One of the great benefits of these technologies is that they are able to share the information publicly. For this reason it has been considered an ideal technology for the dissemination of information about natural disasters.While it does not rank in the top 10 Nielsen websites for August 2011, Twitter has grown substantially since it's 1.2 million visitors a month in April of 2008 (Johnson, 2009). One of the more practical uses of Twitter (and Facebook and similar sites) is quick dissemination of information during a natural disaster. Freeman analyzed the use of twitter during 3 Australian disasters: the Victorian wildfires of early 2009, flooding in Queensland in late 2010-early 2011, and tropical cyclone Yasi in early 2011. In the wildfires Twitter was used primarily by news outlets to spread information about the fires well beyond Australia. However, by late 2010 the Queensland Police Service and the local power company were prepared to spread warnings and pertinent information to locals about the floods and cyclone. In all three disasters, citizens themselves were, of course, a major source of information.
Unlike traditional news channels, Twitter does not fact-check or filter information. The unreliability of crowd-sourced news is indeed one of the biggest problems in a disaster situation. One could certainly imagine bad information about safe evacuation routes causing people to get stranded or worse. Freeman notes that National ICT Australia is working on methods to coordinate government usage of electronic communications. Having up-to-the-minute official information in a disaster is likely to be more useful, or at least make people feel better.
So the next time you see someone checking their twitter obsessively, don't immediately pass them off as a Beiber fan. They just might see the tornado warning that saves your life.
-Evan W.
Freeman, M. (2011). Fire, wind and water: social networks in natural disasters. Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 13(2), 69+. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.dml.regis.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA273280029&v=2.1&u=regis&it=r&p=CDB&sw=w
Johnson, S. (2009). How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live (in 140 characters or less). (Cover story). Time, 173(23), 32-37.
4 comments:
Good post. I am not a Twitter user, but it probably has its place, however, some people get way to excited and this causes a domino affect. Donna
Hi Evan,
Great post, it is scary to think that some people will post anything to scare others,but on the other hand is a great way to know some of the latest news. Thanks to Facebook I find out first about news that there were not yet publish on the news channel, but friend posted first. Like when there was a earthquake and they type it in their cell phone to publish in Facebook.
Carol
Tm, great post on this. I'm not a fan of Twitter, but I've seen where information transmitted on twitter caused an up roar and perhaps a change in government. ie Egypt. It is a great tool indeed to get information as fast as possible to others. The question remains however how reliable that information is. since it is at face value could it be wrong to assume it is right?
kerk
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