The Social Media Challenges for Crisis Reporting

From the earthquake in Haiti, to Snowmageddon in Washington, DC and Japan’s earthquake and the riots in London; social media tools are increasingly playing a role during natural and man-made crises. From monitoring a situation and reporting through to organizing. There are major benefits, but increasingly there are growing challenges that solutions will need to overcome. From our research into how social medias are used before, during and after a crises, we’ve identified several issues;

1. Validity of Information: One of the biggest challenges is determining the accuracy and validity of information posted to public (open) tools such as Ushahidi and CrisisMappers. Anyone with a mobile phone or wireless device (i.e. iPad) can enter information. From where a house may have collapsed to where a store is being trashed. But what happens when someone in a fragile state reports a collapsed house with victims after an earthquake, but it isn’t true, they’re just looking for something they don’t really need. Recovery resources are assigned and where the help is really needed, victims may die. Or rioters mis-direct police to take attention away from what is really happening.

2. Identity & Reliability: Anyone who can access a publicly available reporting system can add information. But who are they? Where are they? Such anonymity can make it difficult to prosecute offenders later or gain valuable information from a witness. These too are critical issues.

3. From Data to Information to Intelligence: So much “data” is fed into the system or systems with the result of information overload. For a decision to be made, one must be able to extract intelligence from the information. No solution as yet addresses such an issue. The intelligence in the information comes from being able to validate sources, determine reliability of the information and accuracy of location and the event in question.

4. Too Many Systems No One Solution: Ushahidi is by far the best real-time reporting and monitoring tool for crises, but it isn’t the only one. Different aid agencies and governments may use other tools or citizens may create their own tool. As a result, there are multiple inputs that can lead to indecision or resource paralysis on the ground. In addition, no one solution pulls information in from all available sources; some use email and txt messaging over maps while others rely on txt messaging alone to populate a map and people not on the ground to clarify data on a map.

These are just four of the main issues we’ve identified with social media monitoring and reporting during a crises. They are not the fault of the people who’ve spent an enormous amount of time to build and populate; there is evidence that these tools can be vital. But challenges such as those above make it increasingly difficult for aid agencies and governments providing relief or the affected government, to use them in more than an anecdotal fashion. For security services and policing, they are even less reliable.

Addressing the challenges in identity and validity, technology may be able to help, but it will be sometime yet before that is a reality.

Twitter Wins & Google+ Loses on Libya & Major News

As the rebels in Libya pushed into Tripoli and the endgame was in play, the news and commentary went full throttle. On Twitter. Not so much on Google+, the new social network from Google that many pundits have said threatened Twitter, and I was one of them. Until a major story like Libya’s rebels succeeding broke and within a few hours it was clear that Google+ had missed the mark. We provide insights to clients in the international aid, peace operations and development world when crises like these happen, a number asked us through long day yesterday if they’d be better off using Google+, sadly we had to say “stick with Twitter for now.”

As we ran an analysis on the mentions between Twitter and Google+ we found there was one mention on Google+ for every 20 “tweets” on Twitter over a three hour period. There was little debate or discussion on the issue to be found on Google+ while there was significant re-tweeting and snippet discussions on Twitter. It’s much easier to assess a stream on Twitter to determine whats happening and whats hot. But lets also be practical about this – Twitter has been in the market for far longer than Google+, by years. There is also an entire eco-system of apps and services behind Twitter that cover sentiment analysis, influence scores, trending topics, heat mapping and geolocation and so on. Such apps are still very nascent for Google+ as it is still in its infancy.

But what became apparent is that Google+ is extremely good at enabling tight controls of social groups and information within those groups. But unless you have a slew of journalists or media types in your circles and your paying very close attention to your full stream, you’ll likely miss major news stories unless someone in your circle brings it up, and given the “noise” we note in the stream (as have others.) The other problem is the ability to search. Twitter doesn’t do search well either, but it’s still better than Google+.

Our conclusion from comparing the two services is that if Twitter does one thing very well, it is provide a good flow of information on what is happening around the world and down to local news (keep in mind you should be following at least 100 people, news services among them, to gain this benefit). Something Google+ is weak at, but as Google works on it, I suspect they’ll figure something out. We like where Google+ is going in our company, but when it comes to keeping your finger on the pulse of the Web and the world…well, Twitter is the warp and woof of the Internet still.

Social Media and Tourism

Our research into tourism and social media over the past two years has provided us, along with our clients, with some key insights into how tourists use social media. Among our key findings is that it is almost equal between males and females using social media to research destinations (52% female to 48% male) across the broad demographic range of 20-55+. When it comes to sharing photo’s and videos of their experiences however, that changes to 64% female and 36% male. This correlates to other consumer demographics where women are more likely to share experiences. When it comes to business travel however, men are 15% more likely to share their experiences from their travels.

Niche tourism markets are also very heavily engaged in social media for both planning trips, sharing experiences and recommending locations, things to do and where to stay. Tourism operators and authorities however, are seemingly still unsure about reaching out to niche markets online. Traditional marketing isn’t very cost effective for reaching niche markets for tourism, but online marketing, especially through social media, is. Niche markets are the most active in social media channels and can be effectively targeted and engaged.

In some of the projects we’ve worked on however, tourism authorities have focused on traditional mass markets and their engagement in social media. This would mean families, retirees or a broad demographic. They too are active in social media channels, but reaching them cost effectively either online or through traditional channels such as television, radio and print, is harder to do and remains more scattershot than targeted. Our research has shown that targeting tourist “segments” through social media, from niche markets to more defined segments (e.g. cruise lovers or value seekers) is a far more successful approach.

Through our work, we see we are at the forefront of this kind of tourism research into social media. And lets be clear, there is a definitive difference between monitoring your brand in social media and conducting social media research on tourism. Monitoring brings up conversations “now” and is limited in its ability to find true trends. Nor do any social media monitoring tools effectively (or to any degree) identify niche markets. Using social media monitoring tools is useful once you’ve done the initial research, engaged and have something to monitor. Using social media monitoring tools to research tourists use of social media will lead to disappointing results.

Tourism is a very hot topic across all social media channels and is one of the top three online topics of discussion and engagement. Tourism authorities and operators that research these opportunities and then engage may find significantly valuable new opportunities.

Forums Are Alive & Well Thank-You!

With all the cool new ways to connect with people and share online like Facebook, Google+, Twitter et al, you would think those clunky, earliest of social media tools, those horrid “forums” would be dead and gone to the digital graveyard. Well, not so much. In fact, they remain as popular as ever. And may perhaps be growing. But there is a demographic issue at play.

Online forums were the evolution of the early Bulletin Boards and W’ell (which still exists) out of San Francisco from the early 80′s, arguably the precursor to today’s current social media technologies/channels. They became very popular along with IRC (Internet Relay Chat) services in the mid-90′s. From about 1993 to 2002, forums became the backbone of early social medias. IRC’s were popular, but restrictive in that they were time sensitive and somewhat clunky. From IRC’s grew instant messaging tools such as ICQ (the first big one later supplanted by AOL IM) and Microsofts later MSN Messenger.

But where IM tools are far less popular today (mostly just with the under 20 demographic) and IRC services almost completely gone, forums have persisted and in fact, play a critical part of overall social media usage. In the over 200 research projects we’ve conducted for business and governments, forums have played a role in 97% of these projects and account for anywhere between 5% and 15% of the overall measurable content we analyse with our text analysis software, mediasphere360.

What we do note is that forums are mostly used by the +35 demographic, although we have seen a trend of use by the under 25 to 18 demographic for academic discussions and technical (engineers, ICT, cars.) When the service Ning first came out, we suspected it may edge out forums, since it enabled groups to come together far more easy and included the ability to share rich content like videos. A surfeit of Ning like contenders came out targeting everything from sports associations through to community clubs. Forums, however, refuse to die.

Forums are very popular with tourists and people researching tourist destinations, car and motorcycle mod clubs and all other kids of clubs and interests. One of the largest online forum communities (aside from tourism) is sewing – yes, sewing machines and darning needle types. Outside of North America and consumer engagement, we also see increasingly heavier use of forums by citizens in developing nations and their diaspora living in other countries. For developing nations with limited (read “expensive”) broadband access, forums are much easier for dial-up connections and use far less bandwidth.

We believe that forums will continue to play a key role in online engagement for at least the next ten years, if not longer. If you’re a marketer looking to engage in social media, don’t get confused just thinking Facebook or Twitter is the only place you need to be, it isn’t. If you’re relying on social media monitoring tools like Sysomos, Trackur or radian6 to point you to those conversations – don’t. They rarely “crawl” them and analysing text from them is almost impossible without some heavy lifting by human beings and some deny access to crawlers and must be searched/analysed manually.

The Constant Rebellion Towards Channels

YouTube became successful in large part because people wanted an alternative to boring old tv broadcast stations that dictated what you could watch and when. Internet radio was largely the same reason and blogging etc., because people could tell their own stories, create and share their own ideas. Throughout history, whenever someone creates a media channel to broadcast, someone looks for a way around it because they have another view or find too many restriction imposed by the gatekeeper of that channel.

This is always happening. With Facebook effectively now a “channel” it was no surprise over their leak of Project Spartan with the intent to deliver apps within the Facebook channel. Some media channels are looking at developing apps in HTML 5 to be delivered in the Safari browser in iPad and the iPhone and other smart-phones, bypassing iTunes and the Apple gatekeeper. Sure they’re a tad slower, but they work. More importantly, they avoid Apple’s control.

As we indicated in an earlier article, it’s the Hippies who created the Bulletin Boards and the The Well back in the 70′s and into the early 80′s. Steve Jobs was one of them, he knows the aversion to enterprise systemic control – and yet is creating an Apple-centirc channel today. We’re always, as humans, looking for an alternative…technology always disrupts, just as the printing press eliminated scribes and the car the horse and buggy.

We see the issues of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook as basic economic cycles. They are disrupting and in some cases creating, entirely new forms (i.e. app stores), of channels. People will certainly use them, but at some point, people will find a way around them when they want a different form of content and new channels will evolve. Google+ threatens Twitter more than Facebook, yet now Google and Facebook are trying to outdo each other by adding new features to encourage people to stay within their channels.

At its inception, Facebook was intended for a narrow audience with a channel that did not exist in the form desired. YouTube, DailyMotion, Break.com have succeeded because people wanted other forms of video content than what broadcast television was providing. Social media channels are simply alternatives or new forms based on either a want or need of the market. Therefore, disruption will be the norm and people will always look for ways to communicate that fill a new perceived desire, decrease friction and cost.