communication tool during crisis to support official communications, in particular, reflecting ground level conditions. Recommended Citation. WEB 2.0 EMERGENCY APPLICATIONS: HOW USEFUL CAN TWITTER BE FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE? Inderscience Publishers - Article. Take Two Aspirin And Tweet Me In The Morning: How Twitter, Facebook, And Other Social Media Are Reshaping Health Care — Health Aff. The Media Ecology Association.
Who Tweets? Overview: The people who use Twitter Eight percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. It is an online activity that is particularly popular with young adults, minorities, and those who live in cities. This is the first-ever survey reading from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that exclusively examines Twitter users. In previous surveys, the Project had asked internet users whether they “used Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others?” Here is a little background on our reasoning for focusing just on Twitter in this more recent survey: The message service Twitter launched on July 15, 2006 and now claims tens of millions of users worldwide. Since August 2008, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has been asking a question in occasional national telephone surveys about services like Twitter. In August 2008, 6% of internet users said “yes” to that question.
Why we twitter. Dann. Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration via Twitter.