The Role Of Media And Its Impact On Emergency Management

Whether media comes in the form of news coverage, Facebook updates, or even a text message, the media has been transporting information globally with just the touch of a button. But what happens when media is stricken with negative news? How do they go about portraying that negative information without putting their viewers into a worldwide panic? Or is that even their job? With the Ferguson crisis that was currently happening at this point in time, the media played an important role, as they were the ones who were informing media watchers and viewers about what was happening. But many were debating whether or not the news stations did and effective job when reporting to the community about Ferguson. With headline such as, “Officer shoots unarmed teen,” and “Police Brutality at its Finest,” the media was one of the first places that people went to look for more information regarding Michael Brown. When the shooting of Michael Brown took place, news stations were one of the first ones to arrive on the scene. And from that very moment, they were there covering every step a protestor took just to make sure that the Ferguson community was kept in the

Tragic events that cause damage to property and life may destroy the social, cultural and economic life of a community. Communities must be engaged in the various phases from prevention to recovery to build disaster resilient communities. In order to do this, there must be a disaster preparedness plan in place that involves multiple people in various roles.

Effective disaster management is highly important when it comes to assisting in rescue and relief to affected. This does not only include post disaster rescue efforts but these disaster management activities should be proactive. They start right from taking preventive measures before the disaster actually occurs and goes on till the effected people are resettled back in their lives. This disaster management pertaining to human life is not only associated with physical well being but also focuses on psychological, emotional, and spiritual rehabilitation.

Crisis information during Hurricane Katrina was immediately available through mass media; television, radio, the emergency broadcast system, and social media. During emergencies, the importance of our country’s communications systems becomes clear. These

Disaster relief operations are complex systems having more to them than just a response mechanism. They require a significant amount of pre-planning.

“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.

Timely and accurate information is essential during a terrorist attack and a natural disaster. Therefore, the government must inform the public of all events. However, officials need to be mindful of the information that is released could expose intelligence in an ongoing investigation and put lives at risk. Crisis communication is a fine line of keeping the public informed and placing them harms

Getting a staff together to bring in useful information to plan for the release of the information to the news media is a great way to enhance communication to the public. The media will then get the information out to the public by ways of News releases, web sites, news conferences, newspapers and other social media (Hicks, 2012). The advantages of using these types of media are they quickly allows for the public to know what type of crisis has happened, and what kinds of precautions are being taken to ensure their safety. If there were to be any fatalities caused by the crisis event(s), these types of avenues also will give information on that. Some disadvantages can be unreliable technology of the citizens that will not allow for them to get access to the information that is being released by the media, such as no television, computer is not working properly, or they don’t received the local newspaper to be able to read it, etc.

Social media and web coverage allow the community to stay connected in emergency situations through forums for family and friends. Traffic and road closings can be posted by viewers in real time to assist the broadcasters as well as

I definitely agree that we have to also include social media outlet along with traditional media outlets with partnership with emergency mangers. It is useful to teach the public during non-disaster event how to share important information. It is also important to build a strong trust with media and EM mangers to make sure there is very little misinformation to circulate.

The burden of emergency management has grown great deal in the last few decades. We have seen an increase in natural disasters, a new threat of terrorism on our front door and an increase in manmade disasters. All of these have tested emergency management in a number of cities and towns across the nation. It is not always disasters that present problems for emergency managers. We have to look beyond our traditional view of emergency management of helping us during times of disasters and view what issues they consider may affect their emergency response. Issues that emergency management see that are moving into the critical area are issues of urbanization and hazard exposure, the rising costs of disaster recovery, and low priority of emergency management.

Media partnership is another critical assumption that is used in an emergency situation. The media takes the responsibility of giving information to the public, as well as receiving information from them too. Thus, any emergency response team must work together with the media to give information that is particularly accurate and timely to avert situations that aggravate tension. Emergency managers must have an understanding of the needs and requirements of the media and the value that they come with in emergency response situations (Haddow & Haddow, 2013).

During emergencies, the importance of our country’s communications systems becomes clear. These communications systems include the wire line and wireless telephone networks, broadcast and cable television, radio, Public Safety Land Mobile Radio, satellite systems and increasingly the Internet. For example, in an emergency, we may dial 911, call our family members to make sure they are safe, and turn on our televisions and radios to get breaking news and important updates (FCC, 2012).

This emergence of social media has also changed emergency management and disaster response. Emergency management as a whole is fairly new, only creating widely recognized, integrated emergency management systems beginning in the 1970s. Furthermore, at this same time people realized that the effects disasters have on the communities they strike can be mitigated by the creation of disaster plans ahead of time, proper disaster response training, and the efforts of human actions in these situations. Because social media has enabled mass amounts of instant information sharing, it allows not only locals and disaster response teams to help with the management of crises, but also many remote citizens.

CNA, a research facility, partnered with the National Emergency Management Association to provide research and information on the public’s expectations about emergency management’s use of social media. Before this research, the data about this connection was only done with case studies and unreliable accounts. CAN used a survey in this research to see how people felt about social media in connection with emergency management. The results found an positive approach. Many people in emergency management agencies, on local and national levels are very familiar with social media. It is usually the larger websites that are more widely known. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, are widely known and publicized. There are however many other social media sites that are not as widely known that are even more useful to nationwide security and communication such as crowdsourcing and Nixle and these are not as widely known (Su, Wardell, & Throkidsen, 2013). So while people in emergency management