Public Response to Alerts and Warnings Using Social Media Report of a Workshop on Current Knowledge and Research Gaps (2013) / Chapter Skim
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1 Fundamentals of Alerts, Warnings, and Social Media
1 Fundamentals of Alerts, Warnings, and Social Media
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Committee on Public Response to Alerts and Warnings on Using Social Media: Current Knowledge and Research Gaps. The first session of the workshop provided an overview of alerts (an alert indicates that something significant has happened or may happen)
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Much of this knowledge has been captured in the "Annotated Bibliography for Public Risk Communication on Warnings for Public Protective Action Response and Public Education" that lists more than 350 publications.2 This body of research covers natural disasters such as Hurricane Camille and the Mount St. Helens eruption; terrorist attacks such as those on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001; hazardous material spills such as those that occurred during the 1979 Mississauga, Ontario, train derailment and the 1987 Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, factory fire; building fires such as those at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas in 1980 and at Chicago's Cook County Hospital; and technological accidents such as the 1979 incident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania.
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• People seek social confirmation of warnings before taking protective action. Before acting in response to a warning, people generally seek confirmation from others.
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The communications process includes issuing a warning, monitoring the public's response to the warning, listening for incorrect information the public may be receiving, and rewarning based on observations of what the public is doing or not doing. Given the mix of official and unofficial information available to the public, it is almost inevitable that people will be exposed to some incorrect information, which can lead to inconsistencies that can delay protective actions.
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public officials are not currently prepared to respond to requests for assistance via social media despite growing public expectations for such a capability, officials will need to continue to remind the public to use 911 to call for assistance. BARRIERS TO INCORPORATING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT Although some emergency management organizations have begun using social media to interact with the public, several barriers and challenges remain to more widespread adoption, including limited understanding of social media, concerns about loss of control, and institutional limitations.
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Also, such experimentation with social media often precedes the creation of guidelines or formal policies for their use, which can lead to unforeseen complications or questions being raised by managers, and implementation of measures that restrict the use of social media. TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT FOR THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT Emre Gunduzhan discussed technologies that are needed to disseminate public alerts and warnings using social media and to develop situational awareness during disasters using information gleaned from social media.
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Most often the information available is the address or town that may have been provided as part of a user's profile; a user's Internet Protocol address may also provide clues about his or her location. Although users accessing social media services via mobile devices may be able to provide accurate geotargeting information, users generally need to enable this feature, and many choose not to do so owing to privacy concerns.
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Alternatively, emergency managers might establish partnerships with social media services for disseminating alerts and warnings, either on behalf of individual agencies or collectively at the state or federal level. BOX 1.1 Characteristics of Alternative Methods for Distribution of Social Media Alerts Distribution by a Registered User of Distribution Via Collaboration with Social Media Services Social Media Sites • Alerts appear as ordinary • Alerts can be given priority and messages.
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Ushahidi, an open source tool for information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping,7 for example, has been used successfully during a number of disasters.8 Looking ahead, one 6 In an effort to combine technological tools and human judgment to monitor social media, the American Red Cross opened its Digital Operations Center in March 2012. 7 See http://www.ushahidi.com/.
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Research would help shed light on such key questions as how the new technologies could help shorten the milling time between receipt of an alert or warning and the taking of protective action. • Questions still remain regarding the extent to which social media represent a truly new source of information for improving the situational awareness of emergency managers or whether much or most of the information simply repeats information already available from other, traditional sources.
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FUNDAMENTALS OF ALERTS, WARNINGS, AND SOCIAL MEDIA 11 propagated publicly. Those that are propagated have a chance of receiving attention; those that are not die out quickly.
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