Social Media Use in Crises Situations

We’ve completed several research studies on the use of social media during and after natural disasters now, in Canada, U.S. and UK (our own and from other sources.) From our research and reviews of other case studies, we’ve identified the four primary ways that citizens use social media technologies during natural disasters. We see such uses increasing in the future.

1. Family & Friends Communication: To connect with family members between affected and unaffected communities/areas (or within affected communities) for situation updates and planning responses. This is the most popular use. Primary tools used are Twitter, Facebook and/or a blog. We noted extensive use of mobile apps, but txting is not significant, which is interesting in and of itself.

2. Situation Updates: Neighbours and communities share critical information between each other such as; road closures, power outages, fires, accidents and other related damages. This is rarely shared however, with local authorities, yet is publicly available (except perhaps in closed social networks such as Facebook.)

3. Situational/Supplemental Awareness: We’ve found that in a number of cases (over 80%) citizens rely less and less on authority communication, especially through traditional channels (television, radio, phone.) In part this may be due to the timeliness of these mediums to get a message out by government or news media. This information from authorities on situational developments has become supplemented by citizens using social media channels to share information in text, image and video format.

4. Services Access Assistance: Citizens would use social media channels to provide each other with ways and means to contact different services they may need after a crisis and sometimes during. They may share methods on “how” to access a service including how to “frame” the situation to elicit a better response from government agencies/services.

These findings can better help governments and other response/recovery services to understand the communication taking place between citizens. Social Media channels may help governments reach citizens more effectively while also monitoring public uploading of content to gain insights into areas where emergency services may be needed they may not otherwise have been able to receive.

Some governments in the US and Canada are building web-based applications to integrate social media feeds into a centralized site that may include a Google Map mashup to provide situational reporting, such as the “Snowmaggedon” snow storm in 2010 in Washington, DC.