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SMEMChat: Using Social Media to Navigate Emergencies
On February 3, 2012,
in Alerts & Warnings 101, Social Media,
by Stuart Ridgway
Who and What is SMEMChat
If you work in the Emergency Management field and have an interest in social media, you may have run across SMEMChat (Social Media and Emergency Management Chat) on Twitter. Every Friday, from 12:30 to 1:30pm EST, Twitter users who are interested in emergency management follow tweets that contain the hashtag #smemchat. AWARE readers will be interested in the lively conversations relating to the intersection of emergency management and social media. Chats are open to anyone to contribute to or to just watch.
Today’s incident at Virginia Tech – More to come
On December 8, 2011,
in News,
by Daniel Honker
The news coming out of Virginia Tech today is clearly shocking. At the time of this post, two people, including one police officer, have been killed on the campus. This comes four years after 32 people were killed by a gunman on campus.
More information is coming out by the hour about what happened today. However, what we do know in the few hours since the first reports of the shooting is that social media has been one of the primary platforms for sharing and obtaining real-time information on the emergency.
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When Seconds Count: The Challenge of Slow Social Media Alerts
On December 1, 2011,
in Social Media,
by Lloyd Colston
As readers will know, I have been a huge fan of social media when it is used as part of a plan in part of the toolbox (I most recently talked about it here). As a stand-alone tool, it has shown value and failure.
A 2009 study from Germany, titled A Measurement-driven Analysis of Information Propagation in the Flickr Social Network, traces messages as they “propagate” around the Internet.
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Tagged with: #SMEM • Disaster warnings • flickr • Social Media • Social Networks • Tornados • weather alerts
Eastern Carolina University’s gunman scare shows power of social media
On November 17, 2011,
in News, Social Media,
by Alyssa Mangino
https://twitter.com/#!/EastCarolina/status/136826854224035841
Yesterday morning, I was alarmed to find out via my Facebook newsfeed that a gunman carrying an assault rifle had been reported at East Carolina University, causing a lockdown across the campus. I was reminded of the horrific April 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre in which a gunman killed 32 people and injured many others. Many of my terrified Facebook friends were posting real-time updates from locked-down areas around campus including classrooms, office buildings, and the athletic department.
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“Twitter Terrorism” and False Alerts via Social Media
On October 7, 2011,
in Social Media,
by Daniel Honker
This story is a couple of weeks old, but it merits mentioning because of its implications for how reports of events, both true and untrue, can spread virally over social media.
Two Mexican citizens were arrested in August in Veracruz, accused of spreading false rumors about drug-related violence in their area. The couple used Twitter and Facebook to report kidnappings and shootings at local schools–which were later proven to have never happened. Nonetheless, the reports caused panic in Veracruz. Initial charges of terrorism have since been dropped, though controversy continues to swirl.
As the BBC reports, social networks have increasingly become a primary source for local news on drug-related violence in Mexico. People check Twitter and Facebook before leaving their houses to see if there may be threats of violence in the area.
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