Social media can be an information source about the public. For instance, during the H1N1 influenza outbreak, popularly called the swine flu, there were reports that Twitter was inducing hysteria. I didn't observe this phenomenon that was being reported by major media outlets. Instead I saw people sharing information and trying to interpret symptoms, preventative activity and the severity of the outbreak. What's great about social media is it has provided one of the first opportunities to observe the ways that people are interpreting information that's coming from authorities. Never before has there been the opportunity to look in on people's conversations and observe the myriad ways that they are making sense of risk communication.
Even information that's perceived to be chatter, misinformation or rumor can lead to a greater awareness of what's happening on the ground because it gives you an insight into people's interpretations of warnings and other risk messages. Risk communicators now have the opportunity to craft messages based upon how people are responding to them. They can observe the public communicating about shared information, and new information can be pushed out to correct inaccuracies. What an incredibly valuable tool that is.
Social media also benefits disaster-affected communities. Emergency responders often see people converge to a disaster scene who want to help or desperately want to assist in some manner. With all these new Web 2.0 tools, we are now observing the phenomenon of online convergence for sharing information. People across the United States can come together to organize information online when locals don't have the time, access or resources to do so themselves. This happened following hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008: As the hurricanes were rolling in, distributed networks used the social networking platform Ning and created a mashup for hurricane information. Participants brought together newsfeeds from Twitter, Facebook and blogs, and they annotated maps with information about shelters, evacuation routes and other resources. And they put it all on one platform. This was done in a decentralized way. Distributed and decentralized volunteers organized themselves and gave hundreds and hundreds of hours of their time.
We also have found that being able to participate in social media is a great benefit to those who are directly affected by disaster -- those who might be considered disaster victims -- because it gives them something to do. When you have been evacuated from your home and community, you don't have the ability to participate onsite or to provide hands-on resources. Communicating with others can help victims cope because it gives them the ability to share information and talk about the event. Community forums where people can dialog with one another provide a very important resource for coping.
Real Concerns
Some emergency managers I've talking to are very concerned about "super users," in other words the malicious users who are going to use social media during a disaster event's immediate aftermath to cause additional havoc and insert misinformation that could lead to destructive activities.The terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, in November 2008 is one incident that seems to support this concern. One major media outlet and other eyewitness reports claimed that the terrorists were using these networked platforms to learn about how citizens were sharing information.
But by and large, sociological research has shown that emergency managers should expect members of the public to act altruistically during the immediate aftermath of disasters. People will reach out to one another to share information and resources because they are genuinely concerned. What's uncommon are antisocial behaviors -- panic, looting and malicious attacks are rare.
And the consequences of placing heavy emphasis on antisocial behaviors, instead of the "pro-social" behaviors that are regularly seen
in disasters, are that resources and personnel might be misdirected or detoured. And if public officials don't think there is value in the information flowing through social media, they might cut off connectivity to it. Ultimately if resources aren't put in the right place, there is the potential for lives to be lost. I have no idea if choosing to not view and monitor social media could lead to loss of lives. But that potential is there.
My concern is that if social media is going to be adopted for the single purpose of information dissemination, it's going to become just one more channel to push information out.
But the beauty of social media is that there's a lot of information flowing between people because it's a decentralized network. So it can be a way of getting situational awareness. And it can also be a way for people to enter into the conversation so that it's no longer unidirectional information gathering or data pushing. Instead it becomes a conversation.
As people use social media and informal networks to bring together new resources, I believe this can help to create more resilient communities that can better withstand and recover from disasters.
Part one of the series is The Public Uses Social Networking During Disasters to Verify Facts, Coordinate Information.
Jeannette Sutton is a sociologist at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
