juillet 2, 2009
Panic and false rumors can accompany disasters during and after an event, probably more so with the advent of social media. I hesitate to be contrary about social media because I happen to be attracted to the idea of emergency responders receiving an earful on an impending disaster like a flood, hurricane or brush fire from the digital public. Just say two words — Katrina and FEMA — and you know what I mean.
Yet, Tim Hickernell, an analyst at Info-Tech Research, bears listening to, although I don’t know if I accept his entire argument.
He echoes comments that social networks can be a useful channel to deliver the latest developments about an emergency including evacuation orders and pleas for assistance from the general public.
And Hickernell accepts the value of emergency responders monitoring Twitter, YouTube and blogs, as well as the working of the search engines to glean what different elements of the digital public are also saying. You can’t rely any more on just the traditional media sources of newspapers, radio and television, he observes.
Nonetheless, this former emergency planning engineer in radiological emergency preparedness for a US nuclear power utility worries that social networks can be another vehicle for the dissemination of false and inaccurate stories to the point of information overload. « How many more rumors can be generated that we have to follow up on and quash so that the public doesn’t get excessively scared? »
Hickernell also urges emergency responders to maintain their policy of limiting access to social media sites within their internal organizations despite the griping in some quarters. Rules coming out of the IT department that forbid employees from accessing sites like Twitter for the latest news of an ongoing disaster should be maintained, not loosened up, he urged. Leave the monitoring of information of social networks to specifically assigned media monitors — often done by a third party provider as the disaster is taking place.
For Hickernell it is obvious that you need a centralized process to test the reliability of the bits of information coming in during a chaotic period, he argues.
Social media has speeded up the availability of information including both new and rumours from emergencies coming from a greater number of sources. But that process does not mean what is being uttered digitally is anymore accurate, he told me.
« Things in an emergency happen at the same pace and the same rate that they did a thousand years ago, in a hurricane or in a nuclear emergency — today versus 20 years ago. Things happen in the exact same way. It is just that people can talk about [a disaster] more rapidly and on a larger scale. It doesn’t change facts; it doesn’t change procedures that emergency responders use to mitigate events themselves. »
Yet, the pressures that social media places on emergency responders can also be positive, Hickernell almost grudgingly admits.
« [Social media] can certainly exacerbate the demand on a public information organization to get out correct information faster. No doubt, it places an additional demand on them, but it is not anymore inherently correct or accurate just because people can say things. »
Here is where I part with Hickernell who happened to be associated with the notoriously secretive nuclear power industry. Emergency responders are also complex hierarchical entities bedeviled by political considerations. We know about how the Federal Emergency Management Administration under the Bush administration let down the people of New Orleans. (I am not sure if social media, which had not gotten off the ground during Katrina, would have helped the impoverished and digitally deprived people of the city’s flooded 9th Ward.)
Sociologist and social media watcher Jeanette Sutton argues that having a greater number of voices engaged in an ongoing event like the bush fires in the Australian state of Victoria allowed for a better understanding of what was transpiring. She calls the phenomenon « crowd intelligence. »
Victims of those fires or the latest Red River flooding in North Dakota were also able to help each other in ways that were not possible before social networks.
« You can communicate with others and increase your coping mechanism by sharing information, talking about the event and how did it happen to you. »
To view the original article, click here.
Tags: info-tech research group, social media, social networks, Tim Hickernell
