Social Media Disadvantages

“Social media makes the community part of the actual crisis communication response. For example…Twitter was used to quickly share initial information and updates during the 2007 and 2008 California wildfires, 2008 Mumbai massacre, 2009 crash of US Airways Flight 1549, 2010 Haiti earthquake, and 2011 Tunisian uprising.” This information, again in Veil’s 2011 article, reinforces the idea of how social media communication is highly beneficial and furthers an individual’s ability to remain informed on current events.

Appropriate technology, such as social media, affecting communication during the crisis situation and how these technologies may be used to enhance communication

Websites, twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., are examples of social media to be used to disseminate information to the general public. Implementation of a reverse 911 system provided notification of to specific neighborhood areas. Personal visits, town meetings and fliers provide a personal touch when communicating, especially with a neighborhood or the public. The final form of media is news conferences or (need to consider the current form of communication).

One of the major tasks of emergency management is successfully communicating with the public during the course of a disaster. Social media has taken the world by storm and used in almost every facet of a person’s daily life. As technology advances, so does the potential for social media within emergency management. One of the values of social media is that it not only allows emergency managers to transmit messages to the public, but it also permits interaction with the public that can keep managers better informed and use the public as an asset in emergency response. However, social media often remains a capability separate from operations, leveraged mostly by community and volunteer groups and within the public information or communications functions of emergency response organizations. Not until social media is incorporated within operations, as a communications and as an information source, will its full capabilities be recognized (Social Media in Disasters, 2014).

Police are embracing it and finding ways to utilize it to their benefit. The ability to reach a large segment of the community very quickly has enabled social media to become a tool law enforcement can use, from its ability to notify the public about a missing child to a suspicious activity. Investigators are able share photos and video to help track down leads to solve cases and expand its intelligence gathering. With a search on line law enforcement can identify gang members by putting a name to a face, or tract down perpetrators that like to brag about their crimes. The agencies can also utilize social media as a recruitment tool to help locate and reach new applicants.

Another aspect that needed closer attention after the attack was the channel of communication when the disaster happened. There needed to be a reliable channel that wouldn’t be affected by the failure of the corporate system. Over the years, social media usage as a communication channel has come in handy. It has been used to create a strong collaboration between corporate to client and corporate to corporate for communication purposes. Various corporations can communicate the progress of the data recovery efforts to both their workers and clients. For example most clients would get depressed by failure of a system that manages their data, hence, an assurance of data safety would calm their anxiety in the wake of the disaster. Facebook, Twitter and Linked In are the widely used social media channels for communication because of their robustness, ubiquity and they are free to use.

Still in control of television and their own company websites, they are no longer the sole controller of information. Per Mangeri, all organizations “must be sure to maintain the capability to communicate valuable information about evacuation, sheltering, and other important disaster response and recovery information to the entire community”. This statement previously meant the PIO would prepare to communicate in different contexts to the community. Now, it must also include various forms of social media being utilized by the different generations of media consumers. For example, most organizations have incorporated a social media component to their messaging. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have all become critical avenues to connect people with those delivering critical messaging. Facebook Safety Check is a program to help mitigate the panic that ensues during a crisis. Facebook users can now show themselves as being “safe” during an incident. This allows family and friends to be informed of their loved one's status without having to further burden the responding emergency services. In addition, the responding emergency services themselves can disseminate the desired information. This can vary from weather advisories to critical incidents. In addition, the Code Red System, available to first responder is an immediate reversal of the 911 system, which calls and notifies citizens

Another great quality about this new alert system is that it sends instructions to the reader on how to prepare for unexpected weather conditions or a terrorist attack (Biersdorfer, 2016). Moving on, today another widely used app that can help inform the public is twitter. To better explain, according to one source, people who use “twitter” can now select the option of getting minute-to-minute updates sent straight to their phone on information on public emergency’s (Biersdorfer, 2016). All the cell phone holder has to do is select an agency, for example, the Department Homeland Security, and the Department will send them the same updated information that would be posted on the National Terrorism Advisory System (Biersdorfer,

Throughout human existence many new innovations have been developed to enhance society, including social media. Social media are websites and applications that are used as a communication forum and a method for expressing oneself, it allows users to share content such as thoughts, photos and videos with other users. Despite the fact that society is immensely dependent on social media, negative press has expanded for the effects it convicts on police. Numerous citizens believe social media should remain encouraging and expressing freedom of speech, however, others believe social media should discourage the involvement of police. The battle between social media and police has spiked interest and cause citizens

Approximately 3.6 billion people have access to mobile devices, however only forty percent have access to the internet with their mobile device. Social media impacts information sharing and can help spread correct information during problematic times of rumors during health care crisis and health event. Public health may use social media as a tool to disseminate time sensitive information related to health. Social media can be a two way street and allows non-experts to share information as well. An example was the misinformation given during the Ebola crisis in 2014. The issue with Ebola was public health did respond in a timely manner causing the spread of rumors during this event which cause public panic (Huffington Post, 2018). It is important for public health to be ready for crisis with ways to get the appropriate message to staff volunteers and

Social media allows emergency managers to disperse information to larger audiences whether it is facts, instructions, or guidance and monitor

As Alexander (2013) highlights, social media provides a voice to people who do not normally have one due to the wide community of users. Lindsay (2011) stresses that while present emergency communication systems are mostly centralized through one-way communication from the organisation to the public, social media can possibly change emergency communication as information can flow in many directions. During the Haiti earthquake, Keim and Noji (2011) find out that users in Haiti reported the earthquake live, including information and images on areas affected.

Many people use social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to share information on numerous topics, ranging from politics, sports, and personal stories. This information has been collected and analyzed by researchers for market prediction, mining the opinions, etc. One of the most important properties of social platforms is that they allow people to communicate in real-time. During a crisis or a natural disaster, people on social media tend to easily believe contents of postings related to the events, and Re-tweet the postings with hoping them to be reached to many other users. There are both sides positive and negative to sharing information related to emergency situations on social media. People are well-informed about the situation in real-time, and most of this information is true, or believed to be true.

This study sets out to see how online networking is generally utilized as a part of catastrophe and crisis circumstances. Examine up to this point has secured the imperativeness of online networking in calamity and emergency correspondence however fails to portray why online networking are essential. To secure best practices of social networking use in a debacle and why they ought to be utilized, this study talked with six correspondence or online networking masters in the field of catastrophe alleviation. The accompanying four best practices were built: plan for online networking use before a catastrophe happens; use mainstream and significant online networking devices, confine debacles in social networking utilize, and use

In the wake of the recent attacks in Paris and increasing manmade and natural disasters around the world, the ability to communicate with citizens during times of crisis is more important than ever. It is no longer appropriate to limit the output of emergency information to the traditional delivery methods. Social media use continues to grow at a staggering pace. As of January 2014, 74% of online adults use social networking sites (Pew Research Center, n.d.).