December Best of #SMEM: Stand-By-Task Force

Post by: Kim Stephens

The disaster events of 2011 demonstrated the power of social media to connect survivors to the outside world. This  one-minute video created by Twitter provides  a visual demonstration of the volume of content on their platform an hour before and an hour after the earthquake. As an aside, Twitter is  just one of many social networks used in Japan, Mixi and Facebook are actually more popular.

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, however,  also served as a reminder to  the emergency management community of the challenges we would face with regard to monitoring and analyzing the vast amount of information literally spewing  from these sources.  With 1000s of tweets per minute, there is too much information for a couple of individuals to process or even read, much less analyze. As I mentioned in another post, computer processing of all of this data is coming in the near future. Companies in the web-based content management business, such as PIER, are working to provide systems that not only help publish information to social networks, but filter social media user-generated content as well.  Since I have not seen a demonstration of the tool, I cannot speak to its effectiveness, but my guess is that this is a problem many entrepreneurs are working to solve.

Volunteers Lead the Way

Organizations, however, such as the all volunteer Stand By Task Force (SBTF)–founded in 2010, understand that computer processing will only provide part of the solution. The SBTF’s organizational structure can be described by the concept of “Bound Crowdsourcing.” Jeff Howe, defines crowdsourcing as outsourcing a task in the form of an open call, which can leverage the power of many “to accomplish feats that were once the responsibility of a specialized few.” Bound crowdsourcing, according to one of the founders of SBTF, Dr. Patrick Meier, still relies on an open call, however, participants must meet a certain criteria, including training, before they can contribute.

The SBTF currently has a volunteer team of over 700 geographically dispersed, highly skilled “crisismappers”. Crisismapping, according to their definition, involves four key components: information collection, visualization, analysis and response. These individuals sort data obtained for the most part through open sources, including social media, into categories; verify the content;  geo-locate where the information came from and place a symbol  on a visualization platform, such as Ushahidi; analyze the content and provide summary reports. They also can provide other highly technical expertise, as well as translation.   The services they offer depend, however, on the needs of the requestor. But in order to ask for their help you must meet their very specific activation criteria. Listed below are two of their 6:

• In general, TF is activated only if the request is in compliance with the TF general principles: to provide dedicated live mapping support to organizations in the humanitarian, human rights, election monitoring and media space, with a focus on local organizations.
• The TF will activate in two types of crisis: (i) a humanitarian emergency declared under the International Charter Space & Major Disaster, or (ii) a political situation that may lead to a major humanitarian disaster. The TF will in any case evaluate the activation on a case by case basis.

These skills have not gone unnoticed. This year the United Nations formally asked for their assistance during the crisis in Libya.  Watch the video below describing this experience.

Responding to Crisis Online from UNV on Vimeo.

This great blog post by Andrej Verity “The Unexpected Impact of the Libya Crisis Map and the STBF” provides a description of how the SBTF relationship with the UN OCHA evolved, an analysis of the deployment, as well as areas for improvement.

The SBTF is a  ”best of” SMEM for 2011 because they are working to solve the very problems that make social media a daunting undertaking for the emergency management community. This example, however, should also make us rethink the possible. Do we need to wait around until expensive computer processing tools are available, or can we organize ourselves to use the resources we can find in our own community, or even the global community?

Related articles

• December Best of SMEM List: The Weather “Guys” (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• The December List: CRESA Leads the Way (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• The December List: Best Uses of Social Media by Public Agencies (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• December List: Partnerships Toward Safer Communities and Patrice Cloutier (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• The December List: New York, New York (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• December List: Rebuild Joplin (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• December List: UK Police Superintendent understands the power virtual engagement (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• December List: QPS Media, An example to the world (idisaster.wordpress.com)

December List: Partnerships Toward Safer Communities and Patrice Cloutier

Post by: Kim Stephens

The best of SMEM: The Canadian virtual emergency management community.  

One aspect social media that I like to talk about to skeptical emergency managers is its ability to facilitate professional development. This isn’t just true of emergency managers but for all professions.  David Carr of the New York  Times described in an NPR interview the role social networks play in his ability to understand what information is important. ”It serves to edit what’s going on in the world, and it puts a human curation on this huge fire hose of data that’s washing over us all,” he says. “The question becomes where to look, and it’s nice to have some other people pointing the way.”  It always makes me disheartened to hear about public agencies that have completely walled off access to these sites for staff out of fear that people will waste time or compromise the computer system. That kind of fear really demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the value these tools can provide.

Governments do recognize the need to share information, however, and one way around the wall has been the emergence of online communities of practice. The Department of Homeland Security has a secure portal for their community of emergency management and public safety professionals called First Responders Communities of Practice, but I really like the example from Canada in PTSC because the website is open for all to see, e.g. no secure login and password to forget!

PTSC is a member driven, interactive online community that integrates social media, online profiles, blogs, discussion groups, a knowledge based wiki, spaces for private sector suppliers and students, that all serve to facilitate the sharing of information and collaboration.  It is sponsored by the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, but the focus is geared toward all response organizations. Take a moment to watch their video posted above.

The SMEM twitter community will recognize one familiar face on the site: Patrice Cloutier. Patrice is a mainstay in SMEM–the hardest working advocate I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, and the mastermind of many projects including this December list. As Cherly Bledsoe at sm4em.org pointed out (and gave a really big hint for me or James Garrow) he would never put himself on the list of the best of SMEM, it would not be complete without him. Not only is he active in PTSC, but he is also a lead contributor to the Emergency2.0 wiki in Australia, a member of the CrisisCommons management team, a full time crisis communications specialist in Canada,  and finally the writer of his own blog, Crisis Command Post. Honestly, I can’t keep up!

I acknowledge that my December Best-of-SMEM List has very few item under the tree, therefore,  I will be rounding out the top twelve every day for the next eight. Be sure to check back and send me your suggestions!

• The December List: Best Uses of Social Media by Public Agencies (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• The December List: New York, New York (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• The December List: CRESA Leads the Way (idisaster.wordpress.com)

Bloggers collaborate to comment and expand on the SMEM camp report

Post by: Kim Stephens

Last March the first “Social Media for Emergency Management Camp” took place in conjunction with the mid-year NEMA conference in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. There were many objectives for the camp, but the overarching goal was simply to gather people together who were interested in discussing the impact social media and emerging technologies are having on the response community as a whole. Heather Blanchard, in a stroke of genius, recommended that we enlist the aid of a research team, led by Dr. Clarence Wardell of CNA’s office of Safety and Security, to document the effort.  CNA, is “a non-profit institution that conducts high-level, in-depth research and analysis to inform the important work of public sector decision makers”.

The team listened to our discussions as we organized the camp, captured the data from the camp itself (including tweets from actual and virtual participants), and then researched the topic in-depth, as evidenced by their 74 cited references.  The result of their effort is an in-depth analysis on the role of social media in the realm of emergency management and its potential as a transformative technology. The 46 page report is entitled: “2011 Social Media + Emergency Management Camp: Transforming the Response Enterprise“.

In the report, Dr. Wardell et al. outline three major findings from camp discussions and catalog six recommendations they felt would need to be implemented in order to close the gap between  the current state of social media usage for emergency management and the desired state. The authors do not necessarily identify who should be closing this gap–in some instances the “who” could refer to researchers (e.g. “establishing a baseline on social media usage via a survey of domestic EM agencies”); in other instances “who” could be the SMEM community itself.

There are several of us who blog about SMEM. We have created a collaboration to divide up each of these findings and recommendations and examine them in detail.  Look below to find links to these posts.

Three Key findings:

1. Eric Holdeman (@Eric_holdeman),  of Emergency Management Magazine’s Disaster Zone, discusses “[T]he need—akin to FEMA’s whole community initiative—to redefine the domestic response enterprise to be more inclusive of all response stakeholders.”  
2. Cheryl Bledsoe (@CherylBle) on sm4em.org takes on another finding: ”The need to identify the relationships between system inputs and the effect of those relationships on the transformation of the response enterprise.”
3. Gerald Baron on the Crisis Comm blog talks about ”[T]he need to define future goals for a domestic response enterprise, particularly as it relates to the integration of new technologies and their associated effects.”

Six Recommendations:

Image by BC Gov Photos via Flickr

1. Jim Garrow (@jgarrow) at “The Face of the Matter”  talks about demonstrating value. The recommendation from the report states that we need to

“Expand prior work on social influences on citizen preparedness and response behavior to include the effect of social networks when coupled with various messaging strategies. Presumably, the ability to “view” the behavior of others in a given social network will have an effect on citizen decision-making beyond that of messages delivered through traditional media. Concrete data on the extent to which this is true and can be measured stand to bolster the case for increased investment.”

2. Bill Boyd (@chiefb2) at “It’s Not My Emergency” discusses the decidedly sexy topic of “Operational benefits” which is also related to demonstrating value. From the report, we need to

“Demonstrate the value of integrating social media into operations by capturing improvements in the speed and effectiveness of response. Such a demonstration is critical to gaining buy-in. One area where these improvements can potentially be seen most clearly is in real- time disaster relief routing and logistics decision-making. Information gathered through social media platforms could help lead to the development of a set of meaningful metrics as well.”

3. Patrice Cloutier tackles the recommendation that SM should be used more during exercises and real-world events. His post discusses the use of the medium in Canada and in recent events, including Hurricane Irene. The report recommendation states specifically:

“Continue efforts to integrate social media tools and data into response exercises.These efforts are critical not only to understanding the value of social media, but also to creating a level of comfort in their use by emergency managers. In addition, efforts to capture the role of social media and the response ofVTCs through post-event analysis and after-action reports should be funded and formalized before an event occurs.

4. I’m discussing the need for knowledge sharing and education.

“Make the continued creation and refinement of training and knowledge-sharing opportunities for emergency management practitioners a priority.The 2011 SMEM Camp format was an experiment that was well received by the majority of participants.”

The other two recommendations  include

• “Baseline Establishment: Conduct a survey of domestic emergency management agencies to provide a baseline of social media and mobile technology capabilities (e.g., How many agencies in the United States are currently attempting to use social media tools, and of the ones that are, how are they using them?).” and
• “Reliability and usefulness: Underlying the issue of social media’s value are issues of data reliability and usefulness. Determine thresholds for data corruption and general reliability in response, as defined through post-event analysis, because they are essential to obtaining the buy-in of leadership at all levels of government.”

Be sure to join the #smemchat today (11/11/2011) where we will discuss these findings and celebrate the one year anniversary of that tag on twitter. The tag has been a great place over the past year for the emergency management community to convene to debate this topic in-depth on a daily basis. Read Cheryl’s great post about the history of that hashtag. 

Related articles

• Processing and Analyzing Social Media in a Crisis (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• Still not convinced Social Media is important? Read Craig Fugate’s Testimony (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options and Policy Considerations (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• QPS Media: Social Media Case Study (idisaster.wordpress.com)

SMEM Report Recommendation: Education and Knowledge sharing are needed.

Post by: Kim Stephens

The CNA report entitled “Social Media + Emergency Management Camp: Transforming the Response Enterprise” was written by Dr. Clarence Wardell and Yee San Su  in order to document the findings from the first-ever SMEM camp, and almost more importantly, to explore how social media and emerging communication technologies are changing the way we disseminate and receive information before, during and after a crisis. (See this blog post by Heather Blanchard of  Crisis Commons’ that summarize the report and the SMEM effort in general.)

Recommendations

The authors offer 3 key findings and six recommendations for moving forward if we would like to see widespread adoption of social networking by the emergency management community. One of the six recommendations is the need for continued education and knowledge sharing. Specifically the authors state that we need to

“Make the continued creation and refinement of training and knowledge-sharing opportunities for emergency management practitioners a priority. The 2011 SMEM Camp format was an experiment that was well received by the majority of participants.”

As the authors indicate, in this early stage of the use of social networking as a tool for crisis communications, there are still many unsettled questions that can pose significant challenges to adoption. This includes a lack of clarity with regard to laws, policy and guidance. The authors state, that we are in a “Wild West situation, as the available technology has surpassed the rules and guidance that are currently in place.”

However, with that being said, there are many organizations that are using these tools in creative ways and we can measure their success  based on their own stated goals and objectives. Even though there are no formally recognized and accepted  ”best practices” we are certainly starting to understand the value these organizations are gaining from using these tools. Informally, many of us, including myself, often find organizations that are doing great work in this area and promote these efforts as best practice examples. As Dr. Wardell inferred, highlighting these successes will help us create “buy-in and subsequent adoption and investment [from other] organizations.”

Knowledge Sharing

As forerunning agencies use social networking tools on a daily basis and during real-world disaster events, they are also learning effective strategies. The sharing of that knowledge is invaluable.  Nonetheless, as the technology and adoption rate matures,  I do expect that we will also need to have better answers to the following questions:

• What does an effective public safety SM presence look like?
• What metrics can be used to determine success?
• How can we measure impact–e.g. what are the “outcomes” versus the “outputs”?

Furthermore, knowledge sharing does not necessarily have to take place in a conference or a formal setting. Hundreds of emergency management professionals engage in knowledge sharing on this topic on a daily basis on twitter via the #SMEM hashtag.  There are also many emerging sources of information, including blogs and wikis specifically for this topic. For instance, see the Emergency 2.0 Wiki from Australia whose stated purpose is to “share and advance knowledge, by providing best practice guidelines on how to utilize social media in all phases of emergency communications.”  These guidelines, when fully fleshed out, will provide an amazing resource for all public safety organizations. 

Discussion Points

In the meantime,  below I list some of the more important questions most people raise when discussing social media usage for crisis communications. As you will notice, these discussion points relate to processes, internal procedures, goals and objectives, NOT how to use specific tools. The social networks may change (e.g tumblr versus facebook) but organizations can build structures, policies and procedures that enable them to engage on any social platform. (Each of these subjects are addressed, to some extent, in the CNA report.)

• Why should public safety organizations use these tools? (e.g. Is there a broad use of social networks in your community? Does your local news media expect to receive information via social networks? )
• What are your organization’s stated goals for public outreach (no matter what tool you utilize) in each phase of the emergency continuum? This will ultimately help determine if the effort is successful.
• What resources (human and technical) are necessary to implement a social media campaign during each phase of a crisis?
• What resources are available to augment your staff in a crisis–e.g. virtual support?
• Who in your organization should be using the tools on a daily basis and who should be using the tools during a crisis?
• How have other public safety organizations structured themselves to rapidly update SM content in a crisis? How have they integrated these efforts with other agencies and channels? How does this relate to the Incident Command System?
• How can public safety organizations collect, sort, and verify data from social networks to provide real-time situational awareness?
• What policies need to be changed or adjusted in your organization in order to allow for personnel to use these tools?
• What is the policy regarding publicly provided content? This relates to both storage of the data for FOIA purposes, and how to deal with comments, questions and concerns raised through these platforms.
• What are some effective strategies for reaching the intended audience with preparedness, response and recovery messages? (Strategies do change during each phase.)

As a side note, the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) has contracted with Mantitou, Inc. to develop social media training. The company is in the early data collection stage and has asked the SMEM community to assist them in their effort by providing the following:

•  best practices in utilization of social media in all phases of emergency management;
•  examples of measured impact from use of social media;
• challenges and solutions or approaches to implementing and advancing use of social media within emergency management organizations.

(If you are interested in providing content for this effort let me know and I can pass that info along to their team.)

To view the CNA  report and its resources you can click to 
http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/SMEM_Initiative
 or the below links:

• Social Media in Emergency Management Camp: Transforming the Response Enterprise Report: 
  http://scr.bi/uy5H0w
  
• SMEM Report Factsheet: 
  http://scr.bi/ts1fFP
  
• SMEM Report Annex B: Virtual Operations Support Group/Team
  http://scr.bi/VOSGTConcept
  
• SMEM Report Annex C: Social Media in Emergency Management: the Canadian experience
  http://scr.bi/SMEMCanada
  

Related articles

• Aussies Establish a Wiki to Distribute Social Media Best Practices (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• Processing and Analyzing Social Media in a Crisis (idisaster.wordpress.com)

Mining the Social Media data stream

Post by: Kim Stephens

Craig Fugate announced in a speech over a year ago at the American Red Cross Social Media Summit: “Social Media are Data”. The crowd of people who were all fairly well versed in the subject, cheered. What they understood was the importance of the information in the aggregate. As the Economist described last week:  ”Most tweets are inane, but a million may contain valuable information.”  A blog post entitled “What’s in a Tweet” describes why: each and every tweet can provide geo-location/place associated with the tweet, when the account was created, who created it, their number of followers, date and time it was created, the author’s biography, etc. (The “tweet map”  pictured above can be found here, originally posted by Raffi Krikorian of Twitter.)

However, almost 18 months after Craig’s speech, quite a few local emergency managers still don’t fully understand the “social media as data” point.  Most see the medium simply as a way to push information; but even if they would like to take advantage of the data, trying to monitor social networks and extract pertinent content and understand trends etc. “by hand” is very difficult and potentially impossible after a crisis when the stream of information turns into a torrent. (See this related article in the recent Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management: “Improved Situational Awareness in Emergency Management through Automated Data Analysis and Modeling“)

Businesses (and the intelligence agencies) have turned to computer processing to monitor these social streams.  Mashable reported in an article last year that companies are increasingly employing data mining services in order to  better understand their customers: everything that people post in public forums (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.) is “fair game”, which raises a few eyebrows regarding privacy concerns. Because the information about people’s buying habits, personal likes and dislikes, product sentiment, and even mood is so valuable, many companies have sprung up to provide the service of not only data aggregation but also predictive modeling. These services are based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and mathematical algorithms . But this data is not useful just to understand who likes Honda versus Ford, see this post by Patrick Meier of Ushahidi about a company called “Recorded Futures“. He provides a good discussion of how they are using NLP, predictive modeling and event-data extraction in order to try predict social disruptions, including protests, such as the “Arab Spring”.

Image via CrunchBase

One new company that provide data aggregation and real-time filtering is DataSift, which just recently teamed up with another “real-time trend analysis” company, TrendSpottr. DataSift is interesting because it is “only one of two licensed re-syndicators of Twitter data globally” (e.g. a “reseller” of that data).  The other licensed syndicator is Gnip (based out of Boulder, Colorado).

These companies provide data filtering as well as augmentations which help provide context. This includes data enrichments that help decipher social authority, trends, social identification, and links (an analysis of feeds that have URLs included).

As an example of these enrichments, Klout is an important stand-alone service that identifies social authority, which comes in handy when you need to understand who is the most influential person (at least online) in a crowd. Although the service is billed as a way to know which influential customers to target, I see it as an important tool in a crisis, such as a large protest in your city. People are given a score of 1-100 which “measures influence based on ability to drive action”. They factor in how many people you reach based on how many followers you have on multiple social networks, whether or not those followers repeat your messages (amplification), and what kind of impact you have on “your” network. Although their formula is not perfect, it is interesting to note that in the world of Social Media and Emergency Management some of the people I follow and trust,  TheFireTracker2 and Chery Bledsoe, both have high scores for influence. Similarly, Andy Carvin of NPR–who has over 20,000 followers, has a huge score of 80. Anyone can use this service as a free without going through DataSift.

How could a local EM use Klout?  What if you are trying to reach a segment of your population with targeted information regarding disaster mitigation (e.g. a minority population)? You could use this type of service to find those people that others listen to in that community, and it might not be who you assume. As another example, maybe the students in your University are planning to join the Occupy Wall Street movement and stage a protest.  This type of service could help you drill down to find the organizers. Although you won’t be able to stop their activity, you’ll be able to understand their plans and potentially the expected turnout, etc.

What does all of this mean for the emergency management community? Computer analytical tools are coming to help us process this huge “firehose” of social networking data. Whether or not we’ll have the funds to purchase those services, and which organization will be responsible (Fusion Centers, State OEMs)  is a whole other story.

This video below describes, in very basic terms, the premise around the Datasift product.

Related articles

• Detecting Emerging Conflicts with Web Mining and Crisis Mapping (irevolution.net)
• How data and open gov are transforming NYC  O’Reilly Radar.com

Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options and Policy Considerations

Image via Wikipedia

Post by: Kim Stephens
The Congressional Research Service recently released this 13 page report “Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options and Policy Considerations” by Bruce R. Lindsay. I have attached the link to the document below. Thanks to Claire B. Rubin for bringing it to my attention.

Mr. Lindsay states that the report was written due to “congressional interest and discussion concerning how social media might be used to improve federal response and recovery capabilities” [emphasis added].  In order to speculate on potential federal uses beyond information dissemination, the author explores and summarizes how the medium has been used by the emergency management community. He addresses “potential benefits, as well as the implications, of using social media in the context of emergencies and disasters.”

Although the report is written to describe how social media can be utilized by FEMA, it seems to miss the mark on several fronts. For example,  when discussing the medium’s use during the recovery phase he states:

“…the agency could provide information concerning what types of individual assistance is available to individuals and households, including how to apply for assistance, announcing application deadlines and providing information and links to other agencies and organizations that provide recovery assistance, such as the American Red Cross, or Small Business Administration (SBA) disaster loans for homes and businesses.”

Although this is true, I don’t think this statement really points out the real potential of the technology. For example, community groups are currently leveraging  these networks to manage donations and volunteer efforts in a much more horizontal, collaborative fashion. Tools have been built, for example, that match people’s needs with other’s desire to help. In the process, they essential take government out of the equation. See this post: “Using Social Media to Aid Recovery” which describes how and why platforms such as Rebuild Joplin  were created. Essentially, the organizers of the site built it to filled a void. They provided a place for the public to find “trusted resources and dependable information”.

It took less than 36 hours for a team of volunteers to build the site, verify information, and announce the launch. Led by volunteers and the crew from SPI Creative, Rebuild Joplin will serve as a model for other communities affected by disasters.

The Joplin tool and others like it, including the wiki envisioned by Eric Holdeman in the article “Disaster Wiki: Get Ready Now to Harness the Power of Social Media,” I believe are the future of disaster recovery. Perhaps the author could have asked what the federal government could do to help foster the development of these types of sites and tools before a crisis occurs, versus focusing on just how to use these networks to disseminate information in a unilateral fashion after an event.

I also find this paragraph a little baffling:

“Many residents experienced power outages lasting 48 hours or longer after Hurricane Irene. Yet many smartphones and tablets have battery lives lasting twelve hours or less depending on their use. Although social media may improve some aspects of emergency and disaster response, overreliance on the technology could be problematic under prolonged power outages. Thus emergency managers and officials might consider alternative or backup options during extended power outages, or other occurrences that could prevent the use of social media.” [emphasis added]

From personal experience, people will do whatever it takes to keep their cell phones charged. Of course we should always consider alternative ways to get information to people, but we should also discuss mitigation measures,  such as the rapid deployment of cell phone charging stations to allow for information to flow in ways most familiar to our populations. This seems to be a lesson learned after each big event.

His last sentence, however, I find to be the most confusing, given the increasing evidence of the importance use social media before, during and after a crisis. He states:

“It could be argued that the positive results of social media witnessed thus far have been largely anecdotal and that the use of social media is insufficiently developed to draw reliable conclusions on the matter. By this measure, it should therefore be further examined and researched before being adopted and used for emergencies and disasters.“

His suggestion that adoption of these tools take place after “further examination is completed” is not really an option. Citizens, community organizations, volunteers and governments are already using social media for emergencies and disasters.   Although I would agree that we all still have a lot to learn, I believe, as they say in my native Texas “the horse has already left the barn”.

Click this link to see the CRS report. Social_media_9-06-11-1   If you have trouble, the article was also linked here: <
http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/crs-warns-social-media-abuse-during-emergency-response/2011-09-13
>.

10 Ways for Emergency Managers to Boost Facebook Content

Image via CrunchBase

Post by: Kim Stephens

Oneforty.com recently posted 25 ideas to liven up the content you share on your Facebook page. This inspired me to write a list specifically for the emergency management community because whenever I present to groups about SMEM one of the most often asked question is “How do we get more people to visit our page?”. Coming up with interesting content day after day or even week after week can become exhausting and can also cause burn out on the part of the person responsible for writing that content. I have discussed this before in other blog posts but I think it is worth revisiting.

Here’s a mix of ideas from the OneForty list (which are in quotes) and my own.

1. “Don’t automate Twitter updates to your Facebook page. They are different platforms, so treat them differently.”

This tip is true for preparedness information but probably doesn’t apply to emergency information. For example,  if there is a tree down on a street and you’d like the information to get out quickly to everyone, you might post something like this:

However, what you don’t want post non-critical information in this same manner because it really can limit the amount of interactivity you get on your site.

2. Don’t only post the weather.

Services that automatically post weather updates to your facebook and twitter accounts make it much easier to post that information in a timely manner, and also takes the burden off of organizations that are short staffed. However, what happens is that you loose any opportunity for engagement with your community. Keep in mind that you are on a “social” platform. Imagine if you were at a party and the person sitting next to you only spouted weather data–you’d probably find a way to move away.

3. “Reply to users’ comments and “likes” on your statuses. The more engagement, the more likely your post will make it to your community members’ newsfeed.”

4. “Have a guest host. Have a celebrity, influencer or company executive take over your Facebook page for an hour or a day to interact directly with community members and answer their questions.”

Instead of “company executive” it might be interesting to have local celebrities take over the page, even it that’s the HighSchool football coach talking about how to keep hydrated in the hot weather. All communities have local celebrities that could be tapped. Plan for someone different once per month and then advertise that they will be available to chat on your page during specific times.

5. “Ask for your community’s opinion – Talk about a question that was asked somewhere else (blog, Twitter, etc) and pose that to your Facebook audience.”

Being open to hear what the community has to say is really what these social media platforms are all about. Asking questions, is a great way to open the door for true dialog.

6. Use lots of photos.

There are many ways to incorporate photos into your stream that allow for people to interact with your page. People really like pictures, particularly of their kids or pets. Ask for members of your community to submit pictures that reflect your preparedness campaign for the month. For example, if your organization is trying to relay info about how to stay cool in the heat, then people could submit pics of dogs playing in the water or their kids in the sprinkler. (This is my dog!) Turn this into a contest for another layer of interactivity.

Other suggestions from OneForty included hosting a caption contest or posting a mystery photo and having people guess who it is. (It might not be wise, however, to put the mayor up there and ask people to guess who it is. He or she might not be too happy if no one knows.)

7. “Ask for your community’s ideas – Ask them what they would like to see in your next blog post, ebook, webinar, advertisement, event etc.”

8. “Ask a hypothetical question. (Example: “Would you rather ____?” “If you could _____”)”

9. Don’t be afraid to be funny.

10. Consider combining the Facebook pages of your community.

At a recent conference for emergency managers for Universities, one of the audience members asked me what I thought about not having separate Facebook page for the Campus Emergency Management. I actually think this is a probably wise, particularly for smaller communities, including smaller towns or counties. All community information could be included on one facebook page: police, fire department, mayor’s office, emergency management, etc.  In truth, local governments are trying to do more with less therefore, combining efforts into one Facebook page is probably prudent. Of course, I understand that that means cooperation will have to occur between and among different agencies, which isn’t always easy. However, if a crisis were to occur, it would be helpful to have this kind of combined effort already in place.

Please add any ideas I might have missed.

Related articles

• 25 Great Facebook Page Content Ideas (oneforty.com)

Social Media and Emergency Management: Top 10 Questions

Post by: Kim Stephens

Warm weather seems to bring numerous conferences.  After speaking to various groups I am reminded that there is a large contingent of people in response organizations that have heard of social media, but might not understand some of the basics. If you fall into that camp, this post is for you. I have outlined the top ten questions that I often hear, both through speaking and even through our Social Media and Emergency Management chats.

For an even greater wealth of information, however, I recommend Patrice Cloutier and Barry Radford’s marvelous guidebook entitled: “Project to Advance Crisis and Emergency Communications” April, 2011.  This is essentially a social media “toolkit” filled with hyperlinks to valuable sources about how, and why emergency management organizations can use social media not only to provide information to the public, but also to gain situational awareness  from the public. The bibliography associated with this blog, also has great resources to pull from for basic knowledge.

1. What is social media?  

See the U.S. Navy Handbook for Social Media for a basic definition-”Social Media is an umbrella term describing a variety of platforms, social networking being the most well-known among them.” Others define it as  ”Websites which build on Web 2.0 technologies to provide space for in-depth social interaction, community formation, and the tackling of collaborative projects.”

Art work by: Lazy Crazy Devian Tart.com

2. What is twitter?

For this answer simply turn to twitter itself. They describe the tool as follows:

An information network

“Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting…At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length… Connected to each Tweet is a rich details pane that provides additional information, deeper context and embedded media. You can tell your story within your Tweet, or you can think of a Tweet as the headline, and use the details pane to tell the rest with photos, videos and other media content. See it in action.”

You don’t have to tweet to get value from Twitter

“You don’t have to build a web page to surf the web and you don’t have to tweet to enjoy Twitter. Whether you tweet 100 times a day or never, you still have access to the voices and information surrounding what interests you. You can contribute, or just listen in and retrieve up to the second information. Some people never tweet, they simply use Twitter as a way to get the latest information on their interests.”

Twitter for SMS

“Individuals, businesses and social causes can use Twitter for SMS and our Fast Follow program to connect directly to anyone with a mobile phone. Twitter for SMS is an instant infrastructure for mobile communications.” –This feature is currently only available in the U.S.

Why only 140 characters? From Twitter:  ”… sending a text was originally the only way users could tweet. This is why Tweets are 140 characters — they need to fit into a text message.”

3. What are all those little symbols in twitter?

To the uninitiated, Twitter is full of strange acronyms and symbols. For someone who is not familiar with the “language” it can be a bit daunting. However, there are multiple resources to help you learn this new syntax. See Mashable’s great twitter guidebook for all things twitter. This great resource has hyperlinks to articles from the basic: What is a retweet RT? To advanced: Tools for organizing your twitter community.

4. What’s the difference between Twitter and Facebook? Are there other social media platforms we should be aware of?

See this Mashable article: Facebook, Twitter and the Two-Faces of Social Media, by Ben Parr, but these long quotes boil down his article fairly well:

“What exactly is the difference? And is there one? People have used the terms ‘social media’ and ‘social network’ almost interchangeably over the years. It’s inaccurate to say that they’re the same thing, though. In fact, I argue that social networking is a branch of social media, and can itself be further broken down into two distinct branches — the social network and the information network….On Facebook, you’re supposed to connect with close friends. Becoming friends with someone means he or she gets to see your content, but you also get to see his or her content in return. On Twitter, that’s not the case: you choose what information you want to receive, and you have no obligation to follow anybody. Facebook emphasizes profiles and people, while Twitter emphasizes the actual content (in its case, tweets).”

For emergency management purposes these distinctions are somewhat important because,  with Twitter, you don’t have to follow even one person in order to gain situational awareness information–you can just “listen” by watching the various hashtags after an event.

Facebook, however, does require a little more effort. If you don’t actively try to get “fans” by posting often and being a great source for information yourself, then during a crisis people will go elsewhere and even create their own facebook pages about the event. Why should you care? Because if people are actively engaged on your Facebook page–asking and answering questions–that means you have a large group that can be your eyes and ears during the event (see my post about Australia as a best practice example). It also means you can spend more time monitoring your own facebook page and less trying to track down the 10-20 pages that have sprung up to fill the void left by your organization. Imagine having 165, 000  fans and millions more looking at each of your posts from which you could ask, for example, about a missing person or for information on a crime.

What other social networking and social media platforms should emergency management organizations be aware of? There are many, but a quick look through the Center for Disease Control’s toolkit is a great place to start. I often refer to their Social Media Tools, Guidelines and Best Practices  page where they detail how to gain a presence on  Flickr, YouTube, eCards and blogging platforms. Tumblr is another platform that is gaining in popularity–which is basically a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter.  Even the U.S. Department of State and the National Archives are “tumbling”.

5. What is a Tweetdeck? 

There are multiple tweet management systems (Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are the most user-friendly in my opinion) that allow users to see multiple twitter streams and content at one time, on a single screen. Essentially, they make it much easier to sort and view pertinent information. For example, one row could show every time you or your organization is mentioned, another could list every tweet related to the crisis (e.g. #joplin), and yet another could  list all of the response organizations you have connections to or are following (e.g. @FEMA, @NYCOEM, @LAFD). Here’s a blogpost about Tweetdeck that has two videos describing the basics.

6. Who in the office should be in charge of social media? Everyone is already so busy-no one wants an additional duty.

There is no doubt that currently quite a few emergency management organizations are short-staffed. Most small, local emergency management organizations probably don’t have a dedicated Public Information Officer, therefore, the responsibility of engaging on social media platforms usually falls to the person who is either interested in doing the job or who drew the shortest straw. I have seen, however, great success by organizations when the emergency manager themselves take the twitter helm. Why? Anecdotally, it seems to me that if the person at the head of the organization uses and understands the medium then the chances of its success will be increased.

Another approach is to take turns. I love the example from the Arkansas Fish and Game Commission Facebook page. The small office of about four people decided that in order to keep it fair, they would rotate the responsibility, one person per week, one time per month. They currently have over 40,000 fans–which is a huge number, so they must be doing something right. This approach might be especially effective for EMA’s during the preparedness phase. Furthermore, this would allow for continuity of social media operations since everyone would know how to use the SM platforms.

7. We are a homeland security agency, we can’t tweet or do any social media because we worry about security. Besides you can’t trust any information on social media, it’s all rumors.

The notion that social media platforms perpetuate incorrect content and rumors is not a hypothesis that is supported by fact. Does incorrect information make its way onto those platforms? Of course. But it has been proven in academic studies that the medium is very  self-correcting. Content analysis indicate that people retweet incorrect information significantly fewer times than correct information. Often people will not retweet (e.g. spread) content unless it is linked to a URL and a reputable source. See Alex Bruns research in this area.

One quick example of how the public reacts to content can be found in an exchange on the aforementioned Fish and Game FB page. One person asks about the limit on how many raccoons one person can kill (remember, its Arkansas) and another citizen correctly answers: zero–because the season hasn’t started yet. This is then affirmed by the Commission. This points out another key factor, if you are not involved, then you won’t have an opportunity to understand what misinformation is circulating.

Regarding security of information, this concern is usually about internal staff–people posting more information than they should. In fact, the U.S. Navy has a new expression “Loose Tweets Sink Fleets”. See their great take on security in their handbook (pages 5-6) on how to handle potential problems. I think this quote applies to public safety organizations as much as it does to the Navy:

“Establish expectations for your Sailors’ behavior online, set the example for them to follow and hold them accountable for their actions online just as you would do elsewhere.”

8. How do we get out the message that we are using social media, particularly to people who live in our community only seasonally?

Getting people to become your “fan” is not particularly an easy task when there isn’t a crisis. Therefore, it is necessary in all of your printed materials and on your website(s) to point out and link to your social media presence. Some businesses in the private sector often display “Like us on Facebook” banners, and public agencies–particularly those in seasonal communities, should be doing similar campaigns. This type of advertising can also be done to teach people how to “quick follow” your organization. If possible, it might be a good idea to have Hotels add your information in the portfolios they give guests. Also, ask your local Chamber of Commerce for ideas in how to get the word out.

9. During a crisis, all communications will be out.

This of course, really isn’t a question but more of an assumption we’ve all built into our catastrophic plans. However, recent major disasters have shown that web-enabled communications are more resilient than previously thought. Even after the massive earthquakes in Japan and Haiti messages were getting out via social media platforms either immediately or within 48 hours. Furthermore, don’t assume that if the power is out locally, no one will be viewing your content. One point to keep in mind–people from all over the world, depending on the scale of the crisis, will have an interest in your disaster for a myriad of reasons: a desire to help, a desire to understand  how friends or family might have faired, or just pure curiosity. No matter the motivation, it’s important to understand this potential audience. This is the group of people that can crash your website.

10. What do we write about? And/or how often should we post?

This is a question for the prepaparedness phase because during a crisis, what content to post should be self-evident. Some organizations simply want to have a social media presence ready to go in the event of a crisis. Others have a desire to build an audience and communicate emergency preparedness information. In other words, only by defining your goals and objectives for your social media presence will you understand what content to promote and how often. For ideas on how to create a great preparedness campaigns on social media platforms check out this post: Five Ways to Pump Up Your EM Facebook Presence.

These are just the basics, so please let me know what I’ve missed.

Related articles

• During a crisis, will press releases be the thing of the past? (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• SMEM chatting about Target Capabilities (idisaster.wordpress.com)
• How to Use Social Media to Promote Non-Profit Events (hubspot.com)
• Online and Offline Social Networking Go Together Like Chocolate and Bacon (newcommbiz.com)

The fourth essential use of social media in a crisis.

Post by: Kim Stephens

Gislio Olfassan, who has “been involved in disaster management related activities for the past 16 years, both nationally [in Iceland] and internationally,” recently wrote on his blog that there are essentially three uses of social media in disasters:

• Advocacy and Fundraising – utilizing social media to interact more closely with people donating and influencing public opinion
• Information Sharing with affected communities – reaching out during disasters to the affected community with information about services, threats, etc.
• Information Management – utilizing the social media platforms to collect, process, analyze and disseminate information required for organizations to do their work

There are many others, I think, but today, I would like to add a fourth:

• Information Sharing with concerned citizens–reaching out to those outside of the impacted area who might reside in a nearby region, state, in the country, or on the other side of the world (think of them as concentric circles emanating from a pebble dropped in water). These people will have either an active or a passive interest.

The role of informing citizens about disasters around the world has traditionally been held by the news media. But if someone has a more active interest, for example,  relatives or friends in the impacted area, or they are interested in helping remotely, then the news media is basically irrelevant.   For example, ChristChurch, New Zealand has suffered a devastating earthquake, but most US national news outlets have devoted maybe 3 minutes TOTAL to the story.  This is not a new problem, but social media is filling the information gap.

What does this mean to your response organization?

When using social media you are not only informing the affected community, but you are involved in informing and engaging a much broader audience. You can use this platform to educate this audience about how to help vs. hinder the response effort (I’m not addressing volunteers in this category, they use social media for “information management” purposes, mentioned above by Gislio). There are many ways interest in a crisis can hinder you. One concern I’ve heard voiced (which isn’t necessarily borne out by fact) is that if people have a lot of details about an event (e.g. location, etc.) they might show up to “look”. Curious people, however, can bog down traditional internet sites intended for survivors. There is also a concern (warranted or not) that people might repeat non-factual information. Is this a reason for less information, less engagement, or more?  I argue that these are all reasons for more information, especially information disseminated through social media platforms which won’t cave under the pressure of the world’s eyes.

If informed, the broader public can help the response effort in many ways. Here are just a few examples:

• Amplify the “official” message by repeating factual information originally posted by response organizations.
• Answer questions posed by either other interested citizens, or by the affected community (and knock down false information or rumors).
• The public can be educated to stay off of internet sites intended for survivors, which can crash from overload.

1. Interest by-standers will amplify your message: (see also the related blog post by James Hamilton)

After analyzing data from the flooding in Australia, the research project called New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks, based at Queensland University of Technology determined “somewhat surprisingly (since it was relatively unknown before the crisis), the Queensland Police Service’s @QPSmedia account emerges as a clear frontrunner” in terms of receiving the most @replies and the most re-tweets. A message that is re-tweeted means an exponential growth in those that see the message. It doesn’t matter if the re-tweeter is sitting next door to the impacted area of half a world away–just because I live far away doesn’t mean I don’t know people who have been affected.

2. The public will answer questions posed by others: 

Just because your response organization is participating on a social media platform or even actively engaging in a hashtag on twitter doesn’t mean you have to answer every single question posed. The information you and volunteers organizations are streaming will add to the knowledge base of the entire user community and they will start to answer each other’s questions based on that correct information as well as deny false information. As an example, Google during the ChristChurch crisis (although not a traditional response organization) very quickly put up a person finder application. This message was often repeated (I don’t have details on how many times) and I’ve also seen examples where individuals guided those looking for loved-ones to that google site. See this blog post.

3. The public can be educated about dos and dont’s with regard to social media and internet use (e.g. stay off internet sites intended for survivors).

Sending people to a website from a facebook page or from a twitter account can cause that site to crash. But if you don’t have a social media presence then the site will surely crash because it will be the only place for people to get information. Usually it’s not just survivors viewing these pages but anyone with an interest. However, you can teach the broader public to understand this problem just by talking about it. People for the most part are very respectful when they understand an issue. Furthermore, the more information you are able to provide on third-party social media platforms, the less this will be a problem to begin with.

This obviously is just a sampling of why social media platforms are important in a crisis, but one last word of caution, make sure you get involved in these mediums before a major crisis hits, otherwise, you will be playing “catch-up” and that’s never a fun game during a disaster.

How to help New Zealand:

• 
  http://www.redcross.org.nz/donate
  
• 
  http://rachel-goodchild.com/2011/02/25/the-nz-earthquake-how-can-people-overseas-help
  /

See also: The Yellow Tape Conundrum in Social Media and Emergency Management, by Adam S. Crowe.

Using Corporate Social Media Lessons for Emergency Management “Marketing”

Post by: Kim Stephens

What lessons can we borrow from corporate use of social media? Following information about social media often gets you 10 articles about corporate use to every 1 about the public sector. I think there are some interesting lessons we can glean from the private sector, but there are unique aspects in the use of social media in emergency management.

Using social media in the preparedness phase seems very similar to how the corporate world participates in social technologies –to sell a product and develop brand identity (see Diet Coke’s facebook page with 773,805 fans). By contrast, we have to work very very hard to “sell” preparedness information. However, during the response phase people line up around the virtual corner to “buy” our product because information becomes a precious commodity. Here are a few concepts, however, that I think we can borrow to help make us more successful.

1. Create a sense of community–be personal

In terms of gaining an audience, it’s the preparedness phase that’s the most difficult. So how can we improve our presence during this phase?  Corporations are beginning to understand that social media, at it’s best, creates a community.  A recent article by Chris Syme, “Twitter Rules, Are they Changing?” also describes social media as evolving into community building and how people’s expectations of content has changed. This quote is particularly salient: “Marketers who lack sophistication are still functioning like megaphones. This was okay when Twitter was in its infancy, much like the crying baby who needs to be changed, but now that sort of blatant broadcasting is offensive to most Twitter communities. Scheduling tweets that are identical day after day asking us to come in to your flooring store is not a good use of Twitter.”

The same could be said for the emergency management community: scheduling tweets that say: “change the batteries in your smoke detector” day after day, also stand the risk of being dismissed or ignored. What’s missing is any personal connection. A scheduled tweet that is the exact same message on the facebook page leaves no room for real dialog, and its difficult to be personal without ever having a conversation.

2. Create goals and objectives for your social media presence that include network building.

In an article by Amber Naslund   “9 Ways to Build a Twitter Community With Substance”, she says

“Remember: Twitter is just the medium. These same principles apply across many things, online and off. It all–always–comes down to your honest intent to build a network of people to talk to, to learn from, to share with. ALL of this depends on your desire to use Twitter that way, and not just to amass a collection of people that you can pimp your junk to.”

Maybe this is what makes the emergency management community uncomfortable–although we don’t really have “junk to pimp” we still have a preparedness message to sell. People who use social media are not just passive consumers of information. In order to really gain an audience we have to ask:

• Are we really ready to talk to people not at them?
• Are we ready to learn from citizens, not expect them to only learn from us?
• Are we ready to share information open and honestly, including our mistakes?

3. Create a community that leverages the “wisdom of the crowd”.

People expect to learn from EACH OTHER on social media platforms. So, are we ready to allow for a free flow of information in our own managed online communities that allows people to exchange information?

The Arkansas Game and Fish Facebook page is a great example of this concept.  People ask questions and others answer. Q: Is the fishing good? A: been fishing really hard but ain’t really getting any bites… The “official” on the page also answers the question, but it’s the answers from the other citizens that make the question worth asking. (And I also got to use the words “ain’t and wisdom in the same paragraph!)

4. During the Response and Recovery Phases, adjust messaging accordingly; and expect new members to join your virtual community.

The response phase is probably the most dissimilar to corporate brand messaging on social media platforms. For example, broadcast-type messages are usually expected and even desired during a crisis, but, people also still expect to have the opportunity to offer their own point of view on these participatory platforms. Here is my comparison of recommendations for messaging during the preparedness phase versus the response phase. Some of these are based on the experiences and recommendations from the Australian Queensland Police social media manager:

Finally, creating a virtual community will benefit both the EM agency as well as the citizens.

Here’s a tweet from Jeff Philips, whom I follow loyally. “Engagement, for me, is the only viable social media and emergency management strategy.” He mentions “fascinating & wonderful people.” The online community he has created is real.

Corporations are concerned about loyalty because they want you to buy Diet Coke, not Diet Pepsi for the rest of your life. Loyalty in the public sector is almost as important. Creating advocates for your efforts during the preparedness phase is key to your success in the medium during the response and recovery phase. These people can be called upon and will:

1. help spread your message
2. provide information/situational awareness
3. support the recovery and response by showing up when asked, either virtually or physically.

Selling a product and selling a “concept” obviously present different challenges. But if we can apply some of these corporate strategies, it just might help us reach our goal of creating more resilient communities.

Just something to think about.

Related Article

• What Brands Can Learn from Taco Bell’s Social Media Lawsuit Defense.