Social Media in Emergency Management

Social Media in Emergency Management

Social media plays a significant role in the communication of emergencies. People often exchange information via different social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snap Chat, and WhatsApp. Social media is critical in situational awareness, engaging with the public and sharing of relevant information. The different platforms come in handy in user-generated content, collaborating ideas and people virtually and support of online communities. FEMA runs an application that allows access to safety reminders, weather alerts, disaster resources, and submission of disaster photos. They also run active Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts that enhance the exchange of information among officials and the public during a disaster.

There are also opportunities for social media use where if implemented effectively, can improve speed, relevance, and accuracy hence greater situational awareness for emergency responders, like use of #on twitter to speed trending of a specific topic or figure out an emergency. It also holds challenges for emergency managers, such as difficulties in verifying social media data, information overload, and inadequate resources to manage data and communications. In the five phases of an emergency, the better practices for social media use entails having a two-way message distribution in the interaction of participants and their constituents. This is to facilitate collective intelligence, distributed problem solving, monitoring, and response to the blog.

In conclusion, open-source applications can be applied to sustain the use of social media. For instance, the American Red Cross has established a digital operations center with trained digital volunteers to monitor social media in building capabilities. Social media has further potential to provide crisis communication in places where  emergency response infrastructure is poor (Agency, 2014)

Key Takeaways

Social listening this entails searching for open sources of conversations on events to better understanding of public sentiment. I would ensure as an emergency manager to relate with the public so as acquire immediate feedback, identify misinformation, which will further enhance operational decision and communication efforts.

Social media is imperative to emergency management since the public uses the social media tools regularly for communication. Hence my lesson here is to fully engage with the public who are critical in the efforts towards emergency management.

Cost-effectiveness, I would ensure that the support structure has employees with social media experience and ensure they are in charge of the program. My lesson here is to enhance efficiency as they will be in a position to engage constituents actively and ensure all sites are active and contain relevant information.

Reference

Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2013)Welcome to the National Preparedness Directorate National Training and Education. Washington D.C