All About The Social Media In Natural Disasters

By Gnifrus Urquart


In todays world disasters are just as unpredictable as always. The recent earthquakes of japan and Haiti are just some of the examples of what natural disasters can do. Due to their unpredictability the only thing that is left to do is respond. The most comprehensive way to communicate today is through social media. Social media is the use of the world wide web and mobile based technologies to communicate. Thus social media in natural disasters play key role in many areas.

Social media can be used in a number of ways in the aftermath of a natural disaster. It can help in organizing volunteers and other interested parties to help victims effectively. It is very effective in helping to locating people who are lost or injured in the natural disasters. Finally it feeds the world with news and developments on the disaster in real time hence accuracy is observed.

Many of the people when affected by major natural disasters embrace social media because the other alternative communication channel are more often than not obliterated. The roads, phones lines, faxes and mail are more likely not to be functioning after a natural disaster but social media is often the only communication channel left.

The social media can be used effectively in wireless devices and can continue to thrive without any physical infrastructure. The tsunami and quake in Japan was prominently on the top of the social media website twitter less than an hour after it happened. There was video and photographs of the disaster alongside text all over twitter. The mention of the disaster on the website was over a thousand times a minute. This calculated clearly shows that over sixty thousand mentions or posts were done in an hour.

During the Haitian earthquake the people and aid organizations used social media to locate family members dead or alive. All one had to do is post a message and a picture in a special page on Facebook and the aid organizations would contact their centers to locate the people listed. Majority of the lost children found their mothers or family using this method.

In the Indonesian tsunami disaster the people had special blogs to share and update information on the dead, alive, lost and injured. The social media is breaking geographical and cultural barriers and connecting people from all around the world than it had ever been imagined.

The rel time effect of the social media in disasters has seen the response time reduced to almost zero. The social media can update information in real time while at the same time help in spreading the word to help raise funds to help those in need. This method has been used by disaster relief foundation all around the world and the results have been the saving of more lives due to resources being availed faster than before.




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