With the development of technology and availability of the Internet, the world is becoming smaller and connecting people from every corner of the world through social media. People use social media to search for information, express their opinions and get in touch with friends in a way that is faster and more efficient than ever before. Social media has permeated every corner and field of life, even affecting responses of organizations to crisis. In the past, people would know that an earthquake occurred through the newspaper, radio or TV, which was often hours even days after the disaster. The traditional media were slow because reporters had to be sent to the spot, and the media had to wait for the latest news, which perhaps would not be “latest” when it reached the public. The long time lag often results in misinformation, rumor-mongering and even panic. However, with the help of social media, when a disaster happens, whether it is natural or man-made, relevant discussions and information over disasters emerge continually, and responses to crisis come out quickly, reducing rumor and unnecessary concerns to a large extent.
National Preparedness Report (2013) written by U.S Federal Emergency Management Agency indicates that, during the two weeks after Hurricane Sandy landed, the governors of New York and New Jersey communicated critical information through Twitter, a social network site with 317 million users all over the world. Statistically, users generated 20 million Twitter posts related to Sandy during this period when telecommunication service was not available at the peak of storm. The governors sent many tweets to alert customers and inform people of the daily location of the giant tents and generators. The tweets were not only from government and media posts but also from eyewitnesses and users who re-tweeted information within their own networks, and 25% of the tweets were photos and videos (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2013). Another devastating terrorist attack in 2013 is bombing in Boston Marathon. According to the Pew Research Center (2013), one quarter of folks tracked updated news of the attack on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter , which can be seen as a source of information (Tapia & Moore, 2014).
Aforementioned cases demonstrate a large-scale involvement of social media as means of communication regarding disasters or humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, a framework of functions of social media communication over disasters has been built through a literature study in 2012-13 to facilitate the production of disaster social media at three phases–pre-event, event, and post-event (Houston, 2012) , and to provide instructions to disaster social media users, including communities, governments, individuals, organizations, and media outlets (Houston, Hawthorne, Perreault, Park, Goldstein Hode, & Halliwell et al., 2014). The diversified users are targeted mainly because the nature of social media is two-way mediated communication between users and media, rather than one-way communication from individual media to tons of users featuring traditional media (Fraustino, Liu, and Jin, 2012). Moreover, one of the functions of disaster social media is to document and learn what is happening from pre-event to post-event because social media prove to be more dependable and quicker than traditional media and are especially useful for documenting information of a crisis (Shklovski, Burke, Kiesler & Kraut, 2010; Bunce, Partridge, and Davis, 2012; Muralidharan, Rasmussen, Patterson, & Shin, 2011).
Therefore social media can be seen as a non-negligible tool associated with irreplaceable functions in disaster management nowadays.
Sources:
Bunce, S., H. Partridge, and K. Davis (2012) ‘Exploring information experience using social media during the 2011 Queensland floods: a pilot study’. Australian Library Journal. 61(1). pp. 34–45.
Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2013). National Preparedness Report (p. 15). Washington D.C.: United States Department of Homeland Security.
Houston, J., Hawthorne, J., Perreault, M., Park, E., Goldstein Hode, M., & Halliwell, M. et al. (2014). Social media and disasters: a functional framework for social media use in disaster planning, response, and research. Disasters, 39(1), 1-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/disa.12092
Houston, PhD, J. (2012). Public disaster mental/behavioral health communication: Intervention across disaster phases. Journal Of Emergency Management, 10(4), 283-292. http://dx.doi.org/10.5055/jem.2012.0106
Muralidharan, S., L. Rasmussen, D. Patterson, and J.-H. Shin (2011) ‘Hope for Haiti: an analysis of Facebook and Twitter usage during the earthquake relief efforts’. Public Relations Review. 37(2). pp. 175–177.
Pew Research Center (2013). Most Expect ’Occasional Acts of Terrorism’ in the Future. Retrieved from http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/23/most-expect-occasional-acts-of-terrorism-in-the-future/
Shklovski, I., M. Burke, S. Kiesler, and R. Kraut (2010) ‘Technology adoption and use in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans’. American Behavioral Scientist. 53(8). pp. 1228–1246.
Tapia, A. & Moore, K. (2014). Good Enough is Good Enough: Overcoming Disaster Response Organizations’ Slow Social Media Data Adoption. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 23(4-6), 483-512. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10606-014-9206-1
