Where do social media fit in how you go about alerting your residents of an impending crisis or emergency? When (if you use them at all ...) do you send out alerts through Twitter or Facebook for example?
Many emergency management organizations and municipalities now use Twitter as an alerting tool. What remains to be fully ascertained is the actual role social networks play in informing citizens of impending disasters or crises. We know some of the benefits: instantaneous "push" of info to subscribers and media that now monitor Twitter for breaking news.
The simple fact is that no matter what agencies or municipalities do, people themselves will use social networks, Twitter in particular, as warning tools and as a way to track the path of devastating storms. This was certainly the case during the recent spate of tornadoes that devastated parts of the central US.
In many cases, that unofficial tool, volunteer/citizen-driven, is faster, more responsive and more accurate than warnings provided through official means. But does that mean that Twitter should be at the top of your notification process? What place should it occupy on your notification checklist?
While not a perfect tool, I would venture that changing expectations among our audiences have made social networks, one of the first (if not the first) elements of your notification and alerting systems that should be activated. Is that a stretch? I don't believe so. An overreliance on traditional broadcasters can really limit the effectiveness and reach of your alerts when some stats indicate that as many as 40 per cent of the population doesn NOT watch TV, listen to the radio or read newspapers. They get their info online, primarily through social networks.
So, combining social media and SMS should be the way to go (and you can do that ... as Twitter was first created on the text messaging model) if you want to have immediate reach. That initial communications effort is critical and can save lives.
What is really needed now however, is more empirical evidence on how people consume their emergency information currently, and how they would wish that information to be conveyed to them. It's a critical planning challenge for agencies to quickly close the emerging gap between the public's expectations of how they'll be informed and organizational capabilities (whether procedural or tech-based).
One little town in Minnesota has embarked on that process. Their results and the outcomes of other similar initiatives across North American will guide the future of alerting.
What do you think? What role social media in public alerting?
4 Comments
I certainly believe there is a role for social networks as a component of the alerting / warning system. When developing an emergency notification system I recommend using multiple technologies as no one technology will likely reach the intended audience. From my experience with automated emergency notification systems I recall that many of the systems can simultaneously send messages via telephone, pagers and e-mail. I don't know the answer to this question but I wonder if any of the alerting systems and services have the capability to also broadcast a message to any of the social media channels? Possibly someone can provide an update on current system capabilities.
One of the benefits of using social media is that it can provide two way communication which is an important aspect of emergency communications.
I had occasion to ask Jack Gelber with Everbridge this question at the WCDM and he confirmed Everbridge can send alerts to social media along with alerts to telephones, pagers, e-mail etc. I asked Jack to provide us with more information on this feature.
As William suggests, Everbridge does indeed allow our custoemrs to take advantage of social media like Facebook and Twitter when attempting to communicate important time sensitive messages to employees, clients and possibly residents. The challenge in the past has been the relative 'backward' insecurity of those vehicles. We have found an 'agetn' who is able to receive our system message and securely and quickly post it on the issuers social site. That 'agent' essentially becomes just another destination for our service once set up properly. It also allows the initiator to be fully consistent by using the identical message in all forms of distribution such as media, direct and social.
If you want to discuss more specifics please contact me directly at [email protected].
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