Social Media in a Crisis

A rhetorical question I posed at the end of our Blogging for Public Health session at CDC last week that was intended to generate a sense of urgency to become involved in the social media space took on some chilling realities with the events at Virginia Tech. Susan Promisio captured it like this:

'What if the post-9/11 anthrax scare happened now instead of then?'  If the CDC isn’t out in front in the blogosphere, owning that issue and guiding the public in how to interpret the threat and respond appropriately, other bloggers who might be less expert, but quicker to capitalize on the information vacuum, will command the blogging stage.

Marianne Richmond, another of our panelists, weighs in about the VT tragedy from that same perspective.

 Yesterday's incomprehensible tragic events at Virginia Tech also highlight the way the information is disseminated during a crisis and the need for "official" sources to use social media tools as part of their crisis management plan. I think one of the thoughts that became crystallized for me during the CDC panel and the Forrester Marketing Forum is that if social media was viewed in light of this is a tool, what can I use it for to enhance my communications...

And that mobile technologies were not part of the official response to notify students of danger is another signal that taking a head-in-the-sand approach to emergency risk communications using old media (email !?) endangers lives for control of the message. I don't think that's a reasonable trade-off. And ignorance is no longer an excuse.

Comments

[Marianne Richmond]

Use of mobile phones was such an obvious choice it is truly unfathomable that this was not the first tool of engagement on campus.

[Craig]

Exactly Toby. There are too many options from old-fashioned call trees to opt-in SMS alert systems (I have one for the DC Metro system and another from my bank) to Twitter to be satisfied with email and dry boards as message dissemination tools - specially on college campuses where the mobile phone is ubiquitous. As I said, ignorance is not an acceptable excuse any more.

[Toby]

Craig - After our panel discussion at the CDC I spoke with some of the EMarekting team about Twitter - a way to communicate through mobile text by forming groups (the same provider is not necessary). They immediately saw application use in remote areas and during a crisis. Overlay Google Maps and you have a visual Free alert system.

If I were a betting kinda gal, I'd say that the majority of college students have cell phones. Marianne's suggestion that schools create Twitter groups to relay important information during disasters is brilliant. Those who don't have cells phones would learn about the situation through friends, as well as from the buzz that would be happening on campus.